scumble on 5/10/2017 at 09:39
I just had a thought that most of the gun violence in the US is centred on poor urban areas. My experience of affluent suburban zones is that guns are almost as uncommon as they are in the UK. One of my ex-wife's relatives had/has a concealed carry license but I think he was unusual.
Call me cynical but these headline shootings seem to come up more when it hits an affluent area suddenly sparking another round of the same debate we get each time. The depressing churn of gang violence just carries on.
Also on a pessimistic note, well I think it's what SD said above, the culture is so attached to guns in certain areas that the US probably won't go in the direction of European countries.
I'm not one of the people who is that convinced either way. I prefer not having high rates of gun related homicide in the UK, but it doesn't mean there isn't a load of urban violence. And the fact that you can get hold of pretty powerful weapons in the UK makes me think that there's more than gun control influencing the rates of freak shootings.
scumble on 5/10/2017 at 09:42
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Yet in a single year, the US will experience nearly 100 times the amount of gun violence when compared to any Nordic country. The difference here isn't nearly proportional. We have a little over double the amount of guns per capita, yet host SIGNIFICANTLY higher crime rates.
The same core question still applies. What is it about the US that makes us so prone to violence?
Just quoting this as I'm hinting at something similar above - there's a difference in US culture that I'm not able to put my finger on either.
icemann on 5/10/2017 at 10:13
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Remember that one time you played D&D, Ice? Yeah. Your dalliance with the devils dice game ruined an entire generation. It's all on you.
Should've damn well known better. :mad:
Forever corrupted. That damn level 7 troll. Rolled my D12 and was all down hill from there.
demagogue on 5/10/2017 at 10:18
For homicides, that's just about (
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths/) 1/3 of all gun deaths; I'm thinking drugs and gangs. That's what the demographics and city maps of gun homicides suggest, I think. No coincidence one of the few countries with a higher gun homicide rate is Mexico for the same reason.
There's a history of why the drug market is so large in the US, big market, the US-Latin American economic nexus, race & urban sociology, counter-productive drug laws... I imagine there's a feedback correlation between drugs and gun ownership as well; in that the guns that kill the most people (I'm hypothesizing) were obtained by people (like in gangs) with the intention of being used in the kinds of situations they actually end up killing.
5% of gun homicides are of women, majority domestic violence. Less than 1% are accidents.
Terrorism and mass shootings aren't even .1% of gun deaths (we might double check that), so I'm not sure they're very relevant to the problem in the grand scheme of things. Police shootings of civilians are somewhere around 3%, so there's something there; I'd hypothesize that the bulk of those are drug and gang related too.
If you added suicide -- which you should; 2/3 of gun deaths in the US are by suicide -- then that seems like a good case of pure probability, more guns :: more suicides. I think suicide is about periodic severe down-swings in emotion; and if you just had access to a gun, it's very low-cost (to pull the trigger), very quick, and very irreversible, things that correlate high chance of death with mood swings that drive someone to take quick actions.
heywood on 5/10/2017 at 14:37
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
The purpose of gun control is to lower incidents of spree killing, not to end all crime forever. And it's been highly effective at that in places where assault weapons are banned.
I don't think the purpose of gun control should be to prevent spree killing. The purpose should be to reduce the gun murder and suicide rate. Spree killings represent a tiny percentage of gun deaths, and spree killings also happen without guns.
I'm also skeptical about your statement about assault weapons bans being highly effective. If you look through this list of mass shootings, a lot of the states they occurred in have assault weapons bans:
(
http://timelines.latimes.com/deadliest-shooting-rampages/)
heywood on 5/10/2017 at 14:42
Quote Posted by scumble
I just had a thought that most of the gun violence in the US is centred on poor urban areas. My experience of affluent suburban zones is that guns are almost as uncommon as they are in the UK. One of my ex-wife's relatives had/has a concealed carry license but I think he was unusual.
I think it's very regional. In some parts of the country the majority of people own guns. In other parts it's comparatively rare, i.e. <10%.
Also, the people who own large numbers of guns tend to be affluent suburbanites, because guns are expensive.
Gryzemuis on 5/10/2017 at 15:14
It seems the whole discussion in the US is about whether gun control increases or decreases the amount of murders and killing-sprees. People arguing about statistics and hypothetical situations. Totally obfuscating the point.
The whole world knows that you don't want everybody walking around with guns. The whole world knows you don't want people walk around with handguns or rifles. And certainly not with machine-guns. Except in the US. There half the population thinks this is OK. Many even think it is beneficial to society. I don't know what they're talking about, because every unbiased little kid understand that guns bring nothing but harm to society.
"A 100 little kids got shot dead today. That's a sacrifice I'm willing to make".
It seems Americans are just a bunch of sociopaths. All their stories and movies and folkore is about individuals fighting everybody else. Fight all the commies, fight the muslims, fight your own government, the north fights the south, the south fights the north. Rambo, the guy from Die Hard, those are the american heroes. They've been brain-washing themselves. (No the Ruskies have no influence on the US. You are fucking up your country yourself. You don't need help from outside). Americans are sociopaths, and they are loving it. Every generation becomes more sociapathic. Psychopaths maybe even. Doing anything together is frowned upon. Having a health-care system by everyone for everyone seems to be a thing from hell you need to avoid at all cost. It's pathetic. And it gets worse and worse.
And now the point I wanted to make.
Not having guns in society is not only about decreasing murder-rates.
Guns have a much larger impact on people.
They become scared.
When everyone you meet might be packing an UZI, you need to be careful, All the time. When you do shopping, when you take your kids from school, etc. There can always be a nut with a gun. Be alert. All the time. And if you carry a gun yourself, you need to be even more alert. Because the guy who shoots first wins. So you'll have to make sure you shoot first. Because if you carry an UZI, and someone else shoots first and kills you, you'll look like a dork. Not like Rambo. So be alert. Keep your hands on your gun at all time. Be ready to shoot.
You might think I'm overreacting.
But just think about how the police in the US interacts with their own population.
They are always ready to shoot and kill. No questions asked. If there is any doubt, shoot. Don't shoot once, shoot 10 times. Empty your gun. Make sure to shoot everyone in the head first. Then ask questions.
This attitude has an impact on society.
It is so common in the US that Americans don't realize it anymore.
It makes life full of constant tension.
It makes Americans the most scared pussies in the whole world.
And they don't even know it.
icemann on 5/10/2017 at 15:21
The one area on guns where the U.S excels IMO is with the home defense side, where if someone breaks into your home then your within your rights to defend yourself and your family. Over here in Australia if you so much as injure an invader then your likely to go to jail over it, be arrested, or have your weapon(s) taken.
We had a case of that a few weeks ago, where out in the country (where the rate of gun ownership is far higher due to hunting), a home owner awoke to a guy breaking in armed with a knife intent on causing injury to him and his family + steal possessions to fuel his drug addiction. The owner grabbed his gun which was not loaded (but the burgler obviously didn't know that), pointed it at the guy, demanded he get to the ground and performed a citizens arrest. When the police arrived, the home owners weapon was confiscated and his gun license revoked.
Seems to me to be quite stupid, as what did the police expect the home owner to do then? Roll over and let the guy help himself to the possessions in the house? Fuck that.
Another case, occurred a few years ago. A convicted child rapist was let out of jail, and soon after broke into a home. The owner awoke to his daughter screaming, bolted into her room and saw the guy standing over her bed with a knife in his hand. He chased the guy out of the house and grabbed him in a choke hold whilst his wife called the cops. By the time the cops got there, the rapist had died due to the choke hold. The home owner was arrested with murder. This ended up in the courts, but luckily the home owner got let off (largely due to the massive public outcry about it). Again I'd ask what the father should have done instead in that instance? Allow his daughter to be raped and stabbed?
Draxil on 5/10/2017 at 15:28
You're overreacting, for sure. I live in a state and city where anyone can carry a gun without a license, whether in the open or concealed. There were a total of six murders in my county in 2016, population 587,000, and only 4 involved guns. 2 of those were random--alcohol fueled racism and rage. The other two were domestic disputes gone wrong. I've been pulled over by the police probably 1/2 a dozen times in my life, and arrested once. I'm probably lucky to be alive, according to you. What a crock.
Tony_Tarantula on 5/10/2017 at 16:09
Typical talking points being thrown around of course, so let me add a new angle that hasn't been discussed yet:
What about the US government's penchant for giving out weapons to militant groups like halloween candy? There's a fairly massive number of military grade guns handed out every single year by the lettered agencies for the sake of temporary political agenda. Many of those weapons end up being sold on the black markets ending up in the hands of domestic criminals and criminal organizations.
And how effective are those measures going to be? We already have several key ingredients in place: large, highly organized, nearly state-sponsored criminal organizations to act as suppliers (Mexican cartels and gangs), a logistical network and distribution channels (the almost completely un-enforced southern border), a large supply of weapons (the market is flooded by state actors sponsoring insurgent groups around the world), and a large potential market here in the United States.
Is anyone seeing any possible outcome of a full ban other than making drug cartels and biker gangs extremely rich?
Quote:
You might think I'm overreacting.
But just think about how the police in the US interacts with their own population.
They are always ready to shoot and kill. No questions asked. If there is any doubt, shoot. Don't shoot once, shoot 10 times. Empty your gun. Make sure to shoot everyone in the head first. Then ask questions.
This attitude has an impact on society.
It is so common in the US that Americans don't realize it anymore.
It makes life full of constant tension.
It makes Americans the most scared pussies in the whole world.
And they don't even know it.
If anyone is interested in being better informed on the topic, read Radley Balko's book "rise of the warrior cop".
TLDR version there's three main causes:
* "War on Drugs" and the resulting prevalent use of SWAT tactics
* "War on Terror" and the resultant use of military tactics
* Government spending: most municipalities are cash strapped and we have asset forfeiture, which leads them to run their police departments so as to maximize revenue generation.....the more confrontational interactions between cops and citizens the more tickets/seizures happen
It's a bad recipe for American society: think about our existing racial and social wedges and how each will be impacted by aggressive, militarized policing.
