Would Crime Rates Decrease

If everybody went around with a gun at all times? If you were always scared to mug someone because they could simply pull out a gun and blow you away, you wouldn't get around to much mugging would you? On the other hand, people with anger issues would be that much quicker to go shoot someone if a gun was already available. But back to the first hand, if they already had a gun and everyone knew it, they'd try harder not to piss that person off, wouldn't they? What about a psychological stability test to earn the right to carry your gun?

Think this is a question more dependent on where one lives, since some areas of the USA are better then others.

If everyone in Nevada carried a gun, I could see the crime rate going up.

This debate is particularly important for law enforcement personnel throughout the world (Or just the US). Personally, I support this very much. The reason behind it is the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, which you'll usually find applied to nuclear weapons. If everyone is carrying a piece, how likely are you to start a brawl, a riot, or rob a bank? However, the problem is with the poorer parts of any country, where you'll face people who have nothing else to lose. This type of determination is what drives people to dangerous and completely irrational actions, like what is commonly seen by suicide bombers (But that stems from a very much different problem other than poverty).

I think there would be way too many problems. Say one person accidentally fires the gun into the ground or the air. Some paranoid person might get scared and shoot somebody who had nothing to do with it which would cause another person to draw their gun, and another etc... GUNS ARE NOT THE ANSWER!

Well, the idea that everyone carries guns would just average out crime rates. Considering the fact that most burglaries are armed--which would give meaning to whoever carries the bigger gun wins. Though, I could see it decreasing as well. Given some thought to it, the persons they were trying to burglarize would be armed and not unprotected. But, that's not to say that the [bad] guy in this did not think this thoroughly. It's honestly in fate's hand on this matter.

The majority of crimes committed are out of necessity and no amount of threat to their life would be enough to curtail the crime rate.

Bullshit. The majority of crimes are committed out of the perception of necessity, and not necessarily for one's survival. I know a moron who's broken into several houses and stolen at least one car, not to mention sold drugs ranging from coke to heroin, all because he thought it was necessary for him to fit into what he perceived as "cool society." A good slap in the face from reality, like finding out the guy you're trying to mug has a higher caliber gun than you do, could do much to curb these perceptions, as all the little wannabe gangbangers realize that they aren't "hard" like they want to be.

To your perception, the majority of crime committed are based on that. I live near Chicago, so I hear about tons of stories that are WAY worse than just selling drugs and stealing cars. Things like murder or rape aren't going to stop just because of people having a gun.

Desperation is the main source of crime, perceived or otherwise. Giving everyone a gun would just be a quick fix, and would be more likely to downplay the danger that firearms represent (anything where "innocent bystanders" can get shot shouldn't be used, IMO). A far more effective solution to crime would be education for low income regions, as well as downplaying America's current admiration of gun totting "heroes."

How is rape a crime of necessity? As for murder, enough are committed by accident (manslaughter) some are committed to become a part of a society (gangs) and some are done just for shits and giggles by fucked up people. If desperation were the true cause, the worst parts in the world wouldn't exist, because the people would have killed enough of each other off to thin out the population until life was more manageable. You can't fix these things at the source, because there is no external source. Humans are a broken design, and you would have to change human nature as a whole. Just educating people isn't enough. The worst serial killers are generally middle class middle age educated people. I think society is focused so much on overprotecting and censoring everyone that evolution itself can no longer take place as it should. If the people who did these things ran a higher risk by doing so, and were killed in the action more often, then we would be looking at a legitimate improvement over the next few generations, not just burying our darker nature until it slips back out in the open at the worst possible moment for some victim.

Rape is done because people can't control themselves. All that will happen is people will go from rape to murder. Crimes of passion would suddenly be a lot more serious than they are now. Instead of some drunk assholes getting angry at a bar and getting into a fight with each other, you suddenly have a huge slaughter of nearly everyone in the bar. But why wouldn't the other patrons just shoot them? Because 99.5% of us aren't psychopaths, and being pissed off at someone who's drunk isn't worth ending their life. And, we can't forget that you're giving guns to people that do not know how to use them. That would, believe or not, make MORE people get shot accidentally.

Actually, what you see in places of desperation is a huge increase in the young population because they need more people to help out everyone else and low crime, because they're too tired to care, too hungry to move, and too poor to covet.

SOME human beings are broken. Flawed is not the same thing as completely broken. Education is obviously not enough, but at the very least it gives people something else to do instead of selling drugs and getting shot.

Evolution takes place over a series of hundreds of thousands of years. We've been around for less than 8 thousand (3 if you're religious, but then the whole evolution argument doesn't work for you, anyways). I don't even know where you came up with this argument. As a social society of super-monkeys, nations are rapidly moving away from war to a policy of detenté. We're starting to try to protect not just ourselves as individuals, or ourselves as countries, but now we're looking to goals for the human race and even for the earth itself. This is in the last 5 decades.

Sociopaths would still have the advantage over people that they've always had. They will still not experience any emotional or moral repurcusions from their actions, and every single one of their victims will. The only difference is instead of a sociopath with a MO like poison or a really sharp knife, you get ones with guns.

And now genetics: There are 300 million people in the United States. Roughly 10.000 of them are sociopath/psychopaths who are a danger to other people. Some of them die, let's say 20%, which I think is generous. You now have 8000 sociopaths. But guess what! Next generation you have the same relative amount. Why? Because Sociopathism isn't a genetic mutation. Sociopathism is an environmental reaction. Without changing the environment everyone is in, we stop nothing.

Unless the person in question is packing a shotgun or an automatic weapon, I don't see how the caliber or size of the gun is relevant. Either way, if two people are pointing guns at each other both of them are going to get fucked up. Also, you both seem to be talking about the irrational things people do for stupid/misconceived reasons. As I mentioned before, there is no legitimate defense against this type of bullshit, your best bet would really be to just carry a gun, because law abiding citizens outnumber criminals and there really are strength in numbers.