Pretty much everything has a higher significance, as far as statistics indicate.

Not in the positive and not in the negative way, the collective underworld just shrugs and continues their business as usual when places ban firearms or a ban gets overturned

Actually, when a ban gets lifted, they get a little cranky. Legal firearms means the price of illegal firearms go down, as demand from the legal-but-desperate crowd goes down. But they still have the illegal market, so they'll be fine. Just not as nice on the balance sheets that don't exist.

In the Neo-Anarchist's guide to real life the fashionability or lack thereof of open wearing of armor and weapons actually seemed to be like many fashion trends in that it went in and out of style much like colors and cuts in the current fashion world. So in winter of 2054 designer armored jackets and fancy sidearms may be cool and by spring 2055 it may be completely uncool and a more subtle look may be in fashion. Of course fashion trends trickle down from high society and it will be different at different strata and in different locations, and by the time you get to the barrens salvaged rags and blunt objects are pretty much always in style.

So by now all my holsters are SO last year(or worse)?

A few years ago I had a similar thought with a char of mine. The difference was I said my char is going everywhere armed with his LMG. Not long after we had a run where the GM wanted to disarm me, I usually carried far more than just an LMG (armor, grenades, explosives 1k in ammo...), so he gave us an infiltration run in a jungle and imposed encumbrance modifiers. He expected survival gear and electronics and such with maybe a rifle and 100 rounds, very light weight only and bare necessities only. I brought clothes one magazine of APDS and my LMG. On the way out he sent a dragon after us to try and crash us and make us fail the run. I let off a single burst of full auto fire; the dragon was dead before he hit the ground. That char ALWAYS carries his LMG. It does however make more peaceful runs a bit difficult or awkward at times though...

Yeah you'll need the New Ares Catalog with this seasons colors and cuts, look for the stylish cut away holster windows to show off your custom anodized Predator in matching colors and prints!

Rioters don't want to be armed, if they are armed then they can be shot more easily legally. If criminals can get guns, and they do/can, rioters can get guns. The fact that they are not armed means they want to be an annoyance, not a real that can be shot by Militia/police easily. Even back when people in the states were as close to an armed society as it gets back in the 1700s protestors went unarmed. Of course they eventually were gunned down by the British, but it was an unarmed crowd in a a largely armed society that was shot. Should a riot be armed it would not be a riot but insurrection, that is a far different deal and rioters know it.

I was always under the impression that in the barren everybody who can afford a gun (and does not prefere to beat people) wears a gun.
In AA or AAA destricts I always imagined a security system a bit on the line of the fallout robots.
Thread recognized. Eleminiating thread. Have a nice day
Guy: We should get bigger shields...

But on the other hand, legal sales make it easier to acquire a weapon without a "history" and inject it into the black market. Such weapons yield far higher prices than the ones which have circulated on the black market for years, so the clever smuggler might still make a decent profit. Of course he could just invest into stocks and options for firearms companies (which react somewhat predictable to political changes) and make the same money legally, but where's the fun with that...

Not exactly, High security rating zones really are meant to be an indication of the pervasiveness and quality of Law Enforcement, but if the area has not outlawed guns than the enforcers won't give you more than a little bit more of a watchful eye if your Commlink is broadcasting valid documentation (Or forged of sufficient quality) for your weapon in a AAA neighborhood, if it happens to also be your AAA neighborhood then you may not even get a second look. Now an unregistered concealed firearm is a whole different ballgame.

But the rules change depending on where you are, so when you leave the streets of Seattle (UCAS) and go in to the Mitsuhama Office Towers (Mitsuhama) you may no longer be permitted to carry your gun

Old Joke: "Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms sounds like a great name for a convenience store."

I'd shop there.

You can!

http://parrotheadjeff.com/blog/archives/14...venience-store/

Yeah, I'm sure they'd love to see my foreign Canadian Passport as ID at that place...

in SR4A, the local Kwik-E-Mart carries everything... & if it doesn't have it, the nano-forge in the back room can possibly make it, given the right amount of time & materials. Of course, if you send a message in advance of you getting to the place... that's even better.

Kudos for the stats link, kzt. OK, I stand corrected in that the number of homicides caused by family/partner is not the majority of gun homicides in the US. Still, at 18.66% it is still much much greater statistically than the number of homicides attributed to home invasion (burglary 80, 0.62% of total homicides). In other words, statistically you are more than 30x more likely to be killed by your family/partner than by a home invasion.

And Daylen, I did not mean that as a personal insult, just cautionary advice in response to your assertion that from now on you would keep a loaded weapon by your side at home at all times. No offence intended, sorry if offence was taken.

There seem to be a lot of NRA fanboys on this thread. People do kill people, but the fact is that where guns are readily accessible fights are far more likely to result in homicide rather than injury.

Did a little bit of digging to compare homicide rates in the US and UK. Only found data for homicides in England and Wales, total 642 in provisional figures for 2010/11, link below. Dividing this figure by the population of England and Wales of 54,816,100 (of total UK population 61,827,200, source Wikipedia), we get a homicide rate of 1.17 people per 100,000. Compare this to the US rate of 12,996 homicides vs population of 308,745,538 (source again Wikipedia), for 4.21 people per 100,000. Note that both these data are for total homicides not just gun homicides; in the UK knife homicides are much more common than gun homicides while I would assume it to be the other way around in the US.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/...snr?view=Binary

Granted, the difference in availability of guns is not the only difference between US and UK society; but you're right, people kill people, and therefore statistically US citizens are 4x as murderous as their UK counterparts.

The third one is also wrong...
You need to be smart in Order to kill a lot of people. And mostly it makes you rich and you go on killing even more people...
Just look at all the western educated Diktators in Afrika. Educated and wealthy and killing, killing, killing.

If you consider "indirect" killing, well it goes even more to the opposite.

There were 594 total murders in Canada in 2007. In the US in 2007 869 people were punched or kicked to death without the use of any weapon like a gun, club or knife. 1,817 were killed with knives, 647 were killed with clubs, 131 were burned to death, 134 were strangled. Certain subcultures in the US are quite violent and use violence to settle minor disputes using whatever method seems convenient at the time.

All the more reason to have a gun, then.

(I know it's not that simple, just being facetious)

One thing statistics fail at is demonstrating cause.

It gives numbers per capita, but does not break those down by social or economic groups. Or account for many other factors.

violence in general is more common on the lower ends of the social/economic strata than the higher end. So nations with a majority of it's population below poverty levels tend to have far higher rates (and the US is one of them..)

I'm not and NRA fanboy, I think everyone should have the right to defend themselves and keep a firearm as long as the have the training and mental capacity for using one, but some of the NRA guys are downright nuts.
What I'm saying is that the number of times a gun alone shoots someone is infinitesimaly small to the number of times someone is actually pulling the trigger (either by intent or accident).
Now, there have been studies that show that guns have made killing "more easy" because it levels pretty much everyone and is "impersonal" while killing someone using a knife, bat, whatever, takes a whole new level of intent.
If anyone wants to talk to me about this anyway, send me a PM, I don't want to keep explaining myself on this thread.

And if anyone wants to know what Seattle looks like, should come visit Recife. We have rich neighborhoods surrounded by favelas and every once in a while (more every once than in a while) people from the favela go to the rich neighborhood to rob and many times an innocent civilian is shot and didn't even react.
Just as anecdotal evidence. I was once taking my fiancée to work at 7AM and 2 drugged up kids (real kids, no more than 15 years old) put a gun on my head and my fiancée's, took our money and cell phones and walked away, I repeat, WALKED AWAY, without even looking back.




But how many of those dictators do their own killing? And I'm not talking about signing an execution order, I'm talking about actually pulling the trigger.
They are educated and wealthy and know how to use violence and fear as tools to keep themselves in power.

Yeah, dictators don't generally get their hands dirty. Heck, they don't really even need need guns to kill a lot of innocent people or make violent displays of power. They just need enough guys with sharp sticks for that. It does make it easier though.

On the one hand I would imagine this to be true, however, I was talking strictly about modern societies that are actually democratic. There were plenty of armed insurrections throughout Europe in the past 100 years, most of which were quelled. But the difference is, these happened in states that were mostly undemocratic, and often by people wanting a new undremocratic state.

There is a key difference: A democratically elected government is legitimised by majority vote, which means to oppose it literally means opposing the majority. Do understand that majority does not mean validity, ONLY legitimacy. Also, there is another key difference between protesting and rioting. Rioting is by definition mostly undirected aggression, there is no reason to assume that rioters "know" anything or assume they wish for any kind of deescalation. They have been pushed or pushed themselves to a point where violence is the fanal for their anger. "Professional" rioters, like those that have been cropping up at every greater protest movement lately, have no interest in lethal combat, but if you're rioting for a reason - for instance the race riots or whatever, then you want to get your point across: You're pissed as fuck. At that point do people think about not provoking the cops beyond a certain point? Seriously throwing molotov cocktails at people and shooting people is pretty much the same kind of aggression. They may think they don't want to murder people, but they are completely accepting a lethal outcome. Of course they are probably also expecting the cops to not shoot back - well... And I'm saying this without any kind of bias either way, merely stating it.

So that's why actual protesters don't want to escalate, but rioters are - at least in my eyes - way beyond that point.

At this point I'm quite sure we're pretty much off topic .

Given the general trends in voter turnout (2009 German federal election 70,8%; 2008 US presidential election 63%) that's somewhat questionable. And that's without the seeming trend of increasingly volatile public opinion vs. governments holding office.

from now on? For a long time I've lived with guns and the faculties to determine consequences for where and how firearms are stored and carried. Those that need advise about wife beating need simply that; the tool did not force the abuse nor likely make it easier as abusive people like to start with fists.

Not sure who the NRA fanboy is, but I sure hope you're not referring to me. Really, wikipedia?! the site where anyone can edit at any time? At least you are looking at homicide instead of gun homicide. Have you tried violent crime? As you say though (hopefully not in jest) the US and UK does have some large societal differences. If you like statistics an interesting one for you would be to compare statistics before and after the passage of restrictive laws and confiscations. If there is a correlation the massive confiscations and destruction of firearms should show a dramatic change in crime. I will admit we have far more violent and murderous groups in free society over here, I've never seen videos of kids with 2x4s go on a murderfest in the UK.

Problem with those and any sort of statistical comparison, is that in the US the gun laws are not uniform. Also, the UK has different social norms, economic structure (poverty rates) and a society that is less tolerant of violence than the US. Also, why don't they include the Scots?

By violent crime in 2010, an estimated 1,246,248 violent crimes occurred nationwide (4 incidents per 1,000 persons). Where as 3.1 percent adults (or 31 per 1,000 had been a victim of a violent crime (includes wounding, assault with minor injury, assault without injury and robbery) – a similar level to the previous
year; in england and wales. So while in england you are less likely to be be killed, you are almost 8 times more likes to get attacked in the first place.

Back on topic (Shadowrun), I actually included spousal abuse as an aside in a game once. The group... Did not react well to it.

The offending party, on the other hand, did not react well to being sent to the hospital. Honestly, when a group of Shadowrunners put the smack down on you "just 'cause", you should be happy you're in one piece.

Probably me. Despite a lack of an NRA Membership. As I've said, I'm likely on enough watch lists already, thankyouverymuch.

While you bring up a strong point, I do ask that you please normalize your data first. For example 1800 New York and 1800 London had basically identical firearm laws, and are both major metropolitan centers. Did they have identical per capita violent crime or homicide rates? (The answer is, of course, they don't. New York's was much higher.) Knowing that they don't, and knowing that they have identical firearm laws, can we blame firearms for this gap? Now roll those rates over and track as Britain puts nation-wide bans on the book, and the US does not. While NYC specifically does heavily restrict firearms, they are still legal, and easily available. Or if you prefer, track London against Richmond, which has never become as restrictive as NYC. Please just do that quick test, and tell me what conclusions you draw.

Another interesting example is compare prisons against prisons. Neither U.S. nor English prisons permit firearms within prison walls (or weapons of any sort). Nevertheless, both prisons have violent crime. Compare English prison crime vs. U.S. prison crime, and see if they're identical. If availability of weapons is the primary driver for violent crime, clearly they should be. Then compare to Japanese prisons.

I think, to some degree, we have to accept that the U.S. is just a crazy, violent place. As someone who lives in Baltimore, where guns are heavily restricted, I can tell you I don't feel any safer around my common man for that fact. Really, it isn't the guns that scare me It's the 200-pound guy laden with gold chains and smelling of whiskey who makes me nervous.

Scared of young skinny trolls?

I read somewhere that for the Brits it's just totally acceptable to solve a dispute between men with your fists. It's just the done thing. However, some incidents of happy slapping aside, the intent doesn't seem to be offing the other guy. Being only half-brit, I can't say I share the sentiment. (Of course I want to kill the other guy, duh....)

Britain also produced THE movie on senseless violence, where interestingly enough I think the victims usually aren't killed, so go figure .

Settling a dispute is different from crime and assault, in the states when fighting(mutual) is conducted in public it is disorderly conduct, not assault. If the done thing over there is to rob someone using violence or threat of violence, something is wrong.

What I think is very curious is a difference in culture between the US and most European nations.

In Europe, the ongoing consolidation of the state's monopoly of (legitimate) violence is seen as the progress of civilization. Disarming society is part of ongoing reduction of violence in society.

In the US, disarming the population is seen (by a significant part of the population, but not the entire population) as either the prelude to oppression, or as a deluded, because it'd leave people defenseless.

In the US (it seems to me), many people consider protection from violence to be a personal duty, while in Europe it's considered a government obligation, and we expect that generally the government is capable of meeting that obligation successfully.

Obviously (looking at those homicide rates), the European approach works, in Europe. Whether it would work in the US I don't know.

I beg to differ. Europe seems to be rife with riots. Only in similar parts of the US are there riots as such. Also, there are European countries that refuse to be disarmed. I seem to remember reading that Czech gained their arms back after they came out of Soviet control. Europe has long been run by the Royal few, who have tried to keep their peasants unarmed, of course with modern media they will try to convince people of what you say; from what I understand the people over in Europe largely don't have much in the way of power over the government because the elections don't have many consequences. Under the wiley rule of Lofwyr I can see this getting worse. The question is can even the dragon keep things together and resist Europe's thirst for internal war; or will the continent once more become an armed continent.

I'm thinking you're on to something there.

I seem to remember one European Country that disarmed everyone and then started some kind of trouble... Must be getting old, can't quite remember which one it was.

But that was back in the 1930s, I think, and...

Just one? If I had to choose one it would be Russia, not only did they cause trouble, they also caused famine.

Isn't Russia in Asia?

Ah, Germany, that was it!

@MontVent
Is the majority of the US really below poverty levels? The US is certainly in the top ten countries for average per capita income based on PPP (Purchasing-power parity), see the graph half way down in the below link.
http://www.economist.com/node/21536659

@Daylen
My NRA fanboy comment was a reaction to the platitude "Guns don't kill people, people kill people", which I believe is the excuse the NRA PR machine spins out after each gun massacre in the US.
I used Wikipedia as a quick-stop shop for population data for the US and UK. The figures I quoted do not seem far off the mark, please feel free to correct me if they are wrong.
Not sure where your comment about outcomes of elections in Europe not mattering comes from - certainly to gain power in the UK political parties need to appeal to the centre ground, making the policies of either party seem fairly similar overall, but I have heard the same criticism of Democrats and Republicans in the US. As for your medevil image of monarchs and peasants, believe it or not Europe has largely moved on and modern European monarchies do not have much political clout at all.

@WarlordTheft
I presume you lifted stats on violent crime in England and Wales from the link I gave. Please provide the link for where you got your stats for violent crimes in the US that show 1/8th the number of violent crimes in the US vis a vis England and Wales.

@Nezumi
Don't have the time or Data Search-fu to compare areas of the UK to areas with similar gun laws in the US, but would be interested to know if you can dig up any such data.

@Paul
Sorry for derailing this thread. I understand that the right to bear arms in the US is a touchy subject, my comments came as reactions to assertions that "The gun IS society" and "Guns don't kill people, people kill people.". Dumpshock is a forum for ShadowRun not RL, so I will now crawl back into my hole and not respond to any further arguements and comments on RL gun issues (at least, in this thread) ...

Can't think of it.
The Nazis did not bother much with guns. If you were not in line, they took your life.
If you would have shot at them, they would probably just thrown a hand granade in your living room.

Democratic Governments have a big problem with armed guys making trouble. Fashist regimes do not.
You just kill the guy and afterwards his family (possibly including grand parents, sisters brothers etc. etc ) to make a point.
Thus preventing anybody else from trying something "stupid".

No, the NAZI's were quite concerned with disarming the people they intended to murder. The Nazi "German Weapons Act" of March 18, 1938 explicitly banned Jews from possessing pistols and being in the arms business, along with it removing any restriction on NSDAP (NAZI Party) members. On November 11th, 1938 the NAZI's promulgated "Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons" which totally disarmed Jews. This of course was immediately after the Kristallnacht pogrom.

@kzt
Ah, well. I was not going into that, because the Nazis band jews from pretty much everything.
In general this law lowerd the restrictions on firearms.



If you would follow his line of argumentation the NRA could end up a "Anti-Gun-lobby" considering the legislation to regulate guns on black people they did not oppose/partly supported. (Not talking about today!)

And I stand by what I'm saying, guns don't shoot themselves on their own (not yet, anyway) they need someone pulling the trigger. If someone is willing to kill people, they will sure find a way.

Who says they weren't against the right to keep and bear arms? For a long time all they did was make sure police and military competitions were not effected with a slight additional concern about firearms manufacturers. They helped write many of the old laws that set the course for a long time in taking away rights. In the late 90's there were a few firearms manufacturers and the NRA that were taking a beating on citizen sales and membership because of their collusion with Clinton. Ares has nothing when it comes to working with UCAS against the people.

"It claims to be fully-automatic, but you actually have to push this button here." - Jake Stonebender

I also do in fact have a job. I went through this exact same conversation with myself a few years ago though, when, as an adult with a home, I had to make a decision about whether I wanted to own a firearm or not. I spent a few days doing some pretty intense research. I come from a very anti-gun household, and so that was my bias. I tried to get the strongest arguments from both sides, and measure them side-by-side. By the end of it, my position had almost completely reverse. My only regret to date is not saving all the links

A quicker comparison than prison violence is rape. Rape is perpetrated just as easily if not more easily without a firearm, so if firearm availability is the driving factor in homicide, but no such factor exists in rape, then rape rates should be at least comparable. A quick check to wiki gives us numbers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics

UK (including England and Wales) was 13k in 2009. US was 89k. US rates are nearly eight times higher.

I don't have numbers for me for crime in prison. When I did do research, US prison violence was significantly higher than in the UK. I'd like to think you can take my word for it, but I don't expect it.

Comparing London and NYC violence:
http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/resea...99/rp99-111.pdf - check page 14. This is per capita and for England & Wales. We can translate that using the population data on page 3 for 1920 to 315 homicides total for the area.
Contrast this with homicides for NYC at the time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NYC_murders.PNG to establish a baseline (looks like around 400 for 1926). I apologize we can't do per capita on each. I didn't have time to dig deeper, so this is what I have 'off the cuff' for NYC. However, we can calculate the per capita, since we know the population of NYC to be 7M in 1930. 400 homicides, 3M people, gives us 133 homicides per 1 million people (contrast again with England/Wales' 8.3). This is a HUGE gap. At this time, all of the areas in question had near identical firearm laws (i.e., none).Yet NYC killed round about 20 times more people in a year.

As time goes on, England continues to put on more restrictive firearm laws. The biggest are in 1920, 1937, and 1988. Each of these years major new restrictions on firearms came out. You can look at the graph of crime and homicides and tell me how successful they were for yourself. Contrast this with NYC. Major laws put on the books in 1934, and 1986. New York put additional laws in place in 1911 (out of scope), 1967, and 1991. One of those matches a drop in homicides, although more digging suggests other causes at work, since the same drop occurred across the country, in places which put no such laws in place.

Here's a nice article on the success of UK's gun control from Reason magazine too.
http://reason.com/archives/2002/11/01/gun-...come/singlepage

I'm not saying you're wrong. I honestly don't know. All I'm saying is that the answer doesn't seem to be as clear cut as putting two countries next to each other for a moment in time.

Things changed at the 1977 Cincinnati Rebellion, where the members fired most of the collaborationist Fudds on the board of directors.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb108/hb108-18.pdf

If you want some extra-curricular reading on one of the philosophies supporting gun ownership within the United States, this is a pretty good piece.

Back to the world we care about, the rules for gun ownership in SR are probably defined very largely by that other ubiquitous division in Shadowrun: The SIN number. The SIN population probably can buy, carry, and even use firearms with restriction as set by their local jurisdiction, the SINless technically doesn't even exist so they are in violation of the law just by not having a SIN, not having a SIN and having a Gun makes them extremely dangerous and a threat to be addressed with all due precaution (Lonestar code for either shoot them or beat the drek out them and arrest them)

Or shoot them, beat them, and then arrest them for littering with their blood.

"Oh, their wounds? Found 'im that way."