Part of the problem is not just the actual risk, but the perception of risk. People deserve to not feel like they are going to be shot when they show up to an educational institution, and that feeling has been withering away lately
If the problem really is the perception and not the reality, then the perception can be changed without a constitutional amendment. It would be a lot easier to raise awareness of how safe guns are for society than it would be to get rid of them just to satisfy those who are afraid of them because they aren't aware of the facts.
That's the vast majority of the problem, to be specific, as that perception is far out of proportion to the actual risk. So address the fearmongering and contextualize how rare these incidents are, insteading of blaming gun owners and further eroding civil liberties.
School shootings are unacceptably frequent in the US, regardless of how infrequent they are in an absolute sense. Many countries go decades without a single school shooting.
I don’t understand your comment. It seems to boil down to “they are obviously too frequent, regardless of how frequent they are”. Is that a fair summary?
Anyway, in principle any death for any reason is unacceptable. In reality, however, we need to decide how to allocate limited resources to making various classes of death less likely. Given that dying in a mass school shooting is much less likely than dying from a lightning strike, and is about as difficult to prevent[0], it doesn’t make any sense to focus on.
[0]: No, we can’t just “make guns illegal”. The political structure of the US makes this impossible.
I mean that they are vastly more frequent in the US than in any vaguely comparable country. It would be as if, e.g., 100x more Americans died of electric shocks than Europeans. This would suggest that something fixable was wrong.
You have to prioritize your problems and solve the ones that give you the most bang for your buck. I'm sure there are magnitudes more shark attacks in USA than in EU, but that doesn't instantly mean we should prioritize reducing shark attacks - the cost-to-value ratio of solving that problem is terrible.
America has a lot of problems. I would say school shootings are not terribly high on the list. Same with mass shootings. Gun violence is a very touchy subject in America, as outright bans violate the 2A of the constitution which many believe was inspired to protect against formation of tyranny. Personally, I see the value in citizens being able to own rifles; not so much with handguns (which seem to only be used for murder and suicide).
But imagine if Hong Kong had 2A rights. Protests would be much more violent, yes, but the violence would be up-front instead of postponed until the next revolution (an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure...). Beijing would be forced to either back off or straight up invade. Instead, I predict HK's rights will be slowly eroded in a war of attrition until they are all trapped under the tyranny of the CCP for generations to come (which is arguably worse than up-front violence).
You work on whatever problem you like. I simply pointed out that the US has a singular problem with school shootings. You appear to agree with that assessment.
You have no idea what would happen if Hong Kong had "2A rights".
> You have no idea what would happen if Hong Kong had "2A rights".
Right, because they don't. Just like every other country that slips into tyranny. The absence of 2A rights in countries ruled by tyrannical regimes is deafening.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. There are free countries with tight gun control laws and tyrannies with high levels of private gun ownership. There's no connection between the two things.
The framing of this comparison is fraught due to unequal bucketing. Most other countries are the size of US states or even cities, so they can boast individually low numbers while in the US everything gets bundled together. The US should instead be compared to something like all of Europe or all of Western Europe.
Sure, but what difference does that make? The US still comes out way ahead in school shootings if you compare it to all of Europe. And e.g. the UK has about 1/5th of the population of the US but vastly less than 1/5th as many school shootings. I don't think you can really have thought this through if you think that "bucketing" is the issue.
I suppose I'm conflating school shootings with mass shootings which is what most people worry about, a la Columbine or Parkland. The figures in your link are mostly gang violence, which is a completely separate although valid issue.
We do absolutely have higher rates of targeted gang violence than other countries, which after controlling for factors like density and poverty is highly correlated to young urban male demographics that aren't as prevalent in other developed nations. There is no single policy that can solve the numerous social and systemic failures that generate this problem, but due to the nature of these vendettas they would assuredly be carried out with knives and shanks in the absence of guns.
Cars are designed to transport people from place to place, and cause death as an unfortunate side effect. Guns are designed to propel bullets at high speed, and cause death as the intended primary effect.
There can be other conversations about the effectiveness of public transportation, and how the US infrastructure was designed around cars instead of buses/trains, but there is a pretty big difference beyond the number of deaths caused.
What is your point? Everyone knows cars and guns are designed differently. Seems like you are trying to rationalize irrational terror. Statistics show a student should logically be more wary of dying in a car wreck on the drive to/from school than getting shot at school. Are you suggesting our students should ignore math?
It is an interesting aspect of human psychology that more people are afraid of a mass shooting in a school, though far more students will graduate knowing someone who died in a car crash than someone who died in a mass shooting.
... but it is how human psychology works, so the school must account for it.
Well 9/11 is etched in the collective psyche, still talked about, and the toll there wasn't great either. Acts of terror terrify. I don't think it's so much that people worry about the odds, they just categorically do not want to accept regular school shootings as a normal thing. Why should they?
It's essentially the same thing as air travel safety vs cars. What seemed to work for air travel is to make it into trivia so that any time this point comes up somebody repeats back the trivia.
Far more school shooting deaths than any other developed country by my count. You're choosing to brush it off because it represents a small percentage of the population. That's a ridiculous position, you could hold the same if school shooting fatalities were in the 10,000s instead of 200s; too insignificant. The weight is in whether it's acceptable or it isn't, not how likely your kid is to get shot. It's been worse in the past 20 years than the 20 years prior. You're either a) tacitly saying that the certainty of future school shootings is absolutely fine with you, or b) that it can't be helped, which isn't true. Pick one.
We don't have to accept high rates of vehicular deaths either. Automation will make this moot in the end, but far stronger punishment for inebriated driving is due, among other things.
> You're choosing to brush it off because it represents a small percentage of the population.
That is what you concluded from what I am saying. Why did you conclude that?
> you could hold the same if school shooting fatalities were in the 10,000s instead of 200s; too insignificant
Oh but look at those magnitudes!
> You're either a) tacitly saying that the certainty of future school shootings is absolutely fine with you, or b) that it can't be helped, which isn't true. Pick one.
I did not intend to say either of those things. That's your interpretation. But again, why did you think that? My take: A good chunk of the population in the US is sold on alarmism and "something needs to be done".
> far stronger punishment for inebriated driving is due
Great. Another non-solution giving the appearance that something is being done.
Then when that doesn't work you cry for still more to be done. More punishment. More prying. It's a cycle I won't participate in. I'm disgusted by it!
Why aren't we discussing the resources these kids had, or didn't have, facing their adulthood? How come they decided the way to feel in control was shooting their peers? They're not the only ones! A lot of kids feel that. Few act it out. Thankfully. Why do they feel that? No matter, let's watch their backpacks for guns.
> That is what you concluded from what I am saying. Why did you conclude that?
> Oh but look at those magnitudes!
You're saying again exactly what you're being cute about in the first sentence. Not much to deduce here.
> I did not intend to say either of those things. That's your interpretation. But again, why did you think that? My take: A good chunk of the population in the US is sold on alarmism and "something needs to be done".
That's interesting because your "take" completely ignores those suppositions you insist do not apply to you. It it CAN be helped, those who believe so would explore solutions: which one do you favor, and why?
> Great. Another non-solution giving the appearance that something is being done.
"Our calculations reveal that increasing rates of prosecution and conviction for DWI would reduce re-arrests for DWI and by implication drinking and driving more generally." -- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5472385/
It works.
> I'm disgusted by it!
You're disgusted by putting drunk drivers in jail?
> No matter, let's watch their backpacks for guns.
I never said I was in favor of the clear backpacks, not once. That won't deter anything. I do however think the ease of accessibility to guns is great among disturbed young people.
> Why aren't we discussing the resources these kids had, or didn't have, facing their adulthood?
We should. No one says we shouldn't. And yet, are you going to vote or write legislators to allocate resources this way? I doubt it. It's just another way to brush off the whole thing from cons who don't give a fuck and wish people would just not talk about it.
Your argument is very, very weak whataboutism. Just because people die of other things more frequently does not mean that you are not supposed to prevent deaths. Your argument suggests that we should not be bothering with a justice system at all, because far more people die of cancer and heart disease than are murdered or crippled, therefore it would be dumb to put any money down for preventing and prosecuting murders.
No. If we look at the draconic measures being taken the reaction is way out of line with the problem. If we reacted to the other dangers the same way, society wouldn't function.
Schools are turned into high-security institutions, or the appearances of it. Watching kids for fear of them freaking out is not a good signal to send. It means you only care when it's too late.
A proper measure isn't about "scale of reaction" it's whether it's effective. These draconian measures are red herrings; I'm not sure they're even meant to prevent anything, because they won't work. They will not prevent school shootings, full stop. It's opportunistic bullshit from legislators.
Do you have any evidence that clear backpacks have a meaningful impact of deaths in schools from guns? Is that impact sufficient to warrant the culture of fear that is being incolcated into these poor kids?
It's not whataboutism, it's cost benefit analysis.
> It's not whataboutism, it's cost benefit analysis.
GP didn't make that analysis; they merely implied that nothing should be done about school shootings because more kids get run over. That's whataboutism in its purest form: "We should doo something about school shootings!" - "But what about all the kids getting run over???"
Imagine that 1 person in the US died per year by getting hit by stray golf balls, and 10 people per year in France. (I'm not saying this is true; just imagine).
It might be true that France has by far the highest stray-golf-ball death rate in the world. But this wouldn't mean it is a significant cause of mortality, or an important object of public policy.
Except that we're talking about innocent children being gunned down at school by their fellow citizens. Utterly preventable and disgusting. You might not think it's a big deal, but the rest of the world is horrified by it.
(Also your example is very poor - you should use per capita statistics so countries of different populations can be meaningfully compared.)
I suspect it's some variant of “amend the US constitution to allow the federal government to ban guns”. This is essentially impossible in practice due to the political structure of the United States.
If your response to that is “well then, change the political structure of the United States” then that would involve a violent revolution or some other chaos, which would almost certainly kill more innocent people than mass school shootings do.
> you should use per capita statistics
It doesn't matter, since my example was meant to illustrate a point, not to be quantitatively meaningful. But since you asked, the corresponding per capita numbers would be:
> I suspect it's some variant of “amend the US constitution to allow the federal government to ban guns”.
Sigh. You Americans have been taught to think in such black and white terms. It's either "have guns" or "ban guns". You honestly think there is no middle ground, which is utterly and completely moronic because virtually every developed country in the world has a way of dealing with this that America is convinced can't work. Even though the evidence is blatant.
In many, many countries (including the US actually) citizens are allowed to own certain types of guns, and not other types. I ask how many anti-aircraft guns Americans are allowed to own? Or missile launchers? Or tanks with live rounds?
Clearly there are some weapons that regular people can have, and some they can't.
All America needs to do is tighten down what's acceptable, just like other developed countries do. For example, I live in Canada. I have a large calibre hunting rifle, and it isn't even registered. My friend has a handgun which is tightly controlled. Australia is similar.
So people that "want guns" can still "have guns", but the murder rate is much, much lower in those countries than the US, because other more powerful weapons are restricted or even outright banned.
Further to this, it's a simple idea that people should be required to have licenses and training to own a firearm, just like a vehicle. So what if you need to amend the constitution to do that. You've already amended it 27 times - it's not like the thing was perfect the day it was printed and will still be perfect in the year 3500 or some such nonsense.
Be very clear, I am in NO WAY talking about "Ban guns" or "Take guns away". I'm talking about restricting certain types of guns, and restricting certain types of people, which of course America has already done.
It's really not hard. The rest of the world has done it very well, but you guys are still busy arguing black and white while kids are literally being slaughtered in schools, and people at concerts and movie theatres get gunned down.
>So people that "want guns" can still "have guns", but the murder rate is much, much lower in those countries than the US, because other more powerful weapons are restricted or even outright banned.
That right there is resting on a huge unsubstantiated assumption on your part. I personally don't think giving people the right to bear arms necessarily reduces crime but I say this because evidence doesn't really bear the notion out. You say the opposite without any backing evidence. By way of opposing arguments: In most Latin American countries (including the extremely violent one I live in) private gun ownership is either outright banned or extremely curtailed. Despite this, most of Latin America has murder rates per 100,000 that are several times to several DOZEN times higher than those of the U.S. Another example, in the U.S itself, homicide rates (same metric of deaths per 100,000 people) vary enormously from state to state, county to county and municipality to municipality, and the correlation between this variance has very little visible connection to gun ownership rates or gun access restrictions in those same municipalities. Go look at the stats yourself: this is why states like Wyoming, where gun laws are extremely lax, can have extremely low murder rates while places like the city of Chicago, Illinois or Baltimore, have enormously higher homicide rates despite having local gun laws that are nearly as strict as those of many European countries. Other factors besides gun laws are largely to blame for the higher-than-average murder rate in the U.S (by western standards), not access to lots of powerful guns.
I agree with almost all of your comment. I think as a matter of policy, handguns should be banned or heavily restricted, and if I were in charge of rewriting the US Constitution (which I think is quite shit and a terrible basis for running a modern country), I’d definitely get rid of the second amendment.
You seem to be arguing against what you think a typical American believes, rather than against my actual position.
I’m not arguing that policy shouldn’t be changed. I’m arguing that it’s so difficult or impossible to change, for relatively little benefit compared to other possible reforms, that focusing on it isn’t worth the cost.
The salient difference between the US and other developed democracies is the US’s uniquely broken political structure. What most people don’t understand when comparing the US to Canada or Australia is that the US can’t “just” pass a law making serious and major reforms. It’s simply not possible. In almost every country, when most people agree a law should change, the Parliament just passes it, the head of state agrees to it if necessary, and then that’s it. Not so in the US.
In our naturally gridlocked and fundamentally broken political system, there are only three ways a law can change in a major way at the federal level:
(1) It is obscure enough that nobody cares about it,
(2) It is so widely supported that it can actually get through the deadlock, or,
(3) It doesn’t go through the legislative process at all, but arises from the Supreme Court changing its interpretation of the constitution.
For example: the vast majority of Americans have believed since the 1970s (as far back as my data goes) that abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances. A majority have believed since the early 2010s that gay marriage should be legal. And a solid majority have believed since 2000 (as far back as my data goes, and to be fair it dipped to around half during the Obamacare debates) that the healthcare of all Americans should be the responsibility of the government.
But because of the brokenness of our system, the first two reforms could only be made by the Supreme Court, and we’re still waiting on the third.
We can’t even agree to switch to the metric system, despite practically every educated person agreeing it’s superior.
Given these facts, if you’re going to spend the huge amount of political capital, years of debates to the exclusion of everything else, waiting for once-in-a-generation supermajorities, etc. that were necessary for even a relatively minor reform like Obamacare, you’re better off focusing on something more impactful, like improving transit infrastructure, mitigating climate change, subsidizing poor people’s access to healthy food, or any number of things that will save more lives overall than making mass shootings less likely.
Thanks for the very detailed reply. I guess you're right - even though I've spent 5 months in the US this summer, I hadn't understood the difficulties involved in making stuff better.
It sounds terrible, and I'm sad so many people have to live like that.
All things considered, I think the US is a fine country by global standards. Canada is significantly better in many ways, but the US isn't exactly Syria or El Salvador.
I've never understood the fascination with comparing the US to developing or undeveloped countries. It's a waste of time, and only causes more inaction because "everything is fine, it's better than x,y,z"
Next you're going to tell me your pro football team is doing just fine because they're better than a high school team. (Even though they're literally on the bottom of the pro ladder)
Surely, what is ostensibly the best country in the world should at the very least be comparing itself to OECD countries if it ever hopes to improve.
You are the one who decided to compare the US against two of the best-governed countries in the world and then be shocked that the US is (almost by definition) not governed as well. Not me. So why am I the one who’s obsessed with comparisons?
I’m just confused about this attitude about the United States. I don’t see people being as smug about the entire spectrum of countries. I don’t see endless threads on message boards about how unbelievable it is that Eritrea and North Korea are governed poorly. And I think if you went to a forum filled with people from one of those countries and constantly talked about how it’s not as nice as yours, people would get annoyed.
We know our country has a ton of problems. Lucky you for being born in one that doesn’t, but that’s not a license to constantly lecture us about something we have zero power to change.
I bring up countries that people don’t hold to as high a standard despite them being so clearly worse-off than the US to invite you to reflect on why that is.
I think for most the most part it’s one of a few reasons: (1) people conflate geopolitical power with development, and think it’s abnormal that the most powerful country isn’t the most developed; (2) people conflate wealth with development, and think its abnormal that the wealthiest country isn’t the most developed; (3) people are just racist and think a country with a mostly Western culture should naturally be highly-developed and well-governed; (4) people see the unwarranted patriotism of a loud fraction of Americans and want to knock them down a peg.
Not sure which it is in your case, but I suspect based on your comments that it’s some combination of (2) and (4). But both are total fallacies.
Wealth is not particularly strongly correlated with quality of governance: Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE are all deeply corrupt yet richer per capita than the US. Hong Kong is one of the richest territories in the world and not a democracy at all. Uruguay and Botswana are vibrant, well-functioning democracies despite being developing countries. So it’s actually not very surprising that the US has a more poorly-structured political system than Canada, Australia, and most countries in Western Europe despite being monetarily richer.
As for point (4) it is obviously a fallacy because at no point did I ever claim the US is the greatest country in the world or that we have more freedom than anyone else or that Canada is a Stalinist shithole or anything else, regardless of the fact that some percentage of Americans might believe those things. On that note...
> what is ostensibly the best country in the world.
Your words, not mine. I think the US is better than most countries in the world, but worse than Canada, Australia, or most countries in Western Europe. Why is that so surprising or confusing?
> Next you're going to tell me your pro football team is doing just fine because they're better than a high school team.
I don’t follow football at all. I find baseball and soccer much more interesting. Funnily enough the political discussion parallels the soccer standings. Can’t tell you how many Europeans have a smug attitude about how “bad the US is at soccer” (as if that’s some sort of moral failing!) despite us having a FIFA ranking of 22 out of 210 federations. Funnily enough I’ve never heard anyone smugly shitting on the national soccer teams of China, India, Canada (sorry!) or Palau.
Aweful, horrible, tragic, but a sensational statistic at the end of the day. Crosswalks and the cars that ignore them are a more serious killer, but regulated into local news and not international headline coverage. Pedestrians die every 90 minutes in the U.S. due to cars.
No. But clear backpacks do nothing at all to make them safer. And everyone with half a brain knows this. It conditions the entire population to accept security theater and government surveillance as part of everyday life.
This sets the entire society up to be unable to resist government overreach in the future.
Clear backpacks increase the risk of death from tyranny.
Someone looking to sneak a gun in would be hiding it in their pant's waistband or some other part of their clothes; inversely if they are looking to commit a public atrocity they'll skip the sneaking part altogether. Mandating clear backpacks is just as much security theater as is banning 4 oz liquid containers at the airport
I don't think that's a fair assertion. Even going in through the front doors with guns in their coats, the perpetrators of Columbine massacre used bags full of bombs.
>if they are looking to commit a public atrocity they'll...
Which gives everyone else a sooner notice to run away. This won't work for e.g. gang violence.
>Mandating clear backpacks is just as much security theater as is banning 4 oz liquid containers at the airport
Yes, they started that after someone actually tried to blow up a plane with bottles of explosive disguised as soft drinks.
The bags full of bombs were to kill people after the shooters were dead. They weren't to get in the door. They got in the door by outgunning the security guard (one handgun vs two rifles in a gun battle, so the guard retreated).
Someone who wants to pack heat to school isn't gonna be stopped by a clear backpack. They'll cut out a texbook or hide it on their person. Look to the TSA's track record to see why making the formerly hidden visible doesn't actually help that much.
Look at how that same argument fails to apply to suicide statistics being reduced by removing access to guns or falls from bridges. You're trying to apply a logical train of thought to an inherently illogical act of homicide.
But even if you can apply that, it doesn't work. The gun and ammo you can fit in a textbook is smaller than what can fit in a backpack. Backpacks are good at carrying things, that's why we - and school shooters - use them. So if someone wants to pack heat, they'll be less effective.
Maybe the effect from this is insignificant. But how sure do you have to be for the risk of dead children to be less bad than someone not being allowed a cute backpack?
There are an unlimited number of things that risk dead children. Chewing gum, shoelaces, bicycles, model rocketry, shop class, video game marathons, crosswalks...
How sure do we have to be to ban them all?
There is in my opinion a very clear danger associated with setting up draconian surveillance states borne out by history. How sure do we have to be before we ban those?
Suicide usually involves sevee depression and such a lack of motivation that opening every blister packs to overdose is a deterrant. It is very different from a desire to spree kill.
Besides if we deal with this low probability extremes shouldn't we factor in early blooming girls who kill themselves after being bullied and shamed over carrying their feminine products without any privacy?
No, but if we're forcing the kids to have clear backpacks because of an infinitesimal risk, we should ban them from biking to school, being driven to school and playing in the school football team.
Some schools actually have banned things such as biking to school, along with playing tag, balls, and even running during recess over the same safety boogieman. It's frustrating how the whole freedom vs security balance thing falls off a cliff when children's rights are discussed.
As a child, it is exactly prison, it's not 'like' prison. You are controlled in location, action, and speech. You are told when to use the restroom, when to eat. Feeling sleepy today or maybe not getting along with an obnoxious inmate? Too bad for you, you're powerless.
I personally believe most school violence is induced by the prison-like nature of schools. They are inmate riots of 1.
That's a poor comparison though. Both of the others provide other benefits: a method of commuting to school or exercise. Potentially even scholarships.
Imagine you're a teenage girl and you need to carry sanitary products with you. I imagine that for some of them this is essentially a nightmare scenario. That's a direct harm to kids.
Yeah you are right. Following your logic and your risk assessment, I assume you are getting your children firearms rather than bicycles for Christmas, Happy Holidays...
Or just fix the underlaying issue. Switzerland has 2 million guns on 8 million citizens. Yet no school shootings. Why don't they have school shootings and can we apply the Swiss system to the United States?
I mean if we're talking about Switzerland we have to talk about how their gun laws would be considered extremely draconian and unconstitutional in the US. [see 0] For starters all guns and ammunition purchases have what are essentially background checks, and it's much easier to lose the right to purchase, carry permits are basically non-existent and most transit is explicitly only to and from shooting ranges or hunting. Just saying there's lots of guns in Switzerland so guns aren't the real problem is very disingenuous and ignores the fact that as they've continued to restrict gun ownership to align with broader EU rules gun violence (including suicides) have dropped.
They are not Draconian, they are in the ballpark of a blue state in the US.
If the progressives were willing to accept the Swiss laws in the US under the stipulation that they would never again be made more strict, the US gun owners should be thrilled.
Part of the problem is that US gun laws are often motivated by misunderstanding or spite rather than reason or compromise.
They would be called draconian by Republicans and the NRA, look how they react to any increase in gun laws today. Of course blue states get closer to the Swiss laws but IIRC no state has any kind of background check on ammunition [0] or universal gun registries both of which are part of the Swiss system.
[0] It would be practically impossible to enforce because states can't put up barriers from things coming into their state from other states.
They would be called draconian by Republicans and the NRA, look how they react to any increase in gun laws today.
That's because those increases are never compromises or exchanges. They are simply demands. Republicans and the NRA look at what the gun laws in DC and Chicago were before the Supreme Court cases and think: "That's their end game. Zero guns. Because look: when they had the political power to take them away, they did." They have no rational reason to support increases in gun control that come in exchange for nothing.
If the Democrats offered a compromise, in the form of a constitutional amendment, not repealing the 2nd amendment but detailing it out, we could probably see real talk and progress. If it's not an amendment then it's simply "pray I don't alter it any further".
Why would you demand "exchange" to introduce a law that is sensible and has positive impact? You don't have drivers' association demanding privileges in exchange for penalizing drunk driving or restricting maximum speed.
The whole NRA situation in USA seems so absurd from outside.
Because, unlike with guns, nobody is trying to ban cars.
And to the most common objection: yes they are. Gun control proponents often bring up and praise the UK (near total ban) and Australia (significant limitations compared to the U.S.) as examples to emulate.
And in Chicago and DC, before the Supreme Court cases, there were effectively total bans. And when the plaintiffs sued, they didn't say, "well I guess we went a little too far, let's establish a regulated framework under which responsible, qualified and trained citizens can own guns". Instead, they went all the way to the Supreme Court to try to defend their bans.
So, even if a gun owner agrees with a particular piece of proposed regulation (and I'm sure plenty do), they would be acting against their own long term interests giving the block trying to ban guns political momentum and capital.
> Because, unlike with guns, nobody is trying to ban cars.
That's actually wrong. Gun control isn't banning guns, and if you consider background checks a "ban" - then driving licence requirement is a "ban on cars" :)
If someone had the bright idea to put the right to drive a car in constitution - Americans would be now arguing whether countrywide requirement to have a driving licence to drive a car is ok or not :)
I said that there is a large political block trying to ban guns. Not that they are banned, or that they are more regulated than cars. Is that what you're referring to?
> Instead, they went all the way to the Supreme Court to try to defend their bans.
Their current tactic is to revoke a law that makes it too far into the judicial system to avoid having it receive constitutional review by the Supreme Court and thereby invalidate it nationally.
It speaks volumes to the underhandedness of the gun control proponents.
The whole NRA situation is absurd from the inside too. The organization is the propaganda mouthpiece of the gun lobby and GOP very poorly disguised as some sportsmen's club of yore.
There are guns around. Kids that want to shoot up schools could very easily gain access to one. And yet it doesn’t happen. Violent behavior is not a product to access to guns.
It's not that hard either (over 18, don't have any violent crime history or mental issues (self harm) and Swiss citizen (exceptions exist)) however not every type of gun or knife is legal. Magazines for guns over 20 rounds are not legal and neither are rifle magazines with more than 10 rounds. Fully automatic guns are not permitted unless it was received during military service. Butterfly knifes and throwing knifes are also illegal.
Also ammo purchases have similar background check style requirements so it's difficult to bypass the systems unlike the US. It's always weird when people bring up Switzerland like it disproves the push for tighter gun laws, all it really shows is that tight gun laws work and you don't have to completely ban guns. [0]
[0] They do have a high rate of suicide by guns than the rest of Europe though and that number has dropped as, surprise surprise, gun laws have been tightened.
This is a complete straw man. We are not discussing how many guns the Swiss have in absolute, not are we talking about how that could affect school shootings in the US. If we want to discuss the numbers, devices like ratios will serve us much better.
There are still 6 times more guns per person in the US than in Switzerland. Looking at the numbers also shows that Switzerland is far from being an outlier in any way, so I'm not sure why the Swiss system is more interesting than the Austrian system or Swedish system in that regard.
There are just way too many guns in the US (i.e. "it's just way too easy to get a gun in the US").
The vast majority of those guns are sitting around harmlessly in gun collector's lockers.
US has a mental illness problem. At some point, a societal sickness entered the country. A sickness of nihilism and hopelessness. A sickness where (mostly men) feel lonely and unloved and powerless to change their futures. A sickness where hatred for peers is harbored for years until it festers and explodes out in a violent way.
Why does America have these kinds of people at such high frequencies compared to Switzerland?
It's because they are actually lonely and unloved and powerless, and also because they have been fed lies about America and their station in it since the moment they could first understand language.
The mental illness occurs when their cognitive dissonance is strained to the breaking point. When someone realizes that they have labored their whole life, possibly at significant risk to life and limb, for the primary benefit of other people, who do not even return a minimum level of respect, a psychic pseudopod of rage reaches out, questing, for someone or something to blame.
And it usually lands somewhere that is merely close, rather than deserving. They do not understand why their life has been considered disposable, and become determined to make their mark--even if it is to be a scorch mark or track mark--on the world. We are likely already familiar with some common modes of midlife crisis: buy a motorcycle, buy a sports car, buy a boat, get really into one's religion, volunteer for some charity, go back to school, etc. It may well be that when those sorts of outlets are financially unavailable, then "buy a gun, write a manifesto, and start the revolution" is one of the few that remain within reach. Or it may be that they just preferred that one from the start.
Perhaps Switzerland is better at making people feel important, and is not exploitative to a point far beyond the breaking point?
>A sickness where hatred for peers is harbored for years until it festers and explodes out in a violent way.
Could part of the problem be bullying? I've watched a lot of American movies and any time a school is depicted it has some pretty awful bullying going on. I've not heard of anything remotely like it elsewhere. Sure, there's bullying, but most of it ends in name calling or sometimes fights, rather than this harassment that goes on for years.
I agree, but it's not a currently defined mental illness so we should be more clear on terminology. What you're talking about is a cultural issue. It's massive and real. It's not mental health, however. Fewer than 5% of shootings in the US are caused by people with mental health issues.
You said "caused by people with mental health issues" but what the evidence supports is only "caused by people with clinically-diagnosed mental health issues".
I don't think it's mental illness alone, since these shootings are almost entirely perpretrated by men. Plenty of women are mentally ill, isolated or lonely, feel powerless, and yet they're not committing mass shootings.
Almost all of the mass shootings were committed by men with a history of domestic abuse and violence. I think the real root cause is entitlement and not seeing other people as humans.
> Almost all of the mass shootings were committed by men with a history of domestic abuse and violence. I think the real root cause is entitlement and not seeing other people as humans.
And what makes women immune to being entitled and not seeing other people as human?
Personally I would explain the fact that most of these shootings are committed by men by the fact that men are generally speaking more likely to react in a physically violent way to stress than women are. That plus the fact that these shooters are an incredibly tiny portion of the population would explain why most shooters are men.
I'd say that lashing out violently is a pretty good sign that a person doesn't have empathy for other people. And what's more entitled than thinking you have the right to end other people's lives?
>Personally I would explain the fact that most of these shootings are committed by men by the fact that men are generally speaking more likely to react in a physically violent way to stress than women are.
Men are not rabid dogs incapable of making their own decisions. If someone lashes out violently and murders a bunch of people, they're responsible for the choice to play god with other people's lives.
Most laws restrict some right to make us safer, and most laws succeed at that. For all the vehicular homicides in the US, there'd be more if we didn't require driving on the right-hand-side of the road and not driving on the sidewalk.
The question is always where the tradeoff point should be, not whether there's any tradeoff.
Indeed, and the number of people who would be interested in a Constitutional convention to discuss that (as well as other things that are assumed necessary for a free and stable American society under just laws) is higher than a younger me would have anticipated.
First of all, making something illegal does not make it disappear, and you're also grossly overestimating the occurrence (as are the people calling for clear backpacks) of school shootings. The vast majority of shootings are between criminal gangs - making the guns illegal will not magically make criminals into upstanding citizens.
Consider that the news cycle and FUD have created a terrible availability bias in our country that increasingly leads to draconian actions like those mentioned in the article.
What was I arguing? I merely pointed towards a well known psychological bias that's resulting in feel-good measures that do little to ensure _actual_ safety.
There are many more risks to our children we should consider before this one, and there's only so much political capital to do it. Authoritarianism is one of those risks...
> you're also grossly overestimating the occurrence
The bodycount might not be "spectacular" but the rate of school shootings in the U.S. dwarfs other developed countries. Fatalities 200+ so far. At any rate, you don't know what they were 'estimating' exactly.
> The vast majority of shootings are between criminal gangs - making the guns illegal will not magically make criminals into upstanding citizens.
Criminals retrieve their weapons through underground networks. School shooters do not. They're just students. They've either grabbed what was lying around at home or bought them. Such that, accessibility to school shooters is hampered were it the case that legal distribution were more restricted.
Add to the fact, circulation of guns in the underground is only possible and bloated because of the sheet number of legal guns.
So the vast majority of gun death happens because of illegal guns and yet the problem is that guns are legal. The wretched cesspools that we call public schools are creating a bullying environment that makes kids suicidal and in this way kills lots of kids (some of which translate their despair into murder-suicide) and yet it’s our 2A right that we should dismantle, not the public schools? Our kids are an international embarrassment and cannot even point to Tunisia on a map. And the most famous school shooting of all time, the one that started it all, columbine, sources it’s guns from an illegal gun dealer, not the home and yet it’s my right to defend my home that needs to be infringed?
> it’s our 2A right that we should dismantle, not the public schools?
Didn't say that, nor do I believe that. Just correcting the above.
> So the vast majority of gun death happens because of illegal guns
Well the majority are suicide, with legal guns. As for homicide, yes. But people don't care about that, really. They care about mass shootings, or school shootings.
> The wretched cesspools that we call public schools are creating a bullying environment that makes kids suicidal and in this way kills lots of kids
We don't know to what extent it's about bullying in the school system (kids haven't gotten meaner), or exacerbation of issues as a function of modern living (e.g. more isolation), or neither. What's clear is that guns are easily accessible to angsty homicidal loners.
I don't think schools in and of themselves are so different than those in every other developed country as to be responsible for shootings.
> And the most famous school shooting of all time, the one that started it all, columbine, sources it’s guns from an illegal gun dealer,
Yeah, they did, from unlicensed sellers. Not most.
I agree with none of that. You’re flat out wrong about schools. People from Russia for example who transfer often make note of how amazingly viscous American high schools are. There is a massive difference. Massive.
This, or literally any other action that isn't crazy in the sense of attempting to suppress personal privacy or the idea of protecting oneself. People want to feel safe and capable, not guilty and dependent.
Quite honestly, the amendment should have been worded differently and I believe that is part of the reason we are in the mess we have found ourselves in today. For some reason, many Americans only ever seem to quote the final clause of the amendment:
..., the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
However, the meaning of the final clause is modified by what comes before it:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, ...
Now, there are two important things to note:
1) in the context of the constitution, "person" or "persons" is used when referencing an individual or individuals but "people" is used when speaking generally about a collective group. This can also be seen in the 4th amendment:
The right of the **people** to be secure in their **persons**, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures...
2) Madison wrote the 2nd amendment as a way to provide the States recourse against a corrupt Federal government. At the time when the constitution was drafted, states were much more distinct and separate entities, and the revolutionary war was fresh on the mind so the ability for individual states to train there own militias was an important stipulation.
Bearing this in mind, I do not believe that the 2nd amendment was written as a right provided to individuals but instead as a right afforded to states.
In that case, the 4th amendment is also a right afforded not to individuals because it uses the same wording that the 2nd does regarding "right of the people".
If you want to argue that the "persons" part means the individual, then that would require that you ignore the first part. This contradicts what you said earlier about "being modified by what comes before it".
No, not quite. Notice what comes after "the right of the people" in the 4th amendment: "...to be secure in there persons", then later: "...and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"
The 4th amendment outlines specific rights afforded to individuals. There is no such verbiage in the 2nd amendment. Instead, all that is referenced is the State.
> "...to be secure in there persons", then later: "...and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"
Exactly, that protects the state from it's persons being searched. Because as you just said, the phrase "right of the people" denotes a collective right:
> The 4th amendment outlines specific rights afforded to individuals. There is no such verbiage in the 2nd amendment. Instead, all that is referenced is the State.
When the 4th amendment mentions "right of the people" it means the right of the state. Any persons are just entities of the state and the right does not belong to the individuals. Otherwise it would have said "the right of the persons", as you had argued earlier in the thread regarding the language of the 2nd amendment.
Outside of discussing 18th-century language, do you really believe Americans are going to turn over their guns because a politician comes along and says we have been misinterpreting it thus we must all turn in our guns?
Alone, most likely not. However, the second amendment has never been formally challenged in such a way and there is little legal precedent formalizing the right for Americans to individually own weapons.
It would be naive to think that any change to US law with regards to guns will change anything overnight but we have to start somewhere and allow for the culture around gun ownership to change over time.
> there is little legal precedent formalizing the right for Americans to individually own weapons.
As an American I don't need a legal precedent to say I can own certain property, a legal precedent needs to be set to say I can't own certain property.
I will never give up my right to carry a weapon. Liberals say they want to ban guns and then they turn around and foam at the mouth when cops try to take away the guns if it’s a black persons guns. I would consider giving up guns if liberals would let cops do stop and frisk. Or let cops do anything really.
But liberals don’t care because they live in their mansions, far away from any danger. And rich SV CEOs throw money at anti capital punishment efforts while they relax in their mansions where they are sure to never encounter anyone that it might be used on.
> The right to bear arms was paid for in blood and not just once.
And worse, gun restrictions only benefit criminals. There's plenty of people who legally own firearms and protect their homes and their property legally. They also avoid plenty of crime since criminals tend to run when a gun is pulled on them especially in stand your ground states.
They've tried banning everything in England and criminals will still kill people with just about anything. First it's the guns, then knives, then machetes. You can run over people, are you gonna make cars illegal too?
People who want to hurt people also don't care what laws there are, they can buy guns illegally.
Worse yet, depending on where you live, if something happens in your home, it's a lot safer to have a gun than to wait for cops to come to draw the chalk lines on you and your family.
>They've tried banning everything in England and criminals will still kill people with just about anything anything. First it's the guns, then knives, then machetes.
If these alternatives are just as effective as guns, why do you feel that you need a gun?
Of course, you know that guns are more effective at killing people - especially large numbers of people. That's why we in the UK have not had a mass killing in a school since private ownership of handguns was banned over two decades ago.
>it's a lot safer to have a gun than to wait for cops to come to draw the chalk lines on you and your family.
You're more likely to use the gun to kill yourself or a family member than you are to use it to kill an intruder.
Killing someone who breaks into your home is most likely an overreaction in any case. The chances are very low that they've broken in with the intention of harming you rather than merely stealing something.
> Of course, you know that guns are more effective at killing people - especially large numbers of people.
A knife is quiet, you could probably kill more people with knives, a gun is loud and everyone nearby will hear it, probably what a crazy shooter would want is to strike fear into victims.
> You're more likely to use the gun to kill yourself or a family member than you are to use it to kill an intruder.
Since neither of those two are a viable option for myself, I'd rather have a gun, and only ever shoot it at a range than not have one and watch the worse possible scenario unfold before me.
> Killing someone who breaks into your home is most likely an overreaction in any case. The chances are very low that they've broken in with the intention of harming you rather than merely stealing something.
I don't know that, and I don't have to kill them if I pull a gun on them unless my life is in immediate danger. There's cases where a mother held the intruder at gun point until cops showed up to make an arrest.
So why are you worried about gun bans? You can just use a knife instead.
I think you must know, really, that guns are more dangerous and effective than knives. That's why you want the right to own one. It's also why the US has frequent mass shootings in schools, whereas there are no instances of mass stabbings in UK schools.
Just look at the recent terrorist incident in London. The guy killed two people with a knife before being restrained by unarmed members of the public.
>And I don't have to kill them if I pull a gun on one
The first principle of responsible gun use is not to point a gun at anything you don't want to kill.
As you illustrate, hardly anyone is capable of using guns responsibily.
As an attacker who wants to go unnoticed a knife is the better option. As a defender, who wants to stop an attacker, your best bet is a gun, since you don't have to get close.
> So why are you worried about gun bans? You can just use a knife instead.
You seem to be confused about the concept that self-defense is a different use case than mass shootings. Why is that?
> I think you must know, really, that guns are more dangerous and effective than knives. That's why you want the right to own one.
Are you under the impression that this poster would not object to a ban on knives? Why?
> It's also why the US has frequent mass shootings in schools, whereas there are no instances of mass stabbings in UK schools.
Thank you for providing a good example of post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy
> The first principle of responsible gun use is not to point a gun at anything you don't want to kill.
And that's why there's always bullet holes anywhere that a gun has pointed, because they always have to shoot anything it points at? Were you similarly not aware that it is possible to pull a gun but not point it at the person?
Your first points is obscured by snark. The second seems to be based on a misreading. The third is merely the observation that empirical reasoning is non-demonstrative.
As for number four, I see that you are another pro-gun poster who is unfamiliar with the absolute basics of firearm safety. That doesn't make a great case for private gun ownership. Here's what the pinky leftos at concealednation.org have to say (see point 2): https://concealednation.org/2013/11/the-4-rules-of-gun-safet...
What is obscured about the observation that your comment doesn't recognize the differences between self-defense and mass shootings, and how the qualities of the weapon affect the benefits for the user?
> The second seems to be based on a misreading.
You'll have to explain why questioning an intellectually defunct implication is a "misreading".
"that guns are more dangerous and effective than knives. That's why you want the right to own one."
Considering your claim is that desiring the right to own one is some kind of evidence that guns are "more dangerous and effective", it is thoroughly debunked if the person also desires the right to own knives.
> The third is merely the observation that empirical reasoning is non-demonstrative.
It should be noted that making a gigantic logical leap from "guns are more dangerous and effective than knives" to "It's also why the US has frequent mass shootings in schools, whereas there are no instances of mass stabbings in UK schools" is to ignore the social, cultural, economic factors that affect crime. That's not a good basis for understanding of criminal behavior.
And your last paragraph is just a complete misunderstanding of what the poster said. My comment was not to denounce the rule about where you point the gun, but to note that your claim about killing was unfounded.
> And I don't have to kill them if I pull a gun on one
The fact that you don't understand this is really troublesome. Are you one of those people who believes in that old myth about swords having to taste blood before being resheathed? Because this is on that level.
Hmm? The point is that whenever you point a gun at someone there's a significant risk that you'll shoot and kill them. Hence, you should not do it if this is not your intention. This precludes threatening people by pointing guns at them, except in the case where you are prepared to take full responsibility for their death, should this occur.
So you agree with the other poster that is is possible to pull a gun and point it at them without killing them. What a roundabout way of pretending to disagree.
> Just look at the recent terrorist incident in London. The guy killed two people with a knife before being restrained by unarmed members of the public.
The people restraining him were armed with a fire extinguisher and a narwhal tusk, and he was ultimately subdued by the police shooting him with guns.
Also, since banning guns didn’t actually seem to fix anything, they’re now working on banning knives. So you can’t just use a knife instead. Better hope there’s a narwhal tusk handy when you need it.
>The people restraining him were armed with a fire extinguisher and a narwhal tusk
I.e., whatever objects happened to be at hand. I don't think you'd have much luck using a fire extinguisher against someone with an assault rifle.
>Also, since banning guns didn’t actually seem to fix anything
Hmm? There have been no mass killings in schools since the handgun ban. What was anyone expecting it to fix that it hasn't fixed?
Bear in mind that very few British people owned handguns even before the ban (roughly 0.1% of the population), and none of them would have been carrying their guns around while going about their day to day business. One would not expect the ban to have had any great effect on anything - beyond eliminating the specific problem it was intended to address.
> I.e., whatever objects happened to be at hand. I don't think you'd have much luck using a fire extinguisher against someone with an assault rifle.
A rifle is not automatically an assault rifle... But also, if law abiding citizens have their own guns, they can shoot a mad shooter before they cause too much damage.
My home defense weapon of choice is my Louisville Slugger. If a crackhead in my place saw me chasing them, crazed, in a bathrobe, with that bat waving blindly, they are booking it. There is no question that they are getting clubbed with this bat.
However, if I had a gun, I'm not sure I'm prepared to end a life right there in my living room and deal with that for the rest of my life. Bloodying a crackhead with a bat I can do, and the crackhead knows that too.
As far as guns being loud, that's almost a good thing for a criminal. Witnesses run away, and by the time the cops show up you are gone and the gun is in the sewer.
A. In a free society, I am not required to justify my choices. I don’t have to explain my “feelings” about anything.
B. “Need”, there is that word again. In what ways are enumerated rights dependent on needs? If something better than a gun existed for personal defense, I’d want that, I don’t have to explain my “need” about anything. You seem like you are confusing rights with grants and privileges.
So you either don’t actually understand rights in the US, or you are arguing in bad faith because you just don’t like them.
I don't care particularly about gun rights in the US as I'm not American and no longer live in the US. My question was simply why someone who believed that knives were as effective as guns would feel that they needed a gun to defend themselves. I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick.
> They've tried banning everything in England and criminals will still kill people with just about anything. First it's the guns, then knives, then machetes. You can run over people, are you gonna make cars illegal too?
We just had a Terrorist attack last week. He was armed with 2 knives and he killed 2 people before being taken down by some people with a fire extinguisher and a narwhal horn (I shit you not).
I'll take that over dozens in any shooting spree with victims in the dozens thanks.
And no, a "good guy" with a gun would have made things worse before you even start with that bullshit.
What would you call the police officer that came with a gun?
By giving up private firearm ownership you are putting the safety of yourself and your loved ones in the hands of the government. This article is an example of why it is dangerous to do that.
>What would you call the police officer that came with a gun?
Superfluous, in this instance. It clearly would have been possible to arrest the guy without shooting him. (I believe that they only shot him on the off chance that the suicide vest was real.)
Would you argue that what the police officer did was wrong here? Is lethal force not justified with the credible threat of violence? I would argue that someone threatening you with a Airsoft gun with the tip taken out so it appears to be a real gun is enough to justify deadly force in self defense, you don't have to verify that gun is real. In hindsight, it is clear that you could have arrested him without shooting him, but that was not at all clear in the situation, and having that firearm could have saved dozens if the vest was real.
2.
> In this instance
And, for arguments sake, if this was a different situation where the vest was real, what would you say?
Aren't these tangents? I didn't say that they shouldn't have shot him, just that it clearly wasn't necessary to shoot him in order to remove the threat. (It's obviously possible to apprehend someone armed only with a knife without shooting them.)
All the data from other countries that god rid of guns supports the opposite of this. Show some statistics or stop saying this.
"are you gonna make cars illegal too?"
Ones that can be easily used to kill people? Hopefully, eventually, yes. We already heavily restrict them, license them carefully, track them meticulously, require them to be registered, and constantly improve technology and legal standards to make them less likely to kill people -- unlike guns in America. Soon all new cars will have technology in them to make it very difficult to run someone over with.
"People who want to hurt people also don't care what laws there are, they can buy guns illegally."
So I suppose you're in favour of having no laws at all? Since people will just break them? This argument only works if you're in favour of total anarchism.
Both gun crime AND the overall murder rate dropped substantially since Australia heavily restricted guns in the late 90s [1] - i.e. people don't just switch to other weapons - murder, plus accidental death, actually decreases.
"They've tried banning everything in England and criminals will still kill people with just about anything."
Nope. Not having guns works:
Homicide rate per 100,000 people in 2017 according to UN-CTS:
Go ahead and compare rural US where all the guns are to rural Europe. Similar rates of crime and violence. Take out the major US metropolitan areas that have gun control and see what happens to your comparisons.
When you compare an island the size of Mississippi with 29 citizens of 250k population and a much larger homogenous population, historically weak self-defense and higher reliance on government, etc etc to the whole of the US - I personally don’t think that’s an apt comparison at all.
Why is it size AND population similar countries aren’t ever compared when making this “gunz are bad” argument?
>major US metropolitan areas that have gun control
They don't have gun control in the sense that the UK and most other European countries have gun control. You can even get a permit to carry a concealed weapon in NYC, for example.
> You can even get a permit to carry a concealed weapon in NYC
Ok, I’ll do it for you. Rural crime in USA is 2.0 - 3.5 / 100k in USA depending on region. Where all the guns are, the shootings aren’t.
NYC... for example... SHALL ISSUE state, you’re effectively wrong. Only the connected and elite can get carry permits in NYC. That’ll change soon with the latest SC case coming up.
You’re right, it’s not “the same” gun control. Like Paris where guns for private ownership and stored in your home are effectively banned, yet, worse mass shootings than any in the US ever. Or Norway where black rifles are banned, but worse mass shooting of kids than any in the US.
You’re right, it’s not the same - but what we can look at is IN THE USA, the places with the most gun control have the most shootings, in inconvenient fact.
Ok, so... by your argument. It’s the people carrying legally in the US that are going around shooting people?
And I believe I proposed the question of why size AND population aren’t compared ever? I think it’s because when you compare Russia or Mexico or Brazil to US, with much stricter the gun control the argument falls apart. You need to pick small population and or small isolated homogeneous populations to make your argument - if you think that’s legitimate keep at it.
Are you arguing crime or events? France and Norway beat US in events, gun control doesn’t seem to work there.
If you are talking crime, yes USA crime is higher - in the areas with more gun control. I’d argue the cause of the crime is our poor handling of drug and poverty and not focus on the tool used.
Guns have increased DRAMATICALLY since the crime highs of the 1990s, but crime has dropped to just above the lows of the 1960s.
You have ZERO data for causation of more guns equal more crime because we have opposite evidence.
So while I can’t say more guns EQUALS less crime - I can definitely say more guns hasn’t CAUSED more crime like you are saying.
I don't know what you mean by "events". More people get shot in the US.
There are obviously lots of confounding factors in relation to crime statistics in different areas of the USA. It's more revealing to look longitudinally at the positive effects of gun control legislation in e.g. the UK and Australia.
> And worse, gun restrictions only benefit criminals. There's plenty of people who legally own firearms and protect their homes and their property legally.
The real question is why are the US ranking so high in violent crime and murder rates compared to other developed countries. You shouldn't feel the need to "protect" your home in the #1 power in the world.
The US isn’t a European country that happens to be in the New World, it’s a New World country that somehow managed to become a superpower. It makes a lot more sense to see the US as an overachieving Mexico or Brazil than as an abnormally violent Britain or Germany.
I don't think it's guns, there's other countries where you have gun rights that don't have this problem. Then there's countries where guns were forced out of citizens hands and the government went rogue (Venezuela).
>The real question is why are the US ranking so high in violent crime and murder rates compared to other developed countries
This question has been asked time and again and the gist of the answer is that the people who make their living moving around illicit substances drag up the average. For people who don't associate with drug trafficking the US is basically on par with Europe.
Gun ownership doesn't help public safety anywhere near as much as you think.
The number one and number two uses of guns inside a home are suicide and murder of a loved one, respectively. Defending against a home invader is statistically uncommon at best. But people get angry every day, and we all have moments of weakness and vulnerability.
To your point about criminals, have you ever been robbed? A robber isn't going to announce his intentions from 20 feet away.
Does having a gun under your shirt help you if somebody pokes a knife into your back? Maybe you could draw and murder them in revenge as they leave I guess.
I know that gun-safety classes are mandatory for any kind of concealed-carry permit. But I can 100% guarantee that they don't prepare you for the psychological reality of killing somebody.
And let's say you actually find yourself in a situation where drawing your gun makes it better instead of worse - do you use it? If so, prepare yourself to pay every dime you have to a defense attorney, and to give up a year of your life to court proceedings. Even in a stand-your-ground state. And that's assuming you don't miss and hit somebody else by mistake.
Human-nature is to stand by and watch when something bad goes down. Carrying a gun doesn't change that. And a three-day course on gun safety doesn't prepare you for the reality of drawing on a human and firing.
On the other side of the argument - when guns are easy to buy, lots of people buy them legally. Then some of those people have them stolen or sell them. And others resell them.
When guns are cheap and cheerful, it's easy for a criminal to get one. When guns are expensive and hard-to-get, some criminals might still get one. But a lot of other criminals won't go through the effort. Why find an illegal gun dealer when you can buy a kitchen knife at Costco? And believe it or not - that's a big win for overall public safety.
Also if we could get guns out of the hands of the general population, we'd be able to make a better case for de-militarizing our police. And that would be a _huge_ win for public safety.
The US's founders weren't gods, and they didn't have a crystal ball into the future. We shouldn't treat their words as some kind of immortal and perfect document, to be interpreted on a word-by-word basis like bible scholars. And when the US was founded, the common gun needed a ramrod to load the single shot it carried.
Some good points but I disagree. I got caught up in a situation where I really needed a gun. You say that guns aren’t useful for street crime. That just isn’t true. My experience made me an overnight 2A advocate. It’s insane that we give all this power and leniency to criminals and strip innocent people of the ability to stand up for themselves. Nobody will ever convince me that guns don’t help because I have lived it. I am living proof that that isn’t true. And it’s a shame that people in liberal communities have to live it in order to understand it.
There are countries with guns and low crime. Uk has no guns but a stabbing epidemic. The key to public safety is preventing crime with good education, opportunity and very generous disincentive, preferably a swift execution for violent crime.
For my particular situation, in the USA, the people who want gun bans are the same people that refuse to let police do stop and frisk. So it just doesn’t make sense for me to give up my right to have a gun. We shouldn’t need a ban in the first place. It’s other things that cause the underlying violent behavior.
You are so right about the civil suit. Especially in liberal states, you might as well just shoot yourself instead of the bad guy. But that’s a problem with the legal system, not guns. The legal system in general is responsible for all kinds of problems. A person who loses their case should have to pay the other persons legal fees, too. Lots to change. In the meantime I’ll defend myself in a way that is legally sound and with a gun camera that automatically captures an image of the guy attacking me before the trigger is pulled.
It's a fantasy Americans seem to uniquely believe in that arming the populace is a good deterrent against bad government policy.
If it actually worked, one would expect the US to be two separate nations now. After all, what was the Civil War if not a mass of Americans deciding extra-legally that the laws should not apply to them and taking up arms to break free of government oppression and form a government more inclined to protect their freedoms?
And yet, after a bloody conflict that claimed more American lives than World War II, the country is still one nation and Americans still cling to a strange belief that private gun ownership protects against tyranny (as if a tyrant wouldn't bring their own guns to bear against the citizenry, like Sherman burning towns south of the Mason-Dixon to hamstring the morale of the rebels).
It's not perfect. But what it means is that if you're going to impose a policy that unpopular on half the population, you may have to go as far as the Civil War did, including accepting that many of your own people dying. That's... somewhat daunting.
And a tyrant, while perfectly willing to bring their own guns to turn on citizens, would have a military that might not be willing, especially if they didn't agree with the tyrant. (The Civil War wasn't just the US army against the citizens of the south. It was the army members from the south against the army members from the north.)
It's far from perfect. It demands a tax in blood during peacetime as a faulty guard against tyranny in time of civil war (to say nothing of the fact that---as the Civil War indicates---there's no particular guarantee that the armed civilians will be defending particularly virtuous rights against government interference; it was, after all, the state's rights to nullify laws curtailing slavery that was the crux of the conflict).
You think your AR 15 is going to stop a guided missile launched by an 18 year old with a joystick on a destroyer in the middle of the Atlantic? I think we've all played the AC-130 mission in Call of Duty by now. We are way past the days of a militia dealing with the U.S. government.
But back in 1776 when you and uncle sam had the exact same musket, sure, that was the last chance.
Instead of praying for mercy, Americans can vote for good leadership, be active in their local, state, and federal government, hold each other accountable, and take responsibility for living in a representative democracy.
It is, ultimately, these things that make for a free and stable society, not the proliferation of firearms. When you elect a tyrant, all the private firearms do is ramp up the bloodshed the tyrant will bring.
If only democracies could be trusted to not elect tyrants. Unfortunately, there are many, many examples to the contrary. That fact was one of the primary motivators for the Bill of Rights. You are right that there would be bloodshed when facing a tyrant (certainly more than if there were no way to fight back). In my mind, better that than the gas chambers. Let’s not forget that Hitler came into power by popular vote.
I've heard argumentum-ad-Hitler used as an example of why private citizens should be armed.
What I've never heard is a strong argument that a German citizenry armed as the US is armed now wouldn't have simply resulted in faster, gas-chamber-free deaths of minorities in Germany and German-occupied territories, as the government in charge gave quiet assent to extra-legal killings enacted by private citizens against "undesirables" and the citizenry bought into the mythology of the ubermensch.
After all, the hypothesis of the equalizing effect of private firepower assumes that "good guys" have the guns.
Then given the proliferation of firearms in the US, the firearm-related homicide and injury rates should be lower than in countries that ban firearms (not absolute instances; lower rates, if more guns makes it marginally less likely that any party shoots).
Then at what ratio of armed citizens do the benefits you anticipate kick in? 60%? 80%? Should we all expect to show up to church strapped with a 9mm, just in case?
Can you provide an example of a country where such a high ratio of armed citizenry has worked out well? There should be a positive example we can turn to. The US isn't it by the numbers.
I never claimed gun ownership reduced gun violence overall, but excluding suicide it doesn’t seem to increase it either.[1] At the macro scale, I only mean to say it makes hostile government action less likely. Likewise, at the micro scale, I only mean to say violent confrontation between individuals is less likely when both parties are armed than when only one is armed. This much to me seems self evident (and underpins the macro thesis as well). At the micro scale, I might agree that there would be less gun violence if neither party were armed, but mass confiscation will never happen in the US. It would be ineffective given the lack of a central registry and it would likely incite civil war. In that light, even barring the macro thesis, it strikes me as prudent to be among the armed. With, of course, basic safety training.
I don't actually think mass confiscation would be necessary. Offer nationwide buyback and severely curtail manufacture and first-sale, and the equations change wildly. America is hyper-capitalist and capitalist incentives tend to work on people.
It's win-win; those who want their guns more than the money can keep their guns.
Sure, but I'm not sure the answer would be relevant. As an analogy, just because you haven't used your first aid kit doesn't mean you won't one day need it. To the contrary, we have many examples of countries that left the first aid kit behind only to realize they desperately needed it.
But we're not talking about first aid kits, we're talking about guns. And I think the burden of proof is on those who claim freedom of private firearm ownership works as an anti-tyranny deterrant to play around in the historical fiction realm of how Venezuela, Iraq, Hong Kong, et. al would have turned out differently with a more armed populace (remembering to factor in the possible scenario "Basically the same as it did, only with an awful lot more death when the entrenched military power ramped up the violence level to deal with a populace that could shoot back"). It's probably also relevant in that historical fiction direction to ask whether the "background" level of civilian peacetime death would have been higher or lower and by how much.
Ubiquitous firearm ownership in a society is a bit of a wildcard.
I don't necessarily disagree, but neither would I call it "historical fiction." Armed populaces have fought back against their governments repeatedly throughout history. In any event, I'm one of the guys who would rather go down shooting than in a gas chamber. And, yes, that kind of liberty comes at a price.
I disagree. Fortunately for me, I have the benefit of the Second Amendment, which shifts the burden squarely to those who would deny the right, presumably by further constitutional amendment.
Support for repeal of the 2nd Amendment is at 20%, which is far higher than I, for one, would anticipate for a fundamental Constitutional right. For comparison, 12% of Americans answered "Do you agree or disagree? Homosexual couples should have the right to marry one another?" with "Agree" in 1988.
Germany has barely made it to the 30 year mark of “not being a dictatorship” if you count the East. America has been one of the freest countries in the world for at least 150-some years.
Which other countries were much better? Obviously the fact that women and African Americans got the vote so late is not good, but America could still be one of the freest countries in the last 150 years if most everyone else was even worse.
I think there are lots of Western countries that have never had laws barring people from voting due to their race. E.g., there has never been any such law in the UK. Women in the UK also got the vote slightly earlier.
The UK is an abnormally successful democracy by world standards. I suppose you could quibble about the British Empire, but the main difference there is that Britain colonized much more of the world than America did.
The main question I have concerns Britain’s history of anti-Catholic discrimination. It’s all well and good to point out that Britain never disenfranchised black people during a time when approximately zero black people lived there. Although I suppose Britain is responsible for colonizing South Africa and Rhodesia....
But sure, let’s concede Britain for the moment. France, West Germany, and Italy were effectively fascist dictatorships until the mid-1940’s. (Vichy being a “puppet government” is a lie concocted to spare French pride—Petain was a fascist sympathizer since before the war and he took power within the French political system at the time—its not like the Germans overran the government and installed him like they did in other occupied countries.) Spain and Portugal until the 1970’s. Yugoslavia had a communist dictatorship until the 1990’s. Which is incidentally the same decade that Switzerland achieved universal women’s suffrage.
Great - that was the point of my post. Not sure why you are going off on a bunch of other tangents. You haven't mentioned any other country which banned people from voting on racial criteria.
>It’s all well and good to point out that Britain never disenfranchised black people during a time when approximately zero black people lived there.
You say this as if Britain started disenfranchising black people once they were present in significant numbers, but this is not the case. (This is not to deny, of course, that there is a long history of racism in the UK. I'm merely pointing out that the US is relatively exceptional in passing actual laws banning black people from voting.)
>Because you’re comparing a continent-wide federation to a tiny island-sized country.
I really don't see what you're getting at here. You yourself have been making (irrelevant) comparisons to France, which has about the same population as the UK.
There is no such size as "island-sized". Islands can be big or small.
>No, they just colonized Africa and disenfranchised them there. Totally different.
> I really don't see what you're getting at here. You yourself have been making (irrelevant) comparisons to France, which has about the same population as the UK.
I’m comparing the US as a whole to Europe as a whole. If you want to cherry-pick the best example of Europe, maybe I should cherry-pick one of the northern states that abolished slavery and enfranchised black people in the early 19th century. If you get to claim that France, Spain, Portugal, etc. don’t count, I should be able to claim Mississippi doesn’t count.
Conversely, maybe we can compare the US to the entire British Empire. How many imperial subjects were truly enfranchised? Not the Indians, not the black Africans. Hell, even within the UK itself there was the entire Irish issue. But I guess Irish and Catholic aren’t technically races.
My overall point, I think, was adequately well-stated with my first comment in this thread: America has been one of the freest countries in the world for 150 years.
Your counterarguments seem to consist of, “so was Britain” (which is insufficient to refute my point) and “Britain didn’t disenfranchise based on race” (which is factually dubious when you consider colonization as well as insufficient in terms of proving that Britain was substantially freer than America as a whole).
You also alluded to “lots of Western countries”, which is why I specifically broke down specific periods where many (most?) Western countries were not free within the past century. This is when you doubled down on the UK angle, which is a fair point but proves very little.
You also claimed the UK enacted women’s suffrage before the US. I didn’t bother fact checking this at the time, but the US enacted full women’s suffrage eight years before the UK.
> In 1928 the Conservative government passed the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act equalizing the franchise to all persons over the age of 21 on equal terms.
> After a hard-fought series of votes in the U.S. Congress and in state legislatures, the Nineteenth Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution on August 18, 1920.[4] It states, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."
If so, it’s only because I was making the IMO generous assumption that your original reply was meant to actually refute my thesis that “ America has been one of the freest countries in the world for at least 150-some years.”, and CDSlice’s argument that “America could still be one of the freest countries in the last 150 years if most everyone else was even worse.”
If you were intentionally making insufficient and hence irrelevant points, why wade into the thread in the first place?
> I think there are lots of Western countries that have never had laws barring people from voting due to their race.
This might technically be true, because many of those Western countries have taken the further step of abolishing democracy altogether. I hope you would agree that the various fascist and fascist-adjacent dictatorships of 20th century Europe were “even worse” than racial disenfranchisement.
> E.g., there has never been any such law in the UK.
The use of “e.g.” here implies that you’re discussing Western countries in general and not just the UK. Also, this point is rather fatuous for reasons I’ve already discussed.
> Women in the UK also got the vote slightly earlier.
You were responding—fatuously—to CDSlice’s comment that “America could still be one of the freest countries in the last 150 years if most everyone else was even worse.” Which is a restatement of my thesis.
If you put someone into a situation that isn't optimal, they generally have the means to adapt and not look disadavantaged. This is true for caged animals and humans that lost some of their rights. If you do it slowly enough, you can strip away basically all freedoms without the victim even noticing.
Yes, people adapt. I'm saying you can't look at someone and determine whether how things are for them are good, just because they look fine. An animal raised in captivity looks fine, but maybe it would be better if it was raised in freedom. Or maybe it wouldn't. The point is you can't tell by looking.
Sure, but that's a critical difference between animals and people.
In addition to sampling a whole host of metrics related to a person's health, life expectancy, purchasing power, &c, you can also just ask them how they feel about where they are in life and where they're going. You can't do that with an animal.
Sweden, for example, is showing an OCED Better Life Index of 8.5 for safety and 8.9 for life satisfaction [http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/sweden/]. This is compared to the US's rankings of 7.5 and 7.4, respectively.
If the Swedes have sacrificed their freedom (assuming "freedom" is a quantifiable that the US hasn't sacrificed), I wouldn't draw the conclusion they haven't noticed; I'd conclude they actively don't miss it.
My point is that you can't tell, because people adapt. You could come to the same conclusion about people without Internet access and then come to the conclusion that we should ban Internet access, because people without it are happier.
I don't think anyone sane would read that page, the questions, and in particular trends, and come to the conclusion that gun regulation is a "very unpopular opinion".
Isn't that the law in most (all?) states now in USA, that you need a license to possess a gun legally (ie need to be an authorised person)?
This sounds more like, in common with most polls, it shows how the manner of asking a question alters the answers given?
I'd be really interested in how the poll would go without "the police and other", and with using a construction based on "allow ..." instead of "ban ...".
You don't need a license to posses a gun in many (most?) states. You do need a federal background check to purchase a gun from a vendor. And a license to carry a concealed gun. But as far as owning a gun, no license needed in any state I've lived in.
Possibly worth noting that this works for cars as well; you're allowed to own as many cars as you want, and the vehicle license is to operate it on public roads (and the driver's license is to be the operator, again on public roads).
The US usually puts the balance point at "own" vs "operate in public" for how rights are structured. There are rare exceptions where even ownership is considered too dangerous.
So anyone can have a gun, you just have to get someone else to purchase it?
I was under the apparent misapprehension that the license you needed to purchase a gun was an ownership license - ie you got the right to own, then could purchase.
