Originally Posted By: Guitarhacker
I know that pointing out facts to the anti-gun folks won't change their minds because they tend to operate on emotions rather than facts.

The point about Chicago is that they do in fact, have the strictest gun laws in the country. Right up there with DC and NYC as well as a few other cities. Illinois is not a gun friendly state either. Neither is NY, CA, MD, and a few others. Having those super strict laws does NOTHING to stop the gun violence. In states where citizens have been returned their right to carry a firearm for personal protection, the crime rates tend to drop across the board. In NC, a perp can be shot by the homeowner when they are in the act of breaking in. The presumption by law is that the perp intended to harm the residents and they can act in self defense. No charges are to be filed when it's ruled to be a self defense situation and better yet, no one can file a lawsuit for wrongful death against the homeowners.

Blaming the surrounding states is a cop out. None, of the thugs from the hoods in their respective cities are going to legally buy guns in other states. Since 99% of them have a criminal history, the background check stops the sale in a legal gun shop. Anyone selling or transferring a pistol or other firearm without the proper paperwork is already violating the law.

The guns on the streets in the hands of thugs and criminals are illegal and have been stolen, with very few exceptions. The thugs are violating law just having the gun if they are felons, which most are. It's illegal to have and use a gun in a crime. It's illegal to rob, rape, do drive-bys, and murder.

So what additional law(s) do you think would actually solve this issue?

You should read some of the John Lott guns studies that show no correlation between the number of guns and violent crime with guns.

Another interesting statistic..... America is near the top when it comes to violent gun crime in the world. Fact. But, if you simply remove 4 cities from that statistic, NYC, Washington DC, New Orleans, and yep... Chicago, America falls to very near the bottom on that same list. Interesting.

this is a waste of time trying to convince you of the facts. I'm going to work.... with my 9mm in my holster.

well, you have yet to point out any facts! I get that you love your guns and you are fearful so you feel you need your gun for protection. but here's a fun fact for you: only 0.04% of all gun murders in the US happen during home invasions; read that again...not 4%...not 0.4%...but 0.04%! and over a third of those are killed by their own gun that the criminal has either stolen or taken from them.

and you are in the minority! 77% of all Americans do NOT own a gun! so let that sink in...over 3/4s of us do not feel compelled to shoot things nor do we believe bad guys are coming to get us nor do we have a cowboy complex that drives us to walk around with a firearm.

the simple facts are shown in absolute clarity by all other modern countries where gun laws are much more stringent and the result is crystal clear...fewer guns means less gun violence. so obvious as to be common sense.

Finally, I am quite familiar with Lott's work and it has been rejected by plenty of reputable sources including,

- Rutgers sociology professor Ted Goertzel stated that "Lott's massive data set was simply unsuitable for his task", and that he "compar[ed] trends in Idaho and West Virginia and Mississippi with trends in Washington, D.C. and New York City" without proper statistical controls. He points out that econometric methods (such as the Lott & Mustard RTC study or the Levitt & Donohue abortion study) are susceptible to misuse and can even become junk science.

- Hemenway, David (2006). Private guns, public health. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 9780472023820.

- Ian Ayres, Yale Law School, and John Donohue III, Stanford Law School, "Shooting Down the More Guns, Less Crime Hypothesis," Stanford Law Review, 2003.[27] This study found a temporary increase in aggravated assaults.

- Webster et al., "Flawed gun policy research could endanger public safety", American Journal of Public Health, 1997.

- Jens Ludwig, Georgetown University, "Concealed-Gun-Carrying Laws and Violent Crime: Evidence from State Panel Data", International Review of Law and Economics, 1998.

- Dan Black and Daniel Nagin, "Do 'Right-to-Carry' Laws Deter Violent Crime?" Journal of Legal Studies, (January 1998).

- Hashem Dezhbakhsh and Paul H. Rubin, "Lives Saved or Lives Lost? The Effects of Concealed-Handgun Laws on Crime," The American Economic Review, 1998.

- Mark Duggan, University of Chicago, "More Guns, More Crime," National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Working Paper No. W7967, October 2000, later published in Journal of Political Economy.

- David E. Olson and Michael D. Maltz, "Right‐to‐Carry Concealed Weapon Laws and Homicide in Large U.S. Counties: The Effect on Weapon Types, Victim Characteristics, and Victim‐Offender Relationships," The Journal of Law & Economics, 2001. This study found mixed results as to whether right-to-carry laws were associated with similar effects as reported by Lott and Mustard or not.

- Grant Duwe, Tomislav Kovandzic, and Carlisle E. Moody, "The Impact of Right-to-Carry Concealed Firearm Laws on Mass Public Shootings" Homicide Studies 4 (2002).

- Tomislav V. Kovandzic and Thomas B. Marvell, "Right-to-Carry Concealed Firearms and Violent Crime: Crime Control Through Gun Decontrol?" Criminology and Public Policy 2, (2003).

- John J. Donahue III, Stanford Law School, 'The Final Bullet in the Body of the More Guns, Less Crime Hypothesis', Criminology and Public Policy, 2003.

- Tomislav V. Kovandzic, Thomas B. Marvell and Lynne M. Vieraitis, "The Impact of “Shall-Issue” Concealed Handgun Laws on Violent Crime Rates: Evidence From Panel Data for Large Urban Cities" Homicide Studies (2005): 292-323.

- Michael D. Maltz and Joseph Targonski, "Measurement and Other Errors in County-Level UCR Data: A Reply to Lott and Whitley," Journal of Quantitative Criminology June 2003: 199-206.

- Lisa Hepburn, Matthew Miller, Deborah Azrael, and David Hemenway "The effect of nondiscretionary concealed weapon carrying laws on homicide", Journal of Trauma March 2004: 676-81.

- Robert A. Martin Jr. and Richard L. Legault, "Systematic Measurement Error with State-Level Crime Data: Evidence from the “More Guns, Less Crime” Debate," Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency May 2005: 187-210.

- Rosengart et al., "An evaluation of state firearm regulations and homicide and suicide death rates," Injury Prevention 2005: 77-83.

- Patricia Grambsch, "Regression to the Mean, Murder Rates, and Shall-Issue Laws," The American Statistician (2008).

- Benjamin French and Patrick J. Heagerty, "Analysis of Longitudinal Data to Evaluate a Policy Change", Statistics in Medicine October 30, 2008: 5005-5025. This study concluded that "enacting a shall-issue law is associated with a weak but non-significant increase in firearm-related homicide rates."

- John Donohue and Ian Ayres. "More Guns, Less Crime Fails Again: The Latest Evidence from 1977–2006" Econ Journal Watch (2009): 218–238.

- Hoskin, Anthony (March 2011). "Household gun prevalence and rates of violent crime: a test of competing gun theories". Criminal Justice Studies. 24 (1): 125–136. doi:10.1080/1478601X.2011.544445.

- Aneja, A.; Donohue, J. J.; Zhang, A. (29 October 2011). "The Impact of Right-to-Carry Laws and the NRC Report: Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy" (PDF). American Law and Economics Review. 13 (2): 565–631. doi:10.1093/aler/ahr009.

- Wolfgang Stroebe, "Firearm possession and violent death: A critical review," Aggression and Violent Behavior, 2013.

- Sripal Bangalore and Franz Messerli, "Gun Ownership and Firearm-related Deaths," The American Journal of Medicine, 2013.

- Kesteren, John van; Dijk, Jan van; Mayhew, Pat (January 2014). "The International Crime Victims Surveys". International Review of Victimology. SAGE Publications. 20 (1): 49–69. doi:10.1177/0269758013511742.

- Donald J. Lacombe and Amanda Ross, "Revisiting the Question 'More Guns, Less Crime?' New Estimates Using Spatial Econometric Techniques," Social Science Research Network, 2014.

- Manski & Pepper, "How Do Right-to-Carry Laws Affect Crime Rates? Coping with Ambiguity Using Bounded-Variation Assumptions", Review of Economics and Statistics, 2015.

- Steven N. Durlauf, Salvador Navarro, David A. Rivers, "Model uncertainty and the effect of shall-issue right-to-carry laws on crime," European Economic Review, 2016.