In the 334 days of 2015, America has seen 351 mass shootings (and counting)

[anon78706664]

Firearm deaths are going up

No. They are not.

As of 2011, the gun homicide rate had declined 49% since its peak in 1993. SOURCE: “Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware.” Pew Research Center, May 7, 2013.

Since then, they have updated their data. The gun homicide rate has not risen, it has stabilized. The gun suicide rate, however, has gone up. SOURCE: “Gun homicides steady after decline in ’90s; suicide rate edges up.” Pew Research Center, October 21, 2015.

Curious about the source? Good:

• The data comes directly from the United States Department of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• The Pew reports are extensively sourced, with explanations of the methodology used.
• The Pew Research Center is a branch of the Pew Charitable Trusts, and if you’re an NPR listener, as I am, you’ll recognize the name because of the Trusts’ long-standing underwriting of that network’s reporting on culture, the environment, and religion.
• Here’s an article about them from the American Journalism Review.
• Here’s a fairly detailed counterpoint (which, I should note, addresses several claims I am not making here): “Conservative Media Misread Data To Declare Gun Violence Epidemic Over.”

Now, we can have a discussion about whether the gun homicide rates in this country, despite their decades-long decline - which, by the way, reflects worldwide drops in crime rates - are still too high. We can have a discussion about certain sensible reforms that are rabidly opposed by Wayne LaPierre and his NRA lobbying machine.

But the overarching narrative promulgated by the media and the President of the United States is false. There is not a sudden “epidemic of gun violence.” As of October, gun violence is not “on the rise.” The President has said that he’s going to spend his last year in office focusing on gun control, that’s fine, and necessary. We need some movement on this.

However, there’s the laudable goal, there’s the political agenda…and then there’s a supposedly objective media that’s supporting the President with propaganda, to the point where most people - yourself included - are unaware of the numbers and the facts. What we’ve got now is the same kind of hysteria that’s decried every time a Muslim does something unpleasant somewhere in the West. It’s not sensible then, and it’s not sensible now.

How we get to where we need to be matters.

[anon68952647]

@Brainspore

Battle of Gettysburg

[anon41977465]

Remind me, how many little kids got their parents keys out and then ran over their siblings or crashed - killing themselves.

also, like you said, most of those car deaths weren’t on purpose - it’s almost like people don’t think the primary use of a car is to kill other people.

[Thebarton_Gamer]

Ladies and gentlemen. Bravo! So nice to see the stupid so soundly smashed, so quickly.

High fives all round!

[Advocate]

For those of you who aren’t paying attention, the solution is not a police state. The Police State pisses people off. The solution is to not piss people off. We want to live in a happy society, right? Let’s try working on that and see how the shootings numbers respond.

[Advocate]

How many deaths are caused by police and big business that are never even prosecuted?

[lolipop_jones]

“Mass shootings” are not all of a kind.

The headline can easily be misinterpreted to the effect that there have been 351 cases in which peaceful citizens are minding their own business when a nutcase pops up out of nowhere and starts blazing away.

However, some time spent browsing the links to the Reddit piece demonstrates that many (if not most) of the shootings cited appear to be negotiating tactics between criminal gangs, who have no access to the civil court system to settle their disputes.

Those shootings are not amenable to any control which seeks to make gun purchases more difficult. They can be reduced only by the police proactively confiscating guns from known or suspected gang members, on their persons, in their vehicles, or in their homes.

Somehow I suspect that if such confiscations were to start happening, the reaction on boingboing would not be “Hurray, we’re finally doing something about gun violence!!!” Just a guess on my part…

[abides]

• You must show proficiency in order to be able to operate a car
• If you do something stupid in operating a car, you can lose the right to operate the car. Sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently
• Cars must be insured
• Cars and their operators are registered
• Cars must be shown to be in safe working condition

And finally:

• Cars have a legitimate purpose other than mowing down pedestrians

[lolipop_jones]

@Brainspore

a gun statistically more dangerous than a car.

~13,000 gun deaths a year.

I’m going to assume that half of those were criminal-on-criminal violence which is not preventable by any amount of gun purchase controls or licensing. You are welcome to select a different non-zero value. I’m also going to assume that one gun = one death, which is obviously not true since we don’t use many muzzleloaders nowadays, but it’s the conservative value for the calculation I’m making, which is

For evey gun involved in a killing in the USA in 2015, there were ~41,500 guns that were not.

[anon26940528]

@Advocate

For those of you who aren’t paying attention, the solution is not a police state.

Oh fucking hell. Jesus. Are you kidding me?

[lolipop_jones]

So you must be saying you are not suggesting any action which would take away the guns of the guy in that picture. Is that correct?

[anon62122146]

Straight up. I don’t think anybody in America but a few of the most out-of-touch urbanites would suggest banning all guns. That said, I think the phrase “well regulated” certainly leaves room for a level of regulation similar to what we have for cars.

[anon26940528]

@lolipop_jones

So you must be saying

Wait? Are you about to put words in my mouth?

@lolipop_jones

you are not suggesting any action which would take away the guns of the guy in that picture

Yeah… you kind of are. I never elucidated my position on this in this thread. But I call out the paranoia of slippery-slopes when I see it.

[AnthonyC]

@RagingRoosevelt

Until I hear people pushing to do something about auto deaths as loudly as I see people pushing to do something about gun deaths, I don’t see any reason to believe the people clamoring for change actually care about the death rate. They just hate or are scared of guns.

Vehicle automation. Volvo, for example, has declared that “By 2030 no one will die in a new car.” EDIT: they’ve also said they will have the first such Cara available by 2020.
So yes, there is a solution in development, and we have a rough idea how long it will take to implement, and many large corporations are actively pursuing it.

Does that help?

[tlwest]

[quote=“lolipop_jones, post:29, topic:70138”]
I’m going to assume that half of those were criminal-on-criminal violence which is not preventable by any amount of gun purchase controls or licensing.[/quote]

Well that’s absurd. Next you’ll be telling me that criminals will have the same number of hand-grenades regardless of whether they’re as plentiful as guns or banned utterly.

The reason why guns are so plentiful among criminals in the US is because they are plentiful legally. Common sense 101.

[Boundegar]

Hey look! It’s like the Periodic Table of Bloodshed!

[tlwest]

Things are unlikely to change south of the border until a sufficient number of Americans (say 75-80%) believe in significant gun control (as occurs in pretty much every other developed country).

You want to see gun control, then you change the mind of a large number of people who presently find that easy availability of guns is well worth the lives lost. Not easy, but it’s the price for living in a democracy when you’re fighting against the cultural heritage of that country. (And guns are definitely part of America’s cultural heritage - from the Revolution to the Wild West.)

And one small tip - declaring your ethical superiority over those who oppose gun control is pretty much the worst way to persuade someone. It’s a small declaration that you consider feeling superior to your opponents worth the lives lost by the bad policy.

[AnthonyC]

@lolipop_jones

They can be reduced only by the police proactively confiscating guns from known or suspected gang members, on their persons, in their vehicles, or in their homes.

Well, no, they can also be reduced by raising the minimum wage and improving access to affordable housing, easing the war on drugs, ending policing strategies that keep people from wanting to go to police to report problems, immigration reform so people who are undocumented or have close relatives who are feel like they can go to the police or use other public services… really anything that makes gang-ridden communities more livable and stable.

I’m sure many, maybe most, of those things are ineffective at reducing gun violence, but they’re good ideas anyway, and let’s face it - people who grow up and live in communities where there are lots of options other than crime rarely join gangs.

[Papasan]

[and counting] is very depressing…

[anon34812172]

I was shot by Yahoo, so I switched to Google. Then Apple shot me, so I switched to a Chromebook. But it turns out that Google owns Chromebooks and I got mowed down by an AK Google and dieded. Fuckin’ BIG BUSINESS. They are killers.