the usa should ban most guns and confiscate them

Thank you for accepting me to challenge to you, again, on this topic. "as the oxford link indicates, a gun is a danger to yourself and those around you... you're more likely to be shot or to kill with a gun." You haven't linked your Oxford study, so I assume it is the paper titled "Guns in the Home and Risk of a Violent Death in the Home: Findings from a National Study". If this is not the correct paper, please link it in your next round so I can address it properly. This is an example of how statistics can be made to lie by either intent, or omission. The paper is based on the Kellermann Study from 1988 and again in 1993. The Kellermann study has been widely debunked, even though it still provides favorite talking points for anti-gun groups. The Kellermann study has several important flaws, first selective sampling, secondly single sample, thirdly ignoring important data points, The use of the questionable Case-Control Method, spurious associations, and suspected biases. [1,2,3] Kellermann took one sample county in his study, and claimed that this one county is representative. The problem with this is that there is no 'median' county in the US, both in terms of culture and demographic, even if there was, his inner city sample is hardly the one that is representative. In addition to this Kellermann, and his colleagues who carried out the subsequent studies ignore what I consider the crucial factor, they only count defensive gun uses when the perpetrator of the crime dies. This alone invalidates the study, as to its claim that a gun is a danger to yourself and those around you. Even the CDC allows for more Defensive Gun Uses [DGUs] per year than assaults with guns.[4,5] "but then the next step is imagine lots of people with guns. wouldnt be common sense to expect more murders? that's what the evidence indicates, not just common sense." Actually, that isn't what the data suggests, now using international studies we find that nations with more gun control actually have higher murder rates. Switzerland has a .6, while its neighbors France and Germany have a 1.0 and .8 respectively, it should be noted that German laws are only slightly more permissive than those of the French. In fact in the world as a whole many of the nations with the most violent crime do actually have the most restrictive gun laws. Honduras which ranks 82 in gun ownership is number 1 in violent crime, Venezuela which is number 2 in violent crime is number 58. If you look at the entire world in terms of guns per capita vs violent crime, you find virtually no correlation at all, only a slight negative trend in which more guns correlate to less crime (slope -1.3). [6,7,A] In the United States the trend is similar, but slightly different, states with higher gun ownership actually see fewer murders on average. [8,9,A] However there is a more pronounced negative correlation (slope -3.1). In my opinion, neither of these sets of data show a massive trend in either direction, and there are certainly outliers in each case. But if one wants to draw any conclusion from the available data is must be that the trend is "More Guns = Less Crime" as Lott is famous for saying. Now Lott arrived at a modest 4% difference, I get a 1 and 3 percent difference respectively and again, do not consider it significant enough. "would you be open to this if it could reduce murders by say, eighty percent?" Yes, I think if you could prove that guns are the cause of 80% of murders, even I would begin to seriously consider full confiscation. However, as I will demonstrate in a few moments, this is not the case. Your next two paragraphs repeat your opening, to which I have already replied and make the claim that if we confiscated guns that murder would go down, in addition you use the Australia Argument. The "Australia Argument" is a common talking point of gun control advocates, and shows a complete lack of understanding or even statistical knowledge on the subject. You claim that "i know australia banned and confiscated a bunch of more serious guns and they knocked their rate in half. and they went from one mass shooting per year to none, that's not a statistical anomaly." However, none of this is true. In reverse order, Australia averaged three to four mass killings a decade, not one a year. [10] They still have mass shootings despite a near total ban on Semi-automatic weapons [11]. And finally they did not knock their murder rate in half, in fact the United States has more than double the murder rate decline over the same period of time. In Australia there were 329 murders and manslaughters in 1993, 311 murders in 1996, 322 in 1997 after their new law was passed, 302 in 2003 and the numbers remained higher than the 1993 numbers until 2004 at which point it dropped again to just below, 285, the 1993 numbers. In addition there has been no change in the number of massacres happening in Australia, though now the gun is no longer the weapon of choice. In 2012 there were 292, for a decline of 12%[12] In the US, Over the same period, we dropped from 25,000+ murders in 1993, to under 15,000 in 2012 a decrease of 30%. And while we did see a small spike in the early 2000's it was nothing compared to what happened in both Australia and the UK. Our spike was still down from the decade before.[13] It should be pointed out that gun laws in the US have been getting more progressively liberal in the past two decades allowing far more people to own than in the years before. In Australia, if we look at the numbers, mass killings would have been a serious issue for them, amounting to nearly 10% of murders in their nation, in the US it is less than 1%. More people in the United States are killed each year by bare hands and feet than in mass killings. In addition, Australia, as well as the UK, are both island nations with many other important differences to consider, not the least of which is the demographic difference. In the United States, one demographic group which makes up less than 20% of the population, is associated with 30-50% of most violent crimes, and 50% of murder. Source 1 : http://www.guncite.com... Source 2 : http://guncite.com... Source 3 : http://www.firearmsandliberty.com... Source 4 : http://www.gunsandammo.com... Source 5 : http://www.nap.edu... Source 6 : https://en.wikipedia.org... Source 7 : https://en.wikipedia.org... Source 8 : https://www.fbi.gov... Source 9 : http://usliberals.about.com... Source 10: https://en.wikipedia.org... Source 11: http://www.smh.com.au... Source 12: http://www.abs.gov.au...? ReadForm&prodno=4510.0&viewtitle=Recorded%20Crime,%20Australia~1996~Previous~24/07/1997&&tabname=Past%20Future%20Issues&prodno=4510.0&issue=1996&num=&view=& Source 13: http://www.ucrdatatool.gov... Lettered Sources will reference data that I have personally taken the time to analyze. My degree is Chemical Engineering, and my hobbies include math and statistics. While I claim no expertise in the fields, I am more than willing to turn over any such data for refutation. Source A : I can provide an Excel spread sheet in which all the relevant calculations are done. The sources are numerous, and include reported international crime rates and rates of gun ownership from various international databases.