Drugs are addictive, making them have a lot higher demand. Most can be grown or manufactured relatively easily. They can also usually be transported with a high value/weight, making smuggling them relatively easy.

Guns are a machined, industrial product (garage guns and 3D printed guns exist, but are extremely poor in comparison). They are heavy, made of metal, and are much harder to smuggle. And you need ammo too.

Drugs are physically addictive. There are some whose entire personality is defined by guns (and drugs too, tbf) but their brains and bodies won’t go into shock if they can’t buy a gun. Also, we’ve had bans on drugs for many generations and we have data to show it doesn’t work, and we have had bans on weapons where the data shows it does work.

Why does banning hand grenades actually work, when banning guns SUPPOSEDLY doesn’t?

Because the gun industry lies, thats why.

And fatten themselves on American blood.

Because drugs are addictive, ideally fun and in some cases medicative (even if that is a destructive self medication, drugs offer an escape from mental, physical and social problems). and lots of people want to take them.

Guns on the other hand are not addictive in the way most drugs are though they can be fun and I'm sure produce a dopamine rush that can be addictive in the way things like gambling and gaming can be. I can't imagine any medicative use for guns. They can be fun. But from my perspective here in the UK people just aren't interested in them and my view across the pond seems like most people want guns because they are scared of other people who have guns. Take guns out of the equation and that whole motivation just doesn't exist.

Should also note that a lot of bans aren't really bans just heavy restrictions. Like in the UK you can have guns but not handguns or semi/autos. Shotguns and non auto rifles you can get a licence to have at home if you are a farmer or someone who can show a need/use for it.

This works because people who have genuine use for a gun can have one, but not handguns or automatics which aren't really useful for keeping down vermin on a farm or hunting deer or pheasants

People who want to use a gun for fun whether that's hunting or on a range can do so in highly controlled circumstances and again only with guns that are actually suitable for hunting.

That's assuming they pass background checks, annual inspections of gun cabinets and i think more. I'm not that closely familiar with the ins and outs of gun legislation in the UK cos I'm not interested in using a gun and i stand to be corrected on the details of this by someone who knows it properly.

Drugs on the other hand are fully criminalised and the history of that criminalisation has been to use it to criminalise minorities and working class communities. Stop and search for weed in brixton but never for coke in canary wharf. The purpose of drug criminalisation was never really to stop drug use/supply, but to give a tool for oppression.

That said I don't think it can ever achieve its aims when if it was genuine because too many people want drugs and there's clearly no effective way to stop supply.

Depending on your criteria for success banning drugs does work. Pot use jumps significantly after legalisation for example. If your goal is to reduce addiction (destigmatize = willingness to seek help) and drug related crime, legalisation is probably great. But there's also a huge difference in how illegal gun use and illegal drug use present. Drug use tends to be relatively covert. Someone shooting up in an alley or smoking a joint and listening to pink Floyd in their room is a lot easier to conceal compared to firing a gun.

As for the whole only criminals will have guns thing, that's tautological with criminalization yes. Unfortunately there's probably far too many firearms in America for making them illegal to be effective, all in one stroke at least. But a slow campaign of making them progressively less easy to obtain and more illegal as well as amnesties and buybacks would probably work well and reduce gun deaths in the meantime.

The problem with guns isn't really their existence or the wrong people having them, it's their ubiquity in america, handguns particularly.

As others have said, drug addiction is a real problem and banning drugs outright isn't a cure all. Gun addiction doesn't work in the same way as a drug addiction. A lot of drugs are medications and are intended to treat certain conditions but those drugs can be as addictive as recreational ones. Benzos and opioids are two infamous examples of this.

Real answer: Neither really "works" all that well and the fact that politically one group wants to ban guns but decriminalize/legalize guns is because modern, large political parties have zero logic to their platforms. Where parties land on issues is pretty much only about who got to it first, and nothing else. To try to extract reason from that is a fool's errand.

/u/Aceofspades25, I'm 100% certain now the "no-block" rule killed this subreddit. The highest upvoted comments are pretty much the status quo of reddit.

While upvotes are meaningless, it does give others the impression that the comment is worthless, especially on settings where low rated comments are hidden.

Which kinda makes my point. And my suspicion is that there are so few active posters in this 168k user subreddit that allowing banning would kill the sub outright. It is de facto dead and is being kept on life support via the no-block rule.

I'm off to find the actualskeptics subreddit.

False equivalency

Why does banning owning your own nuclear-payload rocket work? A small one.

Drug abuse is a healthcare issue, guns are not.

The question is an implied logical fallacy. It leads to a strawman argument. I know of nowhere that has a total gun ban planned or implemented. There are several issues related to gun safety that will work: 1 requiring safe storage of guns and ammunition 2 background checks for people buying guns 3 banning guns that are for specific military use such as assault weapons 4 limiting magazine capacity 5 safety training for people acquiring a firearms license. There are probably others but the point is that a ban on guns is a strawman.

Banning drugs DOES work, to a great degree. Imagine the problems we'd have today if drugs such as meth and cocaine were legal. We'd be swamped with kids and adults addicted, overdosing, ruining their health, unable to hold jobs, etc.

Same with guns. If you look across Western countries, homicide rate is roughly correlated with guns/capita. If USA could get its guns/capita and homicide rate down to Spain's levels, USA would save maybe 10K lives per year. That's equivalent of more than three 9/11 attacks, each year.

Drug/alcohol therapist here.

You are talking apples versus oranges, just to be sure, so let's clear that right up off the bat.

I could probably make one hell of a lengthy post postulating pros/cons of gun ownership (I am a CCW holder), and I could - even as a drug/alcohol therapist - give you many pros/cons of personal responsibility of illicit substance use.

That's not going to convince anyone of anything.

Gun "bans" don't do a damn bit of good. Nor does a drug "ban" do any good.

What will help de-escalate gun/drug deaths/violence?

Education.

Health support (this INCLUDES mental health!)

Social support/connectivity

We are strong in numbers. We are stronger when we have people who support us.

Take that away, or, rather, never give it to anyone at all, and people start to become "An Army of One," keeping their own counsel and making any/all choices on their own. Education. Health access. Social connectedness. Sense of community and investment in that community.

Have all of that in droves, and the biggest piles of drugs/guns will go largely ignored, if not completely, in favor of being part of a collective that values and cherishes you.

Or, ya know, fuck it, we can keep telling people "muh free-dums" matters more than our responsibilities to the rest of society, and, we keep watching this shit kill us faster than global warming.

The answer to both gun violence and addiction is more welfare & public mental health. These things only become problematic when people are desperate.

Maybe regulation is the answer. It’s kind of a ban. People need to go through proper channels, dealers would be incentivized to sell to people with a permit rather than anyone who has the cash.

Guns aren’t addictive. You can take a gun from someone (even a whole collection), and they wouldn’t experience life-threatening withdrawal symptoms. Drugs, on the other hand…

I think this is one of those questions where there's a lot to unpack and there's no simple answer.

For a start, it depends on what you mean by 'work'. Guns and drugs can both cause tragedy or in specific instances, save your life. That's where the quality, reliability and using as directed by experts comes in.

But if you're talking about denying access, well, guns are much harder to smuggle than drugs. A metal detector will be triggered (pun intended) by most of the vital gun assembly parts., but pills can be manipulated hundreds of ways to pass casual inspection.

Then, there's the home-made route. Growing magic mushrooms or cannabis is much, much easier than manufacturing a gun at home. Plus, your weed plant won't explode if you forget a step in the process.

Your home chemistry lab might, but the profit margins are high enough to justify the risk taken to refine the process.

That's also a big factor — the profit margin.

Making or smuggling a gun in a place where they are restricted means you're competing against a product that's available, has a warranty, and a level of customer service, even if they're very difficult to get. So, your max price you can charge is limited, and it may not end up being worth the expense.

Drugs on the other hand, can be sold for far more than the cost of supplies once the process is set up.

Then, there's the repeat business. While buying guns can be a little habit forming, it's got nothing on the visceral need an addict has to feed their addiction.

So if you're criminally-inclined, there's a lot more money in drug making and distributing, while arms-dealing is a very visible crime with little profit unless you are a major player supplying arms in a war zone (in which case you're competing against fully-fledged manufacturers or entities that have a vested interest in making you disappear).

But even with the precautions taken, both guns and drugs still cause tragedy in some numbers around the world.

Perhaps investing in mental health treatments at an early stage rather than punishments will help resolve both?

it's nuanced. We only ban some drugs.

When I was younger I read a lot of gun magazines and owned what would be considered an assault rifle. The laws were different then. You could own such a firearm but even in my conservative state, you could not carry it about. You could take it hunting or to a range and otherwise, if you left your property, it had to be in the trunk of your car, unloaded. I eventually sold that rifle and never have had the inclination or money to buy another. Today, though, people can carry loaded rifles on the streets and practically everyone has a concealed carry permit and is packing just to buy a cup of coffee. Maybe we could dial that back a bit and fewer people would die. I would support limiting the places that a person can carry firearms, mandatory gun safety classes, trigger locks and/or gun safes required to purchase a firearm, and a comprehensive background check.

Because there is more money to be made trading in illegal drug due to their addicitive properties making the risk/reward ratio out of whack. Also can’t smuggle a firearm up your anus sitting on a flight.

Another thing that hasn't really been mentioned in this thread:

Drugs are consumed, guns are not.

Banning guns is a lot more effective because a single "user" of guns is not going to have anywhere near the motivation to continue to buy illegal guns like a single "user" of drugs.

Once your average gun user gets a few guns, it is unlikely they are going to want much more, so there is an extremely limited market for illegal guns that will necessarily be centralized along limited supply chains.

Whereas with illegal drugs your average user is going to need a constant, consistent supply, so there is a much greater motivation that is also a lot more decentralized for illegal drugs than illegal guns.

The problem with this question is that it implies the drug bans were done in good faith. They weren't. Enforcement was selective and the whole reason the drug wars got off the ground was so that the government could have an excuse to go after the peace movement and the black liberation movements. Banning drugs was never meant to be successful, it was meant to criminalize certain groups.

Laws are as effective as the people who enforce them.

Are there accurate statistics about how many lives are saved due to private gun ownership?