The whole idea that the patchwork of laws in the United States presents a serious barrier to gun ownership for would-be mass murderers is a fantasy.
Almost all the mass shootings in this country are carried out by people who either either bought their firearms legally or got them from a family member who did. Very few have had to resort to getting guns on the black market, and none have yet used homemade 3D-printed weapons.
Ease of access to guns is absolutely a key factor for why the United States is such an outlier when it comes to gun violence.
I like the term “murders committed by guns”. Not with guns, but by guns. That way we can discuss the issue without needing to address the homicidal maniacs who are actually responsible.
I think you will find that when a person passes a background check but should not, the outrage comes from all sides of the issue.
So you are conflating two issues. Mass shootings and gun violence. The US is not an outlier in mass shootings. Even if we leave Norway out, the US rate of frequency of mass shootings per population and number of deaths from mass shooting per population remains lower than in countries like France and Belgium.
Gun violence in general is high in the US, but largely committed by gang members against other gang members. And the rate of gun homicides continues to drop, even as the rate of gun ownership rises.
That’s not what we’re talking about in this thread. We’re discussing shooters with semiautomatic weapons. Mass shootings. Those were not committed by gang members against other gang members. The worst of them largely committed by white men against random people and children.
But suggestions on how to fix it only come from one side. And that one side is a varied group of people discussing, examining and compromising. While the other side of it simply refuses to even allow such discussion.
We are a global outlier in terms of gun deaths, frequency and number of mass shootings, number of civilian owned guns, and murder rates for developed countries.
You can make it look like less of an outlier by defining down mass shootings, and choosing the metrics that look least extreme. Playing games with statistics.
Because the crime rate overall is at an all time low and continuing to fall. None the less we have proportionally more gun deaths and murders than countries with similarly low and falling crime rates. And the central justification for our current gun situation remains personal protection from all that crime and murder that’s increasingly rare. And increasingly isolated from the not-a-professional-criminals aquiring guns.
Focusing on criminal shootings only captures part of the story.
More than half, and as much as 2/3rds of gun deaths in the US are suicides. Taken together with accidents the vast, vast, vast majority of gun deaths and injuries in the US have absolutely nothing to do with crime.
Roughly 1 gun for every man woman and child in the US.
And a high proportion of them aquired that gun recently. Withing a few months of their attack.
One has to use very, shall we say, “creative and selective” use of statistical analysis to make the U.S. look like anything other than an outlier in the developed world when it comes to mass shootings.
When countries like France or Norway or Belguim have a mass shooting it’s generally a very rare event with an outsized statistical effect, so when you pick and choose the countries and time spans to measure mass shootings it creates a distorted view of the data.
The truly fucked thing is that in a lot of ways we’re an outlier compared to undeveloped, deeply unstable, or governement free areas of the world.
We have vastly more guns than Yemen. A country that’s in the midst of a civil war. We have like 7 times more civilian owned guns than the next guy on the list. We have fewer murders but more overall gun deaths and injury than countries run by drug cartels and war lords.
Also; it’s not “your” cake. To think of rights as something you individually own is fundamentally wrongheaded. Rights are something we collectively share.
Sorry, I am off Facebook, but I see LOTS of presumably Democrats on Twitter calling for banning AR- rifles and handguns. And all guns sometimes. David Hogg (who I think is (otherwise) great is advocating for a AR- ban.
More importantly, gun people believe that’s what all or most Democrats want, because mostly we don’t talk to them, rather than at them, and the right-wing groups - and even most hunting/fishing magazines - talk about this stuff a lot.
All pretty much true. And all pretty much beside the point. The fact is the Republicans have the House, the Senate, the Presidency, the SC, most state Governorships, many if not most state legislatures, and many if not most state and appellate judgeships.
We are not doing as well as we could, nor as well as we must. Demanding unconstitutional gun control is losing us elections. Even publishing thousands of paper and electronic pages demanding unconstitutional gun control is playing right into Karl Rove’s hands. We are missing a huge opportunity with gun owners and hunters and fishermen.
I think what’s frustrating is that demanding constitutional gun control is losing elections, and is such a bizarrely, disproportionally polarizing issue that it leaves those who want mere baby-steps without any options to improve things.
Hunting, fishing, gun and outdoor magazines risk loosing large chunks of their funding if they don’t. Any reporting or writing that doesnt ape the NRA party line on guns sees manufacturers pull their ads. A large proportion of advertising for such media comes from fire arms manufacturers. Many other advertisers don’t want to be associated with such media (in part because of the positions these publications are required to take). And with subscription and cover sales falling. Ad rates falling. Fire arms manufacturers have a disproportionate roll in keeping the doors open.
Stepping too far out of line also sees NRA attacks against the publication and against the specific writer.
Accurate coverage of statistics, legit safety information, anything even remotely approaching positive feelings for gun regulation see harsh crack downs.
While bans are part of the conversation on the pro-reg side (which isnt only “the left”). They arent the whole story. And in no way is “ban them all” an accurate way to characterise the movement for gun control.
The idea that it is, does not come from the left. Its a claim that was created and is pushed by the hard line no-regulation side. As a sort of straw man to smear the opposition. Along with the narrow focus on crime as the defining reason to own or regulate guns. Dog whistley claims about “thugs”, claims and fears of “people” coming in to your home. And scare mongering about the government. Either coming for your guns, or setting up camps, coups, other tyrannical things and conspiracy theory. Its pushed for ideological reasons. To motivate and lock in that small but very loud hardline base.
But mostly because its killer for business. Most of these ideas have a traceable history in firearms marketing. And while manufacturers take a public stance of not getting involved. If you poke it with a stick they’re deeply and directly involved with funding pro gun politicians and the NRA. Dictating talking points, coordinating advertising with the political tenor. And the threats and black listing of people who don’t tow the line.
Theres a direct coorelation between guns and ammo sales (and prices) and bursts of that sort of anti-government fear and partisan attacks.
What they’ve done is convince a large portion of the population that you must have a gun. You are not safe without one. They have convinced a subset of that population that you must get more than one gun. And they must be a specific kind of high margin gun with a wide variety of high margin accessories. They then use scare mongering about regulation, the government, minorities, and crime. To push people to buy guns now. Right now! Hillary’s coming for you guns! And once she has them you’ll be helpless in the face of hordes thugs in hoodies who are lingering outside your home for reasons. Murder reasons.
ETA:
Again thats a vast over simplification of the conversation going on. Even the impression that its “us”. As in only the left who have concerns and involvement here. And its a vast over simplification and misrepresentation that is deliberately pushed by the right for the sake of dictating the conversation.
There are vastly wider reasons than just gun control that lead to where we stand currently.
While I can agree that there’s a misses opportunity in reaching out in a more practical way to people who are base friendly to gun ownership. Gun owners or not.
Those people are not single issue voters. They arent all republican voters (or even voters) to begin with.
A fair bit of the issue is the left just accepting the right’s dictates on where the state of the issue is. That its bans vs freedom.
And any attempts at the sort of broader, federal, top to bottom approach to this is effectivelt nuked by an overly influential, loud gun lobby. Even discussion of it. When “here is a reasonable policy that does not involve bans and the majority of American support, by a huge margin, even gun owners” spurs a run on the gun stores and threats of violent revolt.
Well. Doing what your calling for, which people are already doing. Doesn’t exactly make progress.
I think you are making false assumptions there. After Sutherland Springs, there was and remains outrage about the fact that the shooter’s history was not uploaded to the NICS system. Same for Parkland, the Nashville Waffle House shooter, and the Pulse Nightclub shooter.
In the US, homicides with guns and other violent crimes are heavily concentrated into particular areas, and do not correspond to rates of gun ownership. The fact that European mass shooter incidents are so much of an outlier might be related to the fact that mass shooters in Europe are more likely to employ fully automatic weapons than shooters in the US.
