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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8RDWltHxRc[/youtube]

Yeah. Obviously we can't say that the gun restrictions caused the increase but it's another example of focusing on a tool instead of underlying cause. If we could make all guns in the US outside of the direct control of the military and law enforcement disappear it's reasonable to think the murder rate would go down to some extent because guns are effective tools. But the US would still probably have a murder rate much higher than that of Europe. I don't think, for instance, drug gangs would decide they're not going to try to kill somebody they want to kill because they don't have access to guns. They're just going to use different tools.

Here's an interesting article from a gun control advocate:

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/367104/ ... irearm.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A quote:

And in the pro-gun debate, Switzerland is often used as a case in point: the country has high gun ownership rates, along with remarkably low rates of crime.

But in reality, this correlation is drastically oversimplified. A closer look at the relationship between gun ownership and criminal activity in Switzerland and the United States shows that gun control is just one of a great many factors that have an effect on the frequency of violent crime in any given location.

What I would say to the author is that the complexity she describes also means you can't say, for instance, that England has a lower murder rate than the US does because England has tougher gun control laws. Guns do not cause murder. Underlying human behavior does. And taking guns away from people who want to have them and who will never use them to commit violent crime is not going to solve the violent crime problem. It might reduce the number of fatalities by some extent. But we don't know that extent. We can't assume that you can just subtract the number of homicides involving firearms use from the total number of homicides and get what the number would be without guns. And I don't believe one should take guns away from people who are never going to use them to attack somebody (except in defense) in order to achieve that probable reduction.

Here's what happens when you require gun ownership:

http://rense.com/general9/gunlaw.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

KENNESAW, Ga - Several Kennesaw officials attribute a drop in crime in the city over the past two decades to a law that requires residents to have a gun in the house...

Kennesaw Historical Society president Robert Jones said following the law's passage, the crime rate dropped 89 percent in the city, compared to the modest 10 percent drop statewide...

"You can't argue with the fact that Kennesaw has the lowest crime rate of any city our size in the country," said Church,

Please don't throw me in that briar patch...