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this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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Imagine living in a country where people are so obsessed with guns that everybody has guns and everyone is a potential threat or one insult away from doing a mass shooting. It's gotten so bad that America has become a parody of Grand Theft Auto, where you can actually feel safer as a character in a video game that glorifies violence and crime.
Your nation has gone beyond ape shit.
There isn't another developed nation in the world where gun violence is as big a problem as in America.
This ISN'T NORMAL.
Age-adjusted firearm homicide rates in the US are 33 times greater than in Australia and 77 times greater than in Germany. Gun violence accounts for over 8% of deaths in the US among those under age 20.
https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/insights-blog/acting-data/gun-violence-united-states-outlier
Break out the 'firearm deaths of under 20yos' stat by income, or average income of residential area where they live. You'll see a STRONG correlation. That's because an awful lot of our gun crime is by violent drug gangs in inner city areas.
That link has a great breakdown though of firearm homicide rate by state. I'll point out there's little or no correlation between gun control policy and firearm homicide rate there. Washington, DC and Maryland have some of the strictest gun control in the country, and the most firearm homicides. Vermont, New Hampshire, and Utah have among the least gun control and highest gun ownership rate, but among the lowest firearm homicide rate. Then there are states that have the expected effect- Hawaii (very anti-gun) with low gun death rate, Alaska (lots of guns) with high gun death rate.
But what that all says is that there's not a causation between gun ownership or gun policy and gun homicide rate. I suspect you'd find a better correlation with poverty than with gun ownership.
What about the other two more important statistics? Stop killing kids with your emotional support weapons you fucking cowards.
the 'key statistics' at the top--
I addressed the which state is which, I addressed the under-20s dying of gun homicide. If I didn't address them enough please feel free to ask for detail on whatever part of it you wish to focus on.
As for the other key point (US has more gun homicide than Germany or AU)- that one's more complicated.
There's an obvious answer that there's more guns in USA, thus more gun homicide- much the same as you get more drownings in Miami (where everyone's at the beach) than Kansas (where there's no water).
However I think focusing on homicide rate by weapon is of limited use. I think overall homicide rate is more important-- if in one place the homicide rate is 1/10million and most of them are stabbings and in another place the homicide rate is 1/10million and most of them are shootings, neither one is safer than the other.
I suspect USA has higher overall homicide rate than either of those two places. But I think the root causes for that are the 'hard problems' we ignore- poverty, drugs, gangs, hopelessness, etc. DE and AU have decent modern health care systems and actually take care of their population. Mental health care is available and affordable. Strong social safety net keeps people out of extreme poverty. Thus- less drug use, less gangs, and of course less violence from the gangs.
I'm sure there's some part of that difference that comes from side effects of our gun policies, so don't think I'm being obtuse. Just that I don't think it's anywhere near the direct causation you seem to be claiming.
It doesn't matter what you think when there's evidence of what works.
"We've tried nothing, and it hasn't worked!" Says only country where this happens regularly.
Are you from the US? I'm assuming not. I mean no offense by this.
What most people from other places don't recognize is that the US is in effect 50 different countries. Each state has their own regulations, that in some cases are wildly different from the next.
That applies to gun laws also.
So it's most incorrect to say 'we tried nothing and it didn't work', when in reality we've tried 50 different things. That is the beauty of your link, if you look at the state by state data. There's 50 different visions of what gun policy should be, and 50 different outcomes. And this really does run the gamut. There are a few national-level laws, for example every gun store purchase must have a background check, and some case law that has defined what the government can and can't do to regulate, but for the most part it's up to each state to write their own policy.
In DC for example, you had a scheme that would fit in well anywhere in Europe- you need training and licensing to even get a permit to buy a gun, each gun has to be registered and test-fired before it can be delivered to the buyer. From beginning to end the process of buying a gun (which you couldn't even carry) took months and a dozen visits to various government agencies. I've heard it's since gotten a bit less strict, but it was like that for a LONG time.
DC has the highest rate of gun violence in the nation and has for a very long time.
Hawaii has gun control that's similarly strict, and has among the lowest gun homicide rate in the nation.
In Vermont for example you have what everyone accuses the entire USA of having- anyone can buy as many guns as they want with no training or licensing, and you can carry your gun loaded without a permit or proof of training. This is sometimes called 'Constitutional Carry' (the Constitution is your carry permit). Buying a gun is easy, other than the Federally-mandated background check, you can walk into a gun store and walk out with a gun in less than an hour.
Vermont has among the highest gun ownership rate, but among the lowest gun homicide rate.
Alaska is similar to Vermont (Constitutional Carry, high gun ownership rate) but among the highest gun homicide rate.
What those 4 states should tell you, is that gun policy or gun ownership rate are not necessarily drivers of gun homicide rate. Something else is going on that drives gun homicide rate.
So's the E.U. they got it to work. The excuses Americans will make for allowing themselves to ignore the dead kid problem is astounding. And you're right, there is more that drives homicide rate, like lack of social services, 10% of your population living without food security on an annual basis, 54% of your adult population reading below a 6th grade literacy level, there's a lot of big problems and you aren't fixing any of them.
And on this I am in 100% agreement. It's fucking shameful that we don't take care of our own people. But our government spends money it doesn't have like there's no tomorrow; our military is bigger than the next 10 in the world combined (including all of our enemies) and we continue to fund it at absurd rates, we have billions of $ worth of domestic spying invading our privacy. And while we fight over whether we protect kids with more guns or less guns, we then throw them in schools where teachers are barely able to scrape by, send them into a cutthroat society where corporations fuck over the employees with no remorse, and where if you're not rich you probably can't afford much in the way of decent health care.
Quite frankly it's shameful. It's appalling. If it or any part of it was imposed upon us by force by another nation, we'd all go to war and support using nukes against them. But we do it to ourselves so we smile and nod and say 'oh he got cancer and went bankrupt and couldn't afford treatment and died' like that's the way things are supposed to be.
And then in our politics we fight over should we elect this loser or that psycho, should we have more guns or less guns, should we have more immigration or more border security, meanwhile upward mobility is down, quality of life is down, the wealth of the nation is being extracted by big companies, and we're too distracted by random shit to fix the underlying problems.
So if you think I'm one of the 'Murica, fuck yeah!' people, I'm not. I love my country and I'm proud to be American, but I'm not proud of what my nation has become lately.
I would agree with this, but it's not about guns (especially since most of those kids are shot with illegal guns by people who can't legally own guns).
The problem is poverty. And we do fuck all about that.
No, it's "not about guns". We still have guns, I have friends who have guns, I've shot and hunted. It's about having the adequate systems in place for BEFORE people get the guns. And yes there are lots of guns already, but not putting in limitations won't make that number drop will it? Not trying voluntary buy-backs won't get unwanted guns out of normal citizens homes. Not having adequate food, wealth, and access to education isn't going to reduce the amount of crime that scared regular Americans into thinking they need emotional support weapons. Just do something, fucking anything. It's not that nothing works, it's that you refuse to try what works elsewhere because you've been fooled into thinking you're special individual snowflakes, but your ravenous individuality has eroded any capacity you have for co-operation with your fellow Americans in securing your right to live.
There's 500 million legal privately owned guns in the US. If you assume an average value of $450, that's $225 billion.
If I had $225 billion to spend, I sure as fuck wouldn't spend it buying back guns. I'd fund mental health care, I'd fund education, I'd fund jobs programs.
These DO happen in a lot of places, on a local or state level. Doesn't have much effect because the people who commit the crimes are the ones with illegal guns who aren't gonna sell them.
We are stupid in that we refuse to try things like single payer health care.
But I suspect almost any gun policy you'd come up with has been tried somewhere in the USA.
What you're really missing is there are two kinds of gun owners in USA- law-abiding and criminal. The law-abiding ones aren't committing most of the gun crime. Look at the stats for defensive gun use (when a law-abiding person uses a legal gun to stop or prevent a crime)- they aren't tracked by government so the data has to come from statistical surveys, but even the anti-gun people agree that DGUs happen 5-6x more often than firearm homicide.
Most DGUs end with no shots fired- criminal sees gun and runs away.
And with respect, this is a totally ignorant comment that's based on an anti-gun talking point and not any actual knowledge of American gun policy, gun ownership culture, stated reasons for owning guns, or anything other than conjecture and accusation.
You say 'try what works' (presumably referring to European-style gun control) but show no concept of understanding how truly difficult (damn near impossible) it would be to implement, even if a majority of the nation wanted it (which they don't). And you ignore the fact that much of what you call 'what works' HAS been tried, or is currently being tried.
I don't mean to insult you or personally attack you. But the fact is your accusations show little understanding of the REALITY of American gun ownership, why Americans buy and own guns, and what they do with them.
I'm happy to share what I know. But if your mind is concluded and closed, if you've just decided 'Americans are ammosexual hicks who refuse to give up their penis extenders to keep their own kids safe' and you are not open to even entertaining the possibility that reality is much more complex than that, then there's nothing I or anyone else can say.
If you want to understand, at least from one American's POV, like I said I'm happy to share. And IMHO it's fascinating- I wasn't always pro-gun, I wasn't raised around guns or gun culture, so what I know comes from my own independent research without most of the emotion you see in many gun arguments.
So my friend, can you try an open mind?
Boohoo, gun control is hard so we aren't gonna do it. Dead kids just gonna keep piling up till you do. Stop killing kids with your emotional support weapons you fucking cowards. How about that for opening your goddamned mind, or is the only mind opening you know the sort that happens with lead in American schools.
I don't believe you're reading anything I write with an open mind or good faith.
I've tried to explain that we HAVE tried, we DO try, almost any gun control you might propose either exist in one state or another or has been tried at some poine.
It sounds like your approach is either 'do exactly what we do the way we do it or you're wrong'.
I'm happy to debate in good faith, but that requires you to read and address what I write rather than just throw insults and restate the same points you've already said (which I've already addressed).
I don't believe your populace has done anything significant otherwise there'd be significant change. Actions speak louder than words. Have fun burying your babies.
I believe in the scientific method- test your theory and others, then go by what works and stop doing what doesn't. Do you generally agree with this?
If you do, then how do you explain the fact that on your own link the state by state data shows little correlation between anti-gun policies in a state and low rates of gun homicide in the state?
If taking serious anti-gun action would actually reduce gun homicide, wouldn't you expect states like DC and IL (which have strong gun control) to have less gun homicide, and states like VT, NH and UT (which have little or no gun control other than the federal minimum requirements) to have more gun homicide?
It seems to me that the policy YOU advocate isn't having a demonstrably positive effect. How do you explain that?
Because you also lack social services to move people out of poverty, you lack decent education, you lack food security. If you can't see how these might increase one's feeling of helplessness or danger of being attacked by those without, then you're the one only ever looking at one part of the problem. Fucking dumbass americans, see the tip of the iceberg and think they have the whole picture. Fix your social welfare systems, fix your education systems, fix your gerrymandered bullshit electoral system, and stop killing your fucking kids.
Pathetic, weak willed, child mudering, emotional support weapon toting, undereducated, underfed, unhoused, violent, cowardly, ignorant troglodyte Americans are the problem. You are the problem.
The fact that you aren't as angry at your politicians and representatives as I am at you is proof you don't even think to care about fixing the problem. You'd rather count the ways you can shirk responsibility. At least you have plenty of dead kids to use to keep track of how many responsibilities you shirk, because you'll run out of fingers.
Funny how Americans are all "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" right up until the point where they actually need to think about the children. A country filled with muppets, all mouth, no brain, and someone else's hand up your arse driving your actions.
There's not much point in continuing, no number of insults no matter how pointed and accurate are going to get you to shed your wilful ignorance and intentional belligerence or accept any measure of personal responsibility. Lord knows you're too individual to be responsible.
I mean, if dead kids can't change your mind, what will?
And if you read my replies in this thread, you'd recognize that I agree 100% with this. Many Americans do.
Where did I ever say that I am not? Most people are angry at Congress. We're just all angry about different things.
I agree strongly with this, although perhaps not in the same way as you. My anger with this is the religious/conservative obsession with preventing abortion, but the same people repeatedly defund programs that would help single and impoverished mothers like nutrition assistance, cheap/free childcare, etc. Same thing with reproductive health care that might stop an unwanted pregnancy before it starts. I'm strongly against such people.
As I see it- even if you ignore the humanitarian side (which we shouldn't), contraceptives are cheaper than abortion, abortion is cheaper than childcare and education, education is cheaper than police, and police are cheaper than incarcerating a bunch of inner city kids who have no future and no resources so they turn to crime and drugs and gangs.
And on a humanitarian side, we should take care of our own citizens.
I would agree we shouldn't continue, mainly because you seem to not be listening to or addressing anything I actually say. It seems like you have this image of a stereotypical dumb hick American who DGAF about anyone but themself and some psychotic love for weapons, and you're arguing against that straw man rather than addressing anything I actually say. It appears that your mind is entirely closed, your responses suggest that you acknowledge only two possibilities- that someone is just as anti-gun as you are, or that they are all the negative things I just mentioned.
The sad thing is I think we do or might agree on an awful lot. But it seems like your mind closes to that possibility the second I say I'm pro-gun.
So I wish you all the best. Stay safe.
Keep killing them kids Yosamite Sam. Keep pretending like doing nothing will work. Keep pretending like not doing good enough is good enough. You can't provide any significant rebuttal because there is none, all you can do is cry about how I don't see things from your perspective when you refuse to see things from the perspective of dead kids. You'd do more for them than most people by just copying and pasting our conversation and sending it to your representatives, but I bet you barely vote, let alone engage with those actually making the rules.
PS. I am pro-gun, you're pro-dead kids. I wish you'd learn the difference. Your opinion is irrelevant when there's evidence of what works.
"Nothing works!" says only country in the entire world where this happens regularly.
"What you do won't work for us!" says the only country not doing what works.
"But we're 50 small countries!" says the country that ignores the EU exists and doesn't have a federal government.
"But our gun problem is unique!" says country that has the same problems others did before they did something.
"But the guns aren't the problem!" says the richest country that refuses to fix any problem.
"But my rights!" says the country where gun owners have more rights than women.
19 Countries with the Most School Shootings (total incidents Jan 2009-May 2018 - CNN):
Number of countries with ZERO school shootings: 174. You have almost two school shootings for every country that doesn't, not per year, for a whole decade and I hear you've been trying to up those numbers the last few years. Now that's a record to be proud of...
And you just spent 48 hours proving me right. And I guarantee you still won't contact a single representative but will gladly tell me again how you can't fix it because of Americas unique snowflake status. Go give your emotional support weapon a hug, make sure your NRA membership is up to date, don't worry, no-one is coming to take it, Americans collectively decided you prefer dead kids. Because that's exactly what you want when you're told you can HAVE guns and NO school shootings and your response is "NO! I WANT GUNS!". The citizens of safe countries don't need to defend their homes with firearms, but you don't want to be safe, you want to feel safe. Don't worry, everyone will notice when you don't want dead kids instead of feeling like you don't want dead kids. Just like when you decided you don't want human rights.
If you are 100% sure there is no rebuttal, that means your mind is closed. It means you are 100% sure you have the only correct position (all others are wrong). And against that, you're right I can't provide any significant because you refuse to open your mind and consider the potential significance (or lack thereof) of what I say.
But you are not doing that and have not done it this entire conversation. You appear to perceive me as Yosemite Sam, running around and screaming and firing guns into the air. And thus you don't consider my words, you mock them and ignore them.
It's not a very mature way to carry on a conversation. So I bid you good day.
If self-awareness was a disease you'd be the healthiest person alive. I notice you ignored literally everything else, like you do every time you respond. Hypocritical, intellectually disingenuous coward. Here's the bits you missed:
I don't know what nation you're from but America is nothing at all like this. Gun owners aren't like this.
People who don't understand American gun culture expect it's like GTA- everybody's strapped, fender-benders at traffic lights turn into firefights, don't dare tell anyone anything negative because they'll shoot you if they don't like what you say. This isn't at all the case though. Not even close.
Gun owners who carry guns look at it like a seat belt or fire extinguisher-- you hope to god you never need it, but if ever you do, having it might save your life. There is no action movie attitude of 'who do I shoot today?'. Gun owners recognize how serious a responsibility it is, and petty arguments rarely involve weapons fire, even in situations where everyone involved is armed.
We have a big problem with gun violence- but the majority of it is caused by our bigger problem of poverty and hopelessness in many areas. People turn to drugs, that are supplied by violent gangs who are all armed with illegal guns. Those guys commit the lion's share of our gun homicide.
Problem is, fixing it is a slow and expensive generational process. You need better schools, mental health care, child care, reproductive care, and real jobs for people to aspire to (not just flipping burgers). This costs billions.
If you want to criticize us for something- criticize us for spending billions/trillions on military (we have more military force than the next 10 nations combined, including all our major enemies) when our budgets are fucked and we can't even seem to take care of our own citizens. THAT is worthy of your criticism (and mine).
I'm not aware of another developed nation where getting cancer means you've got a good chance of going bankrupt. THAT ISN'T NORMAL and we should be fixing that shit.
What you say in this comment seems inconsistent with what you said in the previous one, namely that if you try to break into someone's stuff (e.g. an unoccupied parked car in this case) you should expect to be shot at. Going straight to deadly force to protect one's property is the bit people (at least, many non-Americans) think is not normal.
Finally a somewhat intelligent comment that isn't just restating a talking point.
You're (understandably) conflating as one position what is actually two
I think in general it should be legal to use deadly force to defend major property. IE I don't think it should be legal to shoot someone for stealing a pack of gum, but I think in many cases it should be legal to shoot someone for stealing larger items that make up a person's livelihood. I take this position not because I think human life is worth less than tools or cars (I don't feel that way) but because if you take any other position, you have a situation where the lawful owner of said property is legally required to basically sit there and watch while a criminal steals their shit.
Police aren't always seconds away. In much of the USA, police are tens of minutes or hours away.
What should be legal is one half of the coin, the other half is what I as a gun owner want to actually do.
To make an extreme example- I'm a strong advocate of the 1st Amendment (free speech). I believe I should have the right to take off all my clothes, cover the bare minimum in duct tape and cardboard, and walk down public streets telling all passers-by that I am the reincarnation of Napoleon and they should join my new army and help take over the world.
But while I support the right to do that, while I'd strongly advocate for that right, I have no desire to do such a thing myself.
As a gun owner, I have no desire to kill anyone ever. The same is true of virtually all gun owners I know, both online and off. (The one notable exception is a slightly nutty friend of mine who ended up joining the military and volunteered to go fight in Iraq/Afghanistan). There is nothing in my car that's worth taking a life for- even if the perpetrator is a lowlife criminal.
But I also take that as my choice to make for myself. Millions of gun owners would make the same choice- go on any gun forum or subreddit that deals with such things and you'll find few if any people suggesting that just shooting a guy who's stealing your unoccupied car is a good plan.
Does that make sense?
Thanks for the reply. It makes sense, though I would jump off at a different point from you. I tend to feel that if it comes to life vs property, even the life of a robber who is making others miserable and afraid, life generally wins no matter what the property is. That is, I don't myself feel like it is ever worth taking a life to preserve property, and I hope that if I found myself in the situation of being robbed of something dear to me, I would be able to let the property go and the robber live, painful though it would be. But I also don't believe ethical questions can arrive at a final answer. There's too much nuance in every situation so I wouldn't propose this as "the right answer". It's just how I currently feel on the matter. Another aspect of this view is that while I wouldn't condemn in advance anyone who shoots in such a situation, I'd understand it better if they were afraid for themselves rather than just for their property.
Thankfully I'm not a legislator so I don't need to try to codify this into law, and I appreciate your position, which seems that be that although you probably wouldn't yourself shoot in this situation, you don't think others should be branded criminals for doing so. I don't want to pronounce on that matter, but just to observe that your position is probably more common in the USA than in, for example, many European countries, hence it seeming unusual to many of us non-Americans.
And that is my position exactly.
Go on various self-defense subreddits or online forums, like /r/CCW, and you'll find a very similar attitude. There will be a couple who'd say 'shoot the thief' but the overwhelming majority take the position of 'you shoot to stop the threat, in self defense, only when necessary' and many would even take the position that it's a 'bad shoot' to shoot someone just breaking into a car. Confront them maybe, shoot them if they move to attack, but don't just shoot the guy in the back as he's stealing your MacBook.
The other issue is- while I'm not a legislator, I am a citizen of a representative democracy. So in a sense, it is my job to write the law, or at least, to make educated choices in what laws and policies I advocate for and against.
To that end, anyone making any law must consider that there will be times it backfires, doesn't apply correctly, etc. And whenever that happens, I'd always rather err on the side of giving the citizen defending themself or their property more leeway than providing additional protections to a criminal who's engaged in clearly illegal acts against said citizen (which necessarily means punishments for the citizen defending against said criminal).
Right. Except everybody leaves their fire extinguishers at home. And their fire extinguishers don't cause other fires. And they're not widely used by stupid incompetent people to cause harm either.
Your argument doesn't make any sense to any other normal sane person outside of the United States.
Using deadly force to kill someone should be hard to access and only be used when your own life is in danger. Which can be anytime, anywhere by anybody in the US because of how accessible it is.
Ending a life shouldn't be something anybody can do.
Like any tool, a gun can be used for good or evil. The vast majority of gun uses in the USA are 'defensive gun uses', which are legal gun owners stopping or preventing a crime. There's minimum 10x more DGUs than firearm homicides, perhaps 100x or even more.
But ending a life IS something anybody can do, and you don't need a gun to do it.