Reply #52: and if you had some evidence [View All]

... or even decent argument to establish that "murders ... by gun are replaced by murders ... by knife", I assume that you'd present it.

A mere similarity in total numbers between the two scenarios simply does not prove a substitution effect, you know.

People may switch from margarine to butter if butter becomes exorbitantly expensive, with total butter & margarine sales remaining the same. But people who like butter and hate margarine may simply stop buying butter. At the same time, other people may start eating margarine who previously didn't eat either butter or margarine, particularly if someone presents them with some reason for doing so, like maybe it will improve their social lives. (Advertising; who can predict?) We'd never know unless we asked a whole lot of them.

Maybe you can show that at least a chunk of the people who committed non-firearms homicides in Australia in the last couple of years had firearms previously, or would have had firearms but for the ban, or tried to get a firearm but had to settle for a rock ... . Maybe you can't.

Why you included "robberies" in that sentence I quoted, I just don't know, unless you're resurrecting the straw individual you just claimed not to have been employing.

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