Liberals, Europeans, Americans, Asians: What do you think about these historical Quotes?

[Pie, Mash & Liquor]

I think some are excellent (Churchill for example), some are so old (100 years +) as to be questionable in their relevance to modern society, some are out of context for example Ghandi, some are half a quote (the 1938 Nazi gun laws actually made it easier for most Germans to own a gun, though your point about disarming a minority is taken) and some are just false. I've tried hard to find a credible source for that Yamamoto 'quote' and can't find one, all I can find is blogs, twitter messages, and pro gun websites. Not a single credible academic source seems to exist.

Some are also accurate quotes, but that doesn't mean they are factually accurate. Noah Webster's quote for example states that people in almost all European nations were 'disarmed'. This simply isn't true. If you can find any laws restricting gun ownership in Europe at that time, I'll be extremely surprised.

Oh and George Mason also said ".....once a standing army is established, in any country, the people lose their liberty" Is that true as well ?

Your point on per capita crime is of course valid and perhaps the link previously supplied wasn't the greatest, so here's one with murder example 100,000 population (per capita)

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mu...000-people

This shows the US has a murder rate of 5 per 100,000 almost 4 times the EU rate.

One cannot argue that the European crime rate is anything but far too high, but if you dig into the stats in the UK for example you see that most of the reported crimes are thefts of or from motor vehicles, disgraceful of course, but not a crime I can see being solved by, or indeed relevant to, the question of gun ownership.

Indeed I have seen it argued, that such crimes are simply reported more often in the UK than in the US because in the UK people are more likely to be insured against such crimes than in the US and need to report it to get an insurance claim.

You also have to take into account what constitutes a 'crime', as the article you link to states, In Britain, an affray is considered a violent crime, while in other countries it will only be logged if a person is physically injured. Finally, remember that that the link you have is to an article written nearly 3 years ago in a very Conservative biased paper whilst the Labour party were in power.