Seven dead, seven injured in Santa Barbara rampage shooting

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Yeah…no.

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The darker the color, the higher the homicide rate.

If gun ownership were the major factor in homicides, and if we accept that the United States is this super-dangerous place, you’d expect it to have the highest murder rate in the world. But it doesn’t. It’s alarmingly high…for a developed country.

In Brazil, minimum age for gun ownership is 25, and apparently it’s almost impossible to get a gun permit. But their murder rate is 21.8.

You know, looking at that map, something looks familiar about it:

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Not perfect, but close!

And there’s something interesting to me about U.S. stats:

Wyoming has the highest percentage of gun ownership, but some of the lowest murder rates. Vermont gets that honor, but they’re up there on gun ownership stats. Contrast that with the area with the lowest gun ownerhsip rate, the District of Columbia, who can brag about having the highest gun murder rates in the country.

And California has the strictest gun laws in the U.S., but has a gun murder rate of 3.4, which puts it as being safer than Missouri, but not as safe as most the Southern states, where I’m assuming y’all would assume it’s unsafe to live because of all the stupid rednecks and all those guns.

Huh. Call me crazy, but it looks like areas that have higher population densities, despite stricter gun laws and lower gun ownership rates, have higher gun murder rates. It’s almost as if it’s more complicated than, “It’s because idiots have guns, the discussion is over.”

Maybe it’s time to reassess your preconceptions, and do some thinking rather than operating on feels.

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Here are some more things to check out if you’re honestly interested:

First, The Daily Beast’s interactive multiple victim shooting map. It shows shootings since 2005, identifying them using sized bubbles. Orange is not gang-related, purple is. Relative size relates to the number of victims. Their source data is from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence which in turn gets its data from media reports (in other words, their numbers are, if anything, most likely low). Keep in mind, this map ends with the Newtown shooting. 2013 is not included. This map is good because it’s zip code searchable.

Another extremely good resource for information is Stanford. They have a collection of interactive maps with all sorts of data ranging from 1966-2014. To most easily see our rapid increase in mass gun death in recent years, I suggest you view the “Timeline of Mass Shootings Incidents, 1966 - 2014” and move the slider forward to 1990, then 1999, and then 2014. Prior to 1984, multiple gun deaths were a very rare thing.

http://stanford.maps.arcgis.com/apps/OnePane/azuretime/index.html?appid=6e848a2ac4a447be9635ea70b1197a61

http://library.stanford.edu/projects/mass-shootings-america/maps

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FWIW, when you attach legal/financial/stigma consequences to doctor’s diagnoses, people avoid going to doctors for their problems. I don’t want to deter anyone from seeking help…

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FWIW, Larry The Cable Guy is fake. He doesn’t have a southern accent and he’s playing a character to identify with, and subsequently take advantage of, dumb southern hillbillies.

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Gun advocates typically want to distil the conversation down to particular crime categories and then make the argument that “because this one, very specific data point seems to support what I’m saying, this is ultimate proof that guns r awsum and no deeper analysis is now necessary”. The fact is that most studies on the effects of gun ownership in regards to their effect on overall violence and crime rate suggests that countries with low gun ownership typically have far lower crime rates.

I don’t give a flying fuck if you care to cherry-pick particular states as examples that prove you point. Choose countries. You are a country. A state is not a god analogue for a country, particularly US states since it’s a matter of triviality to get a gun from another state with events that don’t properly check purchases (gun shows) or for a small amount of money on the streets.

No one’s saying that “gun ownership is the major factor in homicides” but you, because it’s the set-up for your whole argument. Other reasons for higher or lower levels of homicide include: overall rule of law, effectiveness of the police, job and social prospects, availability of weapons and the ability of authorities to control those weapons. If you look at the US in terms of homicide rate and firearm homicide rate, you guys are a pathetic laughing stock. But you already know this because we had this discussion last week - before another horrific murder spree had taken place.

Firearm-related death per 100k

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I cut it at Israel, the first country on the list that has a truly comparable socio-political situation as the US and their homicide by firearm rate is less than 1/3 of the US.

I won’t screencap this one because it’s just too long but this chart has overall homicide rate per 100k: List of countries by intentional homicide rate - Wikipedia

Again… the US sits among countries you would not choose to go to and ones which you’d regard as dangerous places to go. The axis-of-evil Iran and Libya are safer places to be than the US. Sri Lanka is a safer place to be. Israel’s murder rate is less than half that of the US… funny that the two comparable countries on the deaths by firearm list have similar positions on the overall homicide rate list. Must just be coincidental.

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Would you agree that Andrew Dice Clay is also a character, designed to take advantage of low-information Yankees?

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I don’t understand why some people seem to throw gun owning stats in with crime statistics to justify that “guns are bad”. Guns are inanimate objects. Their presence doesn’t cause crime. It’s very disingenuous to look at various countries and try to compare their crime rate based on gun ownership. Social and economic status of it’s people and the various cultures which make it up, poverty, drugs, and inequality are all stronger causes of crime than the number of guns. Owning a gun doesn’t make one more likely to want to go out and commit a crime. Can one really honestly compare some place in the US, even someplace with pockets of violence, like Chicago, to a Central American slum?

Chicago gets mentioned a lot because the city has some of the strictest laws in the US, but also some of the worst crime. But look at a map of the homicides. It’s not all over Chicago, but in a handful of pockets. Guns aren’t magically making only those areas dangerous, it’s the people who live there and the things they are involved in. If you magically removed all the guns from those areas the people there wouldn’t suddenly stop hurting one another for the reasons they currently are.

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But then again, we know that he had “high functioning Asperger’s.” Asperger’s Syndrome isn’t exactly known for disrupting a person’s grasp on reality, nor is it normally associated with excessively violent behavior, although some say that young boys with it tend to act up more in class. It affects social skills and creates obstacles for the person with Asperger’s in interacting with other people since they don’t have an intuitive grasp of social cues. This can lead to the obvious feelings of isolation, anxiety problems, and maybe depression, but they don’t hallucinate or develop paranoid fantasies. Either there was a lot more going on with this kid besides Asperger’s, or this isn’t something that can just be waved away with the “he was mentally ill” explanation.

An additional issue in claiming he killed all those people because of his Asperger’s is that it throws pretty much everyone else with Asperger’s under the bus. News stories like this and Sandy Hook make me worried, since unless neurotypical people know someone with this condition or are huge Bones fans, this is going to be the first time they are exposed to AS. My greatest fear is that, because of harmful stereotypes these stories might propagate or revive, such as the idea that folks with AS don’t have emotions or are devoid of empathy, when I graduate and get a job I won’t be able to come out as having Asperger’s to my boss or coworkers without them thinking I’m some kind of budding mass murderer. All my Asperger’s does is make me awkward in social situations, since I don’t always catch subtleties in what others say or know how to respond appropriately. I do feel lonely and sad sometimes because my condition makes it hard to make friends, let alone date, but I would never, ever dream of hurting another person, nor do I blame other people for my communication problems.

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I quite liked the recommendations from the psychiatrist at ~1:45. Keen observations on how the media usually gets stories like this wrong, and I thank Purplecat for sharing this.

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Well, as someone who appeals to perhaps the lowest common denominator, maybe. But I am unaware of whether he faked his accent/background or not… That’s the point, those two together.

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ive never heard it put that way before, and i think that’s a really amazing insight.
casual misogyny and hateful speech isn’t just guys being guys, it’s actively making people less safe.
media talking heads don’t cause people to rush out and kill people, they normalize a mode of behavior which stops people from being able to tell who and what is dangerous.

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how about not being able to buy a glock at all? or, how about being required to keep your gun at the shooting range? or how about taxing guns and - more importantly ammo - to discourage sales?
we could improve gun restrictions a lot. a ten day waiting period for something which can, and frequently does these days, cause the deaths of other people is a joke.

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We should all aspire to be the peaceful, tolerant paradise known as Israel.

I’ll point out that Vermont has very few gun laws, but a murder rate nearly as low as Japan; certainly far lower than Israel.

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i for one liked your new found usage of gerrymander. it’s great because it has echos of political manipulation, which is perfect for the context. :}

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That’s a disgusting attitude. Let’s get real a moment: you’re actually saying that calling a woman ugly leads to mass murder.

Way to trivialize this.

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thanks! if you read what i said, and you saw what i was replying to you’re exactly spot on. /sarcasm

they said:

when half the audience… is shouting “fire!” because they think it’s hilarious, how to figure out if there’s an actual danger, much less how to identify the real source?

which is all about signal-to-noise ratio. it seems spot on to me, and i’m honestly curious how you get from there to whatever lonesome road you’ve taken.

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[quote=“Mister44, post:207, topic:32359, full:true”]
I don’t understand why some people seem to throw gun owning stats in with crime statistics to justify that “guns are bad”. Guns are inanimate objects. [/quote]

I agree entirely. Gun’s aren’t people.

That’s why I think telling guns they shouldn’t shouldn’t shoot people, reminding them to look both ways when crossing the street, and encouraging them to eat well are all silly things. Let’s restrict gun ownership instead.

Maybe. But, they do make committing a crime once you’ve decided to a heck of a lot easier.

Given America’s abysmal record with gun violence, maybe it’s time to try something different.

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I’m not quibbling in general about the stats you found, but I think D.C.'s gun ownership rate is too narrowly determined: the District is a tiny patch of land into which most people commute on a daily basis from the surrounding states. And it’s a tinderbox of hostilities.

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No. Larry the Cable Guy and Duck Douchebag are taking advantage of fat, dumb suburbanites who are so powerless that they think they can worship the pasty tokens of power advertised on TV and the magazine racks of the barber shop. “Stupid hicks” are, frankly, too worried about staying alive and staying out of jail to be political. Gun nuttery is a low-end luxury pose, like lift kits for pickups. There’s a lot of money to be made in both enthusiasms but the price point on guns and ammunition is less frightening than it is for hot rods. Hence the shift in popularity. Congratulation, gun dipshits, you really are desirable… marks.

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They also elected a socialist and make maple syrup. They might as well be Canucks.

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