It depends on what you mean by gun control (full ban vs restrictions), but the opportunity cost of banning firearms is not negligible.
* There is an economic impact (lost revenue for firearm producers, sellers, resellers, ammunition producers, gun ranges, sport associations, hunting groups, accessory producers, etc).
* There is a personal utility cost (enthusiasts, hunters, and sport shooters can't enjoy their hobbies anymore).
* There is a communal cost (those people now have fewer reasons to come together and form groups).
* There is a personal defense cost (citizens and especially at risk groups are less able to defend themselves).
* There is a national defense cost (armed citizens impede invasion).
* There may be a military readiness and recruitment cost.
* There is an increased probability of tyrannical government (armed citizens impede this, I don't know to what degree).
* There are time and legal costs (this will be fought aggressively and take up large amounts of legislator and judicial time which could be spent on other matters). In the US this would require a full constitutional amendment which is by design a non-trivial undertaking.
* There are regulatory costs (someone needs to define and interpret what bans mean).
* There are enforcement costs (all existing firearms would be grandfathered in. To my knowledge there is no legal basis for eminent domain of firearms or seizure of assets that were legally purchased pre-ban. For example, any alcohol purchased before prohibition took effect was still legal to possess and use. Any automatic weapon purchased before the ban on automatic weapons is still legal).
You can argue that it's still a net benefit to ban firearms (and you may be right) but I disagree that there are negligible costs.
Gun control doesn't prevent gun ranges, sport associations, hunting groups, etc - all of these exists in my country (Poland) despite strict gun control. They just have to do more paperwork.
You could just as well argue requiring driving licence destroys car industry and hobbies :)
> There is a personal utility cost
They can, they just have to take an exam, register their guns, and pass some checks.
> communal cost
If anything there's more reason to come together to shoot - because shooting requires permissions so it's harder to organize it separately. There are many shooting contests in Poland (for example one I participated in as a teen - organized by LOK (League of National Defense)).
> personal defense cost
That's what police is for, and looking at the homicide and violence stats from all over the world - the less gun ownership in the population - the safe the country is. This isn't a cost, it's a benefit for personal defense. There's +- 1.5 homicides per 100 000 citizens in Poland. And about 5-10 in USA.
> national defense cost
Armed citizens barely change how hard it is to invade a country. Armies with tanks, planes and missiles doesn't care much about your colt or ar-15. When the government has problem with part of the country - it can just stop supplying it with food, energy and fuel. You'll surrender in a few weeks with no victims :)
> military readiness and recruitment cost
I had shooting lessons at school for 2 years. Among other stuff (first help training, survival lessons, how to behave when there's a missile attack etc). Our country has strict gun control, somehow it didn't prevent it. Many countries with gun control even have mandatory military service :) Training people to use military rifle takes a few weeks anyway.
> increased probability of tyrannical government
Tzar Russia had no gun control, yet it got totalitarian communism in a few years. China before Mao had no gun control and got Mao anyway :)
Gun control changes nothing, because totalitarian regimes arise with popular support, or invade with armies.
Poland after WW2 had lots of firearms in hands of citizens, the biggest resistance in Europe as percentage of population. There was anti-communism resistance fighting till 60s in some cases. Soviets didn't care, most people just wnted them to stop because they were more invconvenient for the populace than for the Russians. At no point were they close to overthrow the government.
> time and legal costs
These are the only realistic ones, and are negligible compared to other things we have to do to prevent similar number of deaths.
> regulatory
If you want to divide legal costs into proper legal and regulatory - sure, whatever, still negligible compared to banning cars or curing cancer.
> enforcement costs
small as well - most people don't do revolutions. We already have state enforce taxes on people, enforcing a few other things as well is easy and in case of gun control - was done in many countries all over the world with next to no problems.
I like how pro-gun Americans raise all these points ignoring that literally 99% of the world did this with good results and no problems. Theory is all nice, but you cannot ignore the reality.
Opportunity cost of gun control is huge for marginalized groups which cannot count on timely police response, or in worse cases, police response may increase chances of lethality.
> Why do gun control advocates never discuss disarming the police?
Of course you disarm the police. Police in Poland shoots less than 100 bullets a year (in action). Most don't even carry a gun, because there's no point in day-to-day service.
Countries disarmed criminals with introducing gun control. It's not hard.
Criminals are rational beings - if there's minimal chance that the victim has a gun, and doing the same crime with a gun means much longer sentence, and you don't need the gun anyway - then criminals won't take guns with them, it would be stupid for them to continue using guns.
They catch them later anyway. Much better if they steal your stuff and go to the jail, than if you start a firefight and people get injured or dead?
How much you carry on you - 1000 USD? How much to fix perforated lungs? Will they even fix it completely?
The best solution to theft is to let it happen and retrieve the stolen goods later. Turning a theft into murder is the worst possible solution.
BTW Crime is less common in countries with gun control than in USA (admitedly - that's probably only partially caused by gun laws, much more important is the absurd lack of basic public services).
> The best solution to theft is to let it happen and retrieve the stolen goods later.
Just wondering - is the best solution to rape also to just "let it happen and deal with the rapist later"?
> BTW Crime is less common in countries with gun control than in USA (admitedly - that's probably only partially caused by gun laws, much more important is the absurd lack of basic public services).
Pretty sure that's a lie, or at the very least there are countries with strict gun control that are far worse than the US. Most of Central America, for instance.
There's a famous joke, about the Quaker standing at the head of his stairs at night, holding a rifle. Says to the thief in the room below "Friend, I wouldn't harm you for the world, but you're standing right where I'm about to fire this rifle."
I think you dont understand the cost of democide. Being disarmed by your govt is a very dangerous position. What do you put as the value of human life ? How about 262 million lives ?
His research shows that the death toll from democide is far greater than the death toll from war. After studying over 8,000 reports of government-caused deaths, Rummel estimates that there have been 262 million victims of democide in the last century. According to his figures, six times as many people have died from the actions of people working for governments than have died in battle.
So what are the numbers for per capita gun ownership in pre-Mao China? There's no point in saying there's no gun control and then ignoring how many guns are owned by the people.
And also because that all happened far away, and that would surely never happen here in the Land of the Free™, right?
That's not to say that a modern military couldn't and wouldn't curbstomp a bunch of civilians with small arms in this day and age, but an armed civilian is at least slightly harder to tyrannically subjugate than an unarmed one.
The 2nd Amendment is valuable because F35s, tanks, and helicopter gunships are useless for fighting an armed citizenry.
Say a President uses the military to fight US civilians on US soil. He and anyone else involved in the plot would preside over a country not worth ruling. Because all their friends and family would be kidnapped and murdered by lunchtime.
People in USA have no idea how authoritharian/totalitarian regimes happen, so they imagine such absurd scenarios.
Totalitarian regimes start as democratic state with huge popular support for big changes in law. They slowly change law stretching some laws beyond recognition, but still preserving popular support by mass spending, finding external or internal public enemies.
Before the country as a whole decide it's enough - it's far past the time for a revolution. Half of your friends support the authoritharian government and work actively to enforce it.
You clearly don’t know the worldview of Republicans, most of whom own guns. Many are ready to defend the Republic against all enemies - foreign and domestic. Gun ownership is an inoculation against totalitarianism.
So far you seem to be a pessimistic outlier without solutions. This attitude is easily exploited by authoritarians.
I know the worldview of republicans. I see how they introduce "Patriot act" and remove personal liberties to fight fringe threats.
They are much more likely to become authoritarian than to defend you from them :) May I remind you they are currently building a wall on the border and keeping children in concentration camps?
You are proving my point because you are confusing the D.C. establishment with the people.
You simply don’t know Republicans. If any are on this site they are chuckling at your comment.
I digress. You seem interested in the southern border. The wall is currently made of tens of thousands of Mexican soldiers. Border walls are normal all around the world because they work.
As for children in Obama cages, everyone agrees this is wrong. This is why a wall is so important - there won’t be any illegal crossers to detain.
Gun control and widespread gun ownership changes nothing regarding totalitarian states. Poland after WW2 had lots of weapons in circulation. There was big anti-communist resistance. Some of them fought till 60s.
They achieved nothing and even the average citizen had enough of them few years in. They were only making life harder, stealing stuff to survive and causing property damage, and had no chances to win vs the army with tanks, aeroplanes, mines, and supply chains.
Now it's even more absurd. People pretending gun ownership protects them from totalitarianism are deluded.
There have already been calls for DRM inclusion on 3D printers and consumer CNC machines. The bans start with objects of violence, i.e. guns and knives. Next it will be to prevent copyright violations. No more printing your own warhammer figurines or Micky Mouse Novelty phone holders. Then we move on to objects of sexual deviance, gotta think of the kiddos. Eventually it leads to the day where you are buying 3D printers that only print from a pre-approved and monitored repository of models. But don't worry, you can upload your owns models to Google-CAD!
Poland before WW2 had lenient gun control laws, and lots of illegal arms (it was where WW1 and 1920 anti-soviet war was fought).
It changed nothing, because you can't fight tanks and professional army with pistols. Besides when people were rounded up for camps they didn't knew they will die, it happened gradually.
Hardly. It does almost nothing and this has been studied and has been continually ignored because the hysteria machine needs something to grind against.
"What is it about gun advocates and math? Are the deceptions deliberate? Or does the excitement of grasping a sleek stiff tool in one’s hand cause a depletion of cognitive coherence?"
That's more than a narrow critique of a particular statistic. And the success of that narrow criticism does little to support that leading statement, which is a broad smear of a large subculture. So a response that extends beyond the meteor comparison seems appropriate.
I've never heard anyone make the referenced argument. You can find stupid idiots on any side of any issue. Trying to impute the stupid idiots to the entire side of the issue is an entertaining past time, but all heat and no light.
Yes, the "hit by a meteor" claim is lame but the other side of things is even more terrible.
If we're actually worried about the things that are going to be likely to kill us -> Drowning, Cars or even being hit by blunt instruments.