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Sure; maybe it's also a mental health problem, but it's definitely 100% a gun problem.
Then I ask this: School shootings simply never happened when I was a kid in the 70's and 80's. We had far less regulation*. Any asshole could buy a gun, get it delivered to their doorstep, and they were cheap. Yes, even AR-15s.
This shit all started with Columbine. Want to suicide and go out the most horrific way possible? Shoot up a school!
So no, it's not the guns. Nothing has really changed on that front. So what happened?
* One exception: Conceal carry laws were nothing like today, far more restrictive. I'm leaving that out because criminals and mass murderers hardly give a shit about carrying illegally. Would that stop you if you were intent on murder? Also, at the same time, the laws around transporting guns generally became more restrictive.
I feel 9/11 and faux news had something to do with fetishizing guns. Fear mongering kills.
Yeah, it's a social problem. Recognize that mass shooters are almost exclusively white males. The book Angry White Men by Michael Kimmel does a great job of profiling the person who does this sort of thing and why. There's a lot that goes into it. Economics, masculinity, school culture, etc.
Weren't the 70s and 80s the peak of violent crime in the US? Including armed violent crime?
Violent crime has pretty consistently dropped for the past century in the US with a small blip in the 90s often attributed to the prevalence of leaded gasoline and the higher propensity for violence that people exposed to it often had.
School shootings still weren't a big/common thing back then tho so I fail to see your point.
The point is that an all time peak in violent crime and violent gun crime would indicate you're not disproving gun crime you're just hiding it in dark numbers that you're hoping we won't think matter.
Also that peak is statistically referred to as happening between the 70s and 90s, specifically quadrupling vs rates prior in the 60s and 50s, before declining afterwards, so you were kinda right.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistory/comments/1b3jm3x/why_was_there_more_crime_in_the_us_in_1970s1980s/
Sorry what context were we talking about? Oh yeah, school shootings. Also that's still the point; it being a clear relationship. I don't understand what your point is. You posed a whataboutism. They're two different arguments.
If you want to talk about gun crime and reform broadly we can. First, in the case of things like mental health checks, how do we decide what makes someone fit to get a firearm? How do we decide who gets to make that decision? How are we going to regulate firearm sales? How do we make it possible for private sales to exist while enforcing background checks and without causing undue burden. Btw you know you already need to get a backhround check to get a firearm except in a few circumstances, right?The American pseudo-left is often frothing at the mouth for reform on this issue and has poorly formed (if any) ideas about what should actually go into place. It doesn't help that most people are controlled by fear mongering more effectively than facts, especially those that don't know much about guns.
Another pr9blem people have with gun control regulation is that it allows an authoritarian government to more easily defeat the populace. In every modern war, guerrillas, especially in urban areas, have the upper hand against modern militaries due to the need to project soft power and retain international support. If you think it's never gonna happen here then you clearly haven't been paying attention and if you're gonna be one of those people that goes "bubut the military had bombs and jets" don't even bother replying as you clearly haven't been paying attention modern history and the successes across the world of resistance movements.
And it's all great to say that the 20,000 people a year that die from guns (mostly suicide followed by active gang members engaged in gang violence, both activities prone to causing deaths regardless of accessibility to guns, but likely reduced) are a price that's worth it to pay but there's no realistic way that you're disarming the American populace, only preventing new sales. This means that there will still be a huge amount of guns available for criminals, and as we've seen with drugs, banning something that people desire just causes a crime-ridden black market. Not to mention the immeasurable good that they could do against a tyrannical government.
On top of that, you can literally 3d print firearms now. It at least used to take some knowhow but now any scmuck can get into it with just a little bit of searching and a very minor investment. In that way, the cat's out of the bag, and if the US gun market fails to supply criminals, especially organized crime, we know exactly what they're going to do.
The key is building up social services in impoverished areas and removing the factors that push people towards crime. Improving our mental health infrastructure and social safety nets such that we have a violent crime rate that resembles other developed nations. Reducing the needless/baseless criminalization and overpolicing of poor and minority communities to reduce the trauma of communities growing up without fathers. Getting a handle on race relations, even between different poc groups, such that gangs become an unnecessary method of association. Not just zeroing in on the scary but useful tool that is the firearm, especially as it is the only true equalizer in society. "God created man but Samuel Colt made them equal".
Not to mention how they allow women especially to stand up to violence they would otherwise have no chance against. Don't give me the pepper spray and stun gun bs btw, I pity the person that thinks that will stop a large, angry man. If you're truly interested in nonlethal means of self defense however, I believe the foaming/gel bear sprays would definitely stop an attacker, but they tend to be quite large and annoying to carry. Also, if you think armed self defense is unnecessary it's only because you've never been in a situation where you wanted or tried to defend yourself but couldn't. I don't carry a weapon, but I've experienced things that make me feel like maybe I should've been and things would've gone differently.
Sorry for the long flow of consciousness style comment and I apologize if I attacked you at all I can sometimes get heated abt this subject.
School shootings are a miniscule issue though by the statistics. The problem is that we spectalize them with the 24 hour news cycle because it makes people angry and upset. This spectacle is also exactly the reward these murderers are seeking out. If the news was required to spend a proportionate amount of time on different subjects by how much they negatively impact your health on average (let's say by how much they reduce the life expectancy of the average person), we should be banning cigarettes, alcohol, and added sugars long before guns. Why are we so focused on the guns? Why aren't we focusing on reducing our ridiculous overweight and obesity rates? Because school shootings make you sad, like the WWF panda or the aspca commercial. Don't get me wrong, they get me sad too, but our deeply damaged society is to blame, not guns.
To go point by point,
I disagree that they should be considered as separated statistics, while school and mass shootings are an especially violent expression of gun violence, they are still acts of gun violence. As for how we decide, let's start with "not on the domestic violence frequent fliers list" and work our way out from there. Ironically, by refusing so vehemently to participate in good faith, gun owners raise the odds that the discussion of what else should disqualify someone, it raises the odds of it becoming an overreach problem. Most gun owners agree not everyone should have a gun, talk to the rest of society about what makes you guys snatch a rifle out of someone's hand at the gun shop or on the firing range.
You're vastly overestimating the ability of the average American gun owner to participate in a guerilla war meaningfully, the vast majority of firearms are owned by super buyers that have made guns their entire identity the same way they'd probably insist queer americans do when you ask them why they'd need that many. Not to mention how even those people have the guerilla discipline of a daddy's money safari shooting club that hasn't noticed the hippo stalking them yet.
Disarming the American public: The only people who are arguing for that are grieving families who just saw their loved ones die because of this problem, and the most Dutchess Satine tier pie in the sky pacifists in American politics who despise firearms as a matter of principle, anyone with a brain is proposing opt in disarmament for legacy owners via a rolling buyback and subsidized display rendering program. This isn't about taking anyone's guns, it's almost entirely about making ownership safer for everyone in the proximity of the gun, including the owners themselves, subsidized lockers are pretty good at stopping little timmy from finding out whoever had the gun last forgot to remove the still shelled rounds before putting it away.
3D printed firearms are to gun ownership what NFTs are for title ownership. Plastic made guns are a bomb that the user happens to spray shrapnel in the direction of where they were pointing before it finishes coating their entire front half in 3rd degree burns and shrapnel wounds if they got lucky. Ghost guns are another example of how the situation at hand doesn't protect gun owners, it makes them feel secure in being unsafe.
I agree whole heartedly that poor social services lead to increased social strife, but other countries with better laws have those problems too, and one mass shooting is usually regarded as an unprecedented national tragedy in those places, rather than a weekly stat/yearly news media red meat event like they've become in the US.
I hate to burst the bubble here but procuring a firearm is actually one of the single most dangerous things a woman in harm's way can do most of the time.
Look getting heated about this subject is natural, what's important is you were concerned enough about it to call it out for yourself, and I'll do the same here too, sorry if this is at all perceived as an attack. The fact that we can trade at least the intent to have a productive exchange means we're on a good pathway to actually getting to do it.
I disagree with the sentiment intended by sating that the statistics say this is a small issue. The odds you'd get rat anus in your sausage were probably pretty low before Teddy started up the food and drug admin, but having the peace of mind that you will 100% not be dining on rat anus at this year's independence day festivities is probably something you're thankful to Upton Sinclair for making such a stink to help achieve anyways.
My point is that a problem doesn't have to be statistically significant for it to be absolutely disgusting and worth addressing on those grounds alone. Just because it's one tiny past good hard boiled egg that's stinking up the joint doesn't mean it's a waste of time to toss the egg, and that's what this problem is, a very stinky egg that has done a good job of convincing people that tossing it will destroy the fabric of our home, when really addressing it would involve about as change to the fabric of the home as someone having to push their chair out from the table to get up and toss the egg in the trash.
Edit: reformatting because I remembered markdown exists and can make an effortpost like this a lot more understandable
In general yes but this discussion is a out mass shootings.
This discussion is about gun violence. Saying there weren't a lot of school shootings back then is about as helpful to the root issue discussion as saying that cyberbullying wasn't an issue before the 90s anyways.
Almost all comments in this chain, and indeed the immediate one you replied to mention "school shooting".
Beyond that, schools and dangerous guns existed before 1980.
Edit even the original meme is about a school shooting
School shootings aren't a part of gun violence?
Of course they are, but to suggest the same variables drive a school shooting vs a midnight gas station robbery is silly
Why's that?
Because they're different crimes with different motives committed by different people under different circumstances.
Literally the only things in common between the two are firearms, humans being involved, and them both taking place on the planet Earth.
What makes those people different?
Well, serves me right for feeding the troll.
No really, what makes them different, what's the obvious difference between the kind of person you picture robbing a store and the kind you picture committing a mass shooting?
Be bold, tell everyone the difference. Explain to us this essential difference that makes it so important that we segregate mass shootings from all other forms of gun violence as somehow a special sort of case?
What are you on about? The motivations and end goals of an armed robbery and mass shooting are obviously and clearly different.
To help you:
A robbery tries to acquire things, and the gun is a threat they generally hope to not use (but might be pretty comfortable using).
A mass shooting is a terroristic event with the core goal of killing as many as possible.
A thief isn't necessarily interested in killing. A mass shooter is.
Simple stuff.
If you pull a gun out you are not threatening, you have declared your intent to kill whatever it's pointing at.
It is not a defense tool, it is a "all other options are expired and now someone has to die" tool.
There is no motive for pointing your gun at someone except to shoot them.
No matter how much your dumbass might think you're just trynna scare them a bit.
It is the same. It is gun violence. It is terrorism without a cause.
I'm aware of the basics of gun safety, and aware that having a gun elevates the charges on a crime like a robbery. Pointing a gun at anything does indeed make clear your willingness to kill.
But you dodged the point of my reply, the motive or intent of the crime.
A robbery is not terrorism, or terroristic in motive. A robbery has a cause and a goal outside of killing. I'm not saying an armed robbery isn't an inherently violent act, and I never said that shit about "trynna scare them". Not sure where you gathered that.
You've devolved to name calling, inserting thoughts for others, and dodging the point of what you're replying to. Seems you're about spent
My point is that involving the gun makes it terrorism by the same principle of escalation.
It's not a robery, it's a near death experience where money might change hands.
Gun violence is gun violence. It is all attempted murder and terrorism. Fact that some people want money out of it is irrelevant, it is still terrorism.
Words have definitions. Real life has different situations. Those situations have different motives and results, even if they share features. Edit you can't just declare everything violent terroristic.
It's silly to assume that the same actions would have the same impacts on two very different types of crime, despite both of those crimes having a gun.
For example: red flag laws where family or certain professionals can bring forward action to take guns away from someone or get them certain care. This is triggered by said folks detecting or acknowledging certain concerning behaviors in someone who might carry out a mass shooting.
This wouldn't help with someone considering a robbery, as their pattern of behavior (edit and motivation) isn't the same.
I am not advocating for red flag laws, or discounting them. That's not the point.
Why doesn’t Canada see a similar per capita rate of shootings despite having more guns per capita than the US?
Maybe because their gun laws are a lot more strict? Kind of proves the point that gun regulation works doesn't it?
My home country (Iceland) has the highest gun ownership in Europe. It's not much compared to the US, but it's interesting that we have almost no gun violence. The reason is that we have very strict gun control with thorough background checks, mandatory training and psych evaluations. In addition to that, we have a functioning healthcare system and low income inequality. All these things need to be adressed before the US sees a decrease in gun violence.
I’m not against regulations. It’s just something that came up in Bowling for Columbine that I’ve found interesting.
Probably because most of those Canadians actually have a fucking good reason to be armed, IE for hunting, defending against dangerous wildlife, competitive shooting
Pls automatic vs hunting stat per capita.
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