Why can’t they sell the guns they take from “badguy” gun owners and sell them to the “good guy” gun owners?
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I’m wary of blaming it all on access to mental health care (stigmatizing the mentally ill, suggesting that people who aren’t mentally ill don’t shoot people), or on firearms ownership rates (because lots of other countries have lots of guns) or US media (exported literally everywhere).
But perhaps there’s a perfect storm of all this stuff.
A country that likes to harken back to wild west times, a culture built (to an unusual degree) around individuality, independence and self-reliance, mistrust in the police/government and an increasingly militarized and trigger-happy police, a media that loves to play on fear, a constitution that has made it very easy to get access to weapons (and in particular, handguns), and yes, medical healthcare.
I can’t see how you put the genie back in the bottle. You could (well, you couldn’t, but whatever) repeal the 2nd amendment, and replace it with strict gun control, disarm the regular police, have an amnesty for turning in handguns, try to get the media to be less enamoured with violence, but how long would it take? How would you get guns out of circulation even if none were to ever be legally sold again?
Invent a time machine, and stop the 2nd amendment being passed in the first place?
Create a fairer society with less extremes of poverty and wealth?
Slightly OT, I love living in the US, I don’t think that I live in the same world as people think they need to carry a gun around with themselves for protection - if that was the case I wouldn’t live here. Even now with events like this orders of magnitude more frequent than any country the US should be comparing itself to, they’re still incredibly unlikely.
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Mass killings are so rare over all I am not sure why we focus on it. Well I do. It is horrible and sensationalistic. But it akin to pointing out his nasty looking mole on your arm, while the other arm is cut off and your are bleeding out. These crimes are devious and cunning. With sites like the now defunct Silk Road, a bright psycho could order what ever he/she wants on the dark net if they so desired.
The overwhelming majority of gun crime is in poor, urban areas. If you took out the these areas from the crime stats, IIRC our murder rate matches Canada’s. I don’t know exactly why the crime rate is so high in certain areas, but most of these “developed” nations don’t have the social-economic make up that the US does.
Conversely you have places like Mexico and other less developed nations, who actually have stricter gun laws than the US, and their murder rate is much higher. Even the “gun free” UK isn’t free of violent crime. They are making kitchen knives you can’t stab people with for crying out loud.
It isn’t the guns. It is the people. Poverty seems to be the #1 factor on how violent an area is. When you have nothing to lose, you are more likely to act out.
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I have done 3 out of 4 of those things and never had to pass a psych evaluation.
The words “well regulated” refers to something in proper, well working order. A well equipped working militia. i.e. A well regulated watch keeps proper time.
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No. Its the guns. Mass killings are rare everywhere in the world except in America.
And I need some data to back up your murder rate being the same as Canada claim. Citation required.
Here is StatsCan on Homicide: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2014001/article/14108-eng.htm?fpv=2693
The only city that comes close is America’s rate is Regina, but even that is below, and the rest of the cities fall well below.
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Interesting (and apologies if this seems like threadjacking - particularly given the tragic circumstances).
I grew up in the UK and vast buckets of sugar drink were not common there up until when I left in the last 1980s.
If this started in the US in the 1950s, how come people weren’t so fat then as they are now? Maybe the switch from sucrose to HFCS?
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I just realised something. I replied to Missy above (or maybe below) that UK gun take up was due to US media. I don’t mean that people in the UK are being influenced to pick up guns due to US TV shows, more that they were going to do something anyway, so are copying what looks a bit cool from the US.
I also don’t believe the answer is: they have a mental condition. I’m seeing this view in a few (US Centric) blogs, groups and other places. Dismissing and diverting by saying ‘they are mental’ is not that useful.
This isn’t aimed at you caze, your message just prompted me.
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Floors were sticky when I was growing up in the early 80s.
Like climate change, vaccines and evolution, no reasonable discussion is possible because only one side is reasonable.
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Did you see the “UK knife” comment above? You’re psychic!
Smaller sizes all around and a generation from the War where sugar was rationed and therefore a treat. I’m not calling them out specifically, as all places are guilty, but when I was a kid in the 1980’s a small at McDonald’s was about 7 ounces, a medium was 12 and a large was 16.
Now, a kid’s size is 12 ounces. The large is 32 ounces, twice the size of the original.
Their large fries is now the small size.
Coke used to sell a 12 ounce can and that was it. Now a single serving is a 20 ounce bottle.
So it comes down to people growing up being told to finish their meal and one day their meals just got bigger “for free” and people are compelled to finish them.
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I completely agree that the majority of America’s gun violence is probably caused by poverty. Poverty and violence go hand in hand all around the world. People talk about two Americas, and there are Americas living in conditions akin to third world countries.
But I’m not sure that’s so unconnected to the mass shooting issue. Like I said, I see the American government as not caring at all about the lives of Americans. Lots of people here have said the same thing, if you want to reduce deaths, why not use models that other developed nations are using? It may be that the best way to reduce gun deaths in America would be a guaranteed income program and much higher taxes on the rich. Model your taxation policies and social policies off of places where people actually trust their governments, where people are happy, where people live longer and have better quality lives.
But America won’t do it. It goes deeper and deeper down the well of fucking over the masses to increase the score of the players on the stock market leaderboards. Why do mentally ill Americans use those guns to shoot up theatres and themselves while mentally ill Swiss shoot only themselves. Both have guns. One has a society that says “fuck everyone” and the other has a society that says “let’s look after one another.”
So it’s not the guns that bother me. It’s the fact that millions of Americans are so dead set on having guns that they’d rather children get shot than give them up. We have our suspicions, but none of us knows whether tighter restrictions on guns would reduce murder for sure. Maybe you are very clever and really understand the relationship between guns and violence (this is not a sarcastic comment, remember that I actually agree that a wave of gun control regulations wouldn’t solve this problem) but it’s not like NRA rallies where people yell “Out of my cold, dead hands” are MENSA meetings.
They don’t know, they don’t want to know. If they knew then maybe they’d be faced with a reality where they had to choose between inconvenience to themselves (akin to a driver’s license, say) and the death of innocent people they don’t know. And they would choose the latter, because they don’t give a shit. They just don’t want to be forced to say that.
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I really don’t know how to use this blogging system, seems massively unintuitive to me. I’m going to have to do this by hand, sorry about that.
Mass killings are so rare over all I am not sure why we focus on it.
Because it happens so often in the US.
With sites like the now defunct Silk Road, a bright psycho could order what ever he/she wants on the dark net if they so desired.
Or, save time and go to a gun shop any just buy it.
but most of these “developed” nations don’t have the social-economic make up that the US does
Yes, they do, and far exceeds it.
Even the “gun free” UK isn’t free of violent crime. They are making kitchen knives you can’t stab people with for crying out loud.
It isn’t free of violent crime, true. Our violent crime is not the same as yours though. it would be like looking at a nasty UK mole on my arm, while the US half of my body had the whole arm chopped off.
Please let me know who is developing these ‘non stab’ knives and where one can buy them, i have never heard or seen any such product here.
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Don’t ban guns, ban ammo. Eloquent solution, no?
Kidding aside, part of the “Why America?” debate also relates to how the news covers these stories.
Everyone remember the Columbine killers made the video saying that they were going to be famous? Initially, it wasn’t aired, because that would be sort of immoral. Then once one news company broke rank, they all aired it. More copycat killings followed.
Well done guys.
“But what about Freedom of the Press?” you might ask. Well, I’m glad you asked that question, because there is a laundry list of things the FCC doesn’t have a problem with regulating. Deadly, horrible things, like nipples, or the word ‘Fuck’.
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They’re Liberty Holes. They make you free faster.
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I live in SO14. You had me worried about my neighbouring post code for a moment there.
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I can’t look it up right now, but the FBI has stats by race. If you exclude the black-on-black crime (most of which is in poor city areas) the per capita murder rate goes from 4.7 to 2.2, which is pretty close to Canada’s 1.6. I think. I am recalling these numbers off the top of my head so if I screwed the numbers around, mea culpa, but I remember reading the FBI numbers and being struck by how badly difference in murders by race are. Also of note, black white crime is really rare in comparison. If you are white and murdered, there is an 80%+ chance it was by another white person.
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From 6 years ago.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8101032.stm
But of course you’ve never seen one, because it’s ludicrous.
Perhaps he was just trying to bring a 4D experience to the movie?
Kind’a like those theme park ones that spritz ya with water when the cartoon character sneezes.
This is exactly my point. Where else do you have large darkened rooms in the middle of the day that people pay comparatively little to get into? AND most of your victims would hopefully be too engrossed in the movie to notice you until the shooting started?
