Things that make you go hmmm

The math understates it, but I get where you're going with it.

Easy enough
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/GUIC.PDF&ved=2ahUKEwi-yqSG56v4AhX8nI4IHcNXDDYQFnoECAQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3VTR1t2pI10j-uR2j96v8y 6jl4fb.jpg (click to show)

So you're saying that guns need to be taken away from citizens before the criminals can steal them?

No—just responding to the 'gun owners are 100% more likely to commit a crime than non-gun owners' thing, which—**all I'm saying**—is statistically false.

...and?

If I steal a car, by definition I don't own it. The owner still owns the car. You understand that, right?

Illegal gun *ownership* is similar to (here in Illinois) owning a gun legally in another state, and bringing it into Illinois without FOID registration. I'm sure other states have similar provisions.

If you steal something, then you don’t legally own it, but you do (now) *illegally* own it, unless and until you’re dispossessed of it. The widespread availability of guns in America provides would-be criminals with lots of opportunity to become “gun owners.”

I get what you’re trying to say, “criminals can steal guns, so gun regulation is pointless,” but ask yourself — is there a rampant gun thievery problem in Japan? South Korea? No, there isn’t. Their effective gun control schemes aren’t thwarted by criminal elements.

The legality of guns in society influences the *illegality* of guns in society, you can’t draw a bright-line. Criminals are often conceived as somehow being separate and apart from society — but they’re a part of society nonetheless, and influenced by the law.

I'm not at all trying to say “criminals can steal guns, so gun regulation is pointless". Regulation is necessary. I support the new law that is coming out...even though I'm struggling to justify the lack of due-process for domestic violence offenders.

I'm also not saying that 100% of gun homicides are with stolen guns—the data shows that 70-80% are by the gun owner.

What I'm saying—originally—is that there is a huge misperception that 100% of crimes are committed by gun owners, and that if we just remove the ability to buy them, it will be a silver bullet solution.

I understand the correlation to Asia, but I can draw the ownership-to-crime comparison to a host of countries, especially in Latin America, but also in parts of Europe, where there is a higher murder rate than the United States, even though they have a lot lower rate of owning guns. For example, Russia has a homicide rate higher than ours and a gun ownership rate that might be about ten percent of ours. Ukraine has a homicide rate that's higher than ours and a gun ownership rate that's less than ten percent of ours. And we can really go down the rabbit hole in South America.

There really isn't a single country on earth that has a culture like the US.

The cat is out of the bag—guns are a part of US culture, whether we like it or not. There are 1.2 guns owned (legally) for every 1 person in the US. There is no sensible, non-totalitarian (or even totalitarian) way of removing them.

So the question SHOULD then become 'how can we stop the wrong people from getting firearms, what causes them to do it, and what can we do to fix it'...but we'll likely just scream at the sun about removing the 2nd Amendment in futility.

I get it. We have a 2nd Amendment, and other countries don’t. There are a huge number of guns in circulation in the U.S. and “gun culture” here won’t ever be accepting of Australian-style buybacks to actually get them out of people’s hands. Bottom-line, more guns out there equals more death. So, we’ll always have higher gun death rates than Japan or South Korea or other countries.

That said, other countries’ successes point the way. There are still ways to address the problem, in a way that won’t stomp too much on entrenched gun interests, or any reasonable interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.

Different gun owners are different. The established gun collector who has 100 guns and is looking to buy his 101st, but has never shot anyone and has no criminal record, is less of a problem than the anxious/depressed 17-year-old who is counting down the days to his 18th birthday so he can buy his very first.

We have to start somewhere. Banning sales of assault weapons to under-21s, for instance, is an easy and logical step. We need something like that in place for these very young kids who are less likely to have any criminal or mental health record, who won’t show up on any background screenings, who might be less likely to meet “red flag” criteria, and we’re therefore rolling the dice when we decide they can own an AR-15.

Agreed. Thank you for a rational conversation in a world that's apparently allergic to it.

If you get run over by a car, finding out that it was stolen won't bring you back to life.