Originally published at: "At least" 16 dead in various Memorial Day shootings across U.S. | Boing Boing
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Pew Research Center
Not the Pew-pew Research Centre?
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Well I won’t be there until Friday unfortunately
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So…Russia is in the middle of an actual war, was hit by drones, and experienced no (reported) casualties. Yet the US has at least 16 dead over the holiday weekend because of freedums. Sounds about right.
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I’d like to see more information about the last Powerpoint deck referenced there. Lots of charts and correlations, but no author listed or accompanying research document. The gist of the preso was that gun violence follows patterns of lack of trust and inclusion in government - when Obama was elected gun violence in African-American communities decreased, and increased in areas where ‘politically alienated’ whites live.
Anyone have more details and maybe a paper?
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I mean, apples to apples, I am sure Russia had murders this weekend too. Just because one drone attack didn’t kill anyone didn’t mean NO ONE died in the whole country.
Murder rates fluctuate year to year, but according to the wiki chart, Russia’s was 7.3 in 2020, compared to the US’s 6.4 in 2020.
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Easy access to firearms in the US creates non-stop gun violence in the US, and gun fetishists DO NOT CARE.
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America still lost more people than killed in an actual military attack for no damn reason except its fetish for private firearms, though.
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Yeah, it’s odd that, as far as the threads I read, gun violence is one of the ONLY topics that guarantees people will draw comparison to other countries to try to make it seem like this is normal.
Sometimes it comes up around bike safety, but not so often or so adamantly. Never about food or general infrastructure (or hardly ever). Usually about healthcare, but EVERY FREAKING TIME about gun violence.
It’s a distraction from us asking ourselves, regardless of what the rest of the world looks like, DO WE FIND THIS ACCEPTABLE?
I don’t.
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Which was the OP’s exact point, metinks.
No misdirection or moving the goalposts, here; gun violence in the US is out of control, for no reason other than greed and apathy.
Which is really weird, because other countries that are as rich and powerful as the US don’t have this particular problem… because they have various forms of gun control.
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Yep.
And, no one arguing in good faith would do that about any other bad thing. Like, when the Flint water crisis happened, no one said, “well, in several other countries they don’t even have public water and sewerage.”
Or during CA wildfire season, no one tries to make that seem acceptable by pointing out how Australia’s wildfire season is actually quite similar. 
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Clusterfuck of bad things here in the US: too many guns in too many hands and a culture that has romanticized gun violence, tied gun violence to concepts of masculine identity and virtue, identified a host of scapegoats, and convinced people that guns are making them safer when they definitely are not. We have closed off most of the other routes to help for suicidal, homicidal, omnicidal, and psychotic individuals… and their victims.
When too many people were gassing themselves with their ovens people changed the type of gas they used in ovens… just sayin’.
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That’s really more apples to carburetors.
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Including, in some cases, a childish refusal to accept a per-capita comparison when it reflects badly on the outcomes of the U.S.'s toxic gun culture. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.
I suppose I should drop in the obligatory link to dissuade the ammosexuals from spreading further FUD.
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and beyond murder: guns are also a tool facilitating the threat of violence, actual domestic violence, and suicide. ( not to mention the deaths caused by police since we also allow them to carry guns when they’re clearly not responsible enough. )
but yeah, lets pick one statistic for one country and pretend that’s the whole picture. *sigh*
[ eta: you could also teach gun safety like oath keepers founder stuart rhodes, and then shoot your own eye out. with guns, there’s so many options ]
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Whataboutism, and drawing false equivs; the sure signs of “conversing in good faith.”
/S
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I was lucky enough to be able to visit an annual festival in town on my way to and from work this weekend, and while I enjoyed some tasty fair food and the feeling of the community gathering in the sunshine, the possibility of a mass shooting never, ever left my mind. While people were laughing and smiling and complimenting each others’ dogs I was mentally rehearsing what I would do and where I would go if I heard gunshots. I suspect many of them were too.
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This is the one that always sticks out for me. A friend of mine lost her husband, also a veteran. From 2012.
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That last link to nationalacademies.org on homicide rates described the drop in US rates around 15 years ago in a way I don’t remember encountering before:
So faith in our government has that big of an effect?!
Which made me think of Paxton throwing out significantly more votes than the margins between candidates in the last couple elections…
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