In all honesty I started with Jim Jefferies’ claim in his show Bare, and then read along to the wiki article on the Port Arthur shooting which at the time I read it pretty much said there were no mass shootings since the legislation.
I’ll admit that I may not have accurate information.
Although if those shootings are all that can be dredged up they’re basically statistical noise compared to the American schedule of mass shootings of 1 every 2-3 days year round since the mid 2000s.
Fatal firearms accidents have been declining damned near monotonically since 1903. The US has the highest rate of gun homicide rate absolutely and per capita in the developed world. By far.
Concealed carry doesn’t bother me.
Open carry does since it is intimidation and half a step from terrorism
Those are fair game, but if they are fair game then the least conservative American numbers are also fair game. You’d still be talking a difference of 20 deaths in those decades versus 20-120 deaths per year in the US in the same timeframe.
Edited for clarity.
You just offended a bunch of guys who like to carry around guns in the open. It really pisses these gun guys off when you tell them you think their carrying around guns and waving them around in public makes you feel unsafe and intimidated.
Maybe you shouldn’t be so fucking rude and controversial and bigoted towards all these “extremely responsible fellas” who love to carry around armed and efficient machines for killing people, all the time.
/ETA:
This is why we can’t have a “gun debate”. All the guys who want guns have all the guns, and all the people who don’t think everyone having guns is a good idea: don’t own guns. Disagreeing with someone who thinks it’s okay to carry around guns could mean that they’ll disagree so much they’ll fucking kill you with their machine made for killing people.
You can’t “debate” with people who think killing other people is the right way to solve problems and disputes.
Just one problem. I own guns. I had a CCW which i since let lapse. I enjoy shooting. I used to teach people how to shoot. I am increasingly disenchanted with gun people.
Sounds to me like you don’t go around with your AR or AK slung across your back, making sure everyone can clearly see all your tacticool bullshit in Chipotle and getting super offended when the business owner asks you to leave.
Also saying open carry is intimidation and half a step from terrorism really is very offensive to many “very responsible gun owners” who feel that it’s perfectly alright to brandish in public.
I fear that i am what gun people call a Fudd
I’ve shot some too. I enjoy it.
I’d think we’d all be safer if you had to keep your guns in a secure local armory (perhaps where your well-regulated militia trains and practices, so they don’t get rusty on safe handling etc.) instead of your home where your loved ones also happen to live.
I think comparing Mexico to most US states, as well as to other countries, is comparing apples and oranges. The problems facing Mexico, as well as a lot of third world nations, have less to do with guns and more to do with economic problems and political corruption. If you arm every Mexican overnight I don’t see it solving their problems.
Crime doesn’t exist for it’s own sake, it exists because of economic issues, drug problems, social issues, etc. Arming more people won’t make those things go away, just like taking away guns won’t make those things go away.
The data is what it is. My issue was the specific inaccurate claim, which gets repeated often.
I hate guns. We should be at a developmental level at which they have no function in society.
I would love to build the world where all that steel is melted down and reused for far more constructive purposes, like building public toilets.
We do not live in that world, yet. And I certainly don’t feel it’s my place particularly to state that POC/victims of colonialism/imperialism should be disarmed.
Lastly, as we’re doing an absolute shit job of confronting the existential crises we face as a species. Sooner rather than later society could devolve into full blown chaos, and if that future indeed comes to pass, fuckin a right there’s gonna be a path-clearing mossberg strapped to my back as me and mine bug out to the hinterlands.
Have you seen any evidence to support the theory that people who have armed themselves in self-defense against the racist, imperialist powers-that-be fare better than the people who haven’t?
That’s a fairly open question. I would say the YPG most certainly need their guns. The people of Cherán, Mexíco certainly needed them to liberate themselves.
On the other hand I definitely know that owning a gun makes you more likely to die by the gun. From a purely technocratic theoretical POV I would say it is obvious to ban guns, universally.
My personal politics leads me to believe that, good intentions/road to hell, taking this stance is acting out the role of the colonizer. I am open to the idea that my thinking is wrong on this, but I’ll admit you or anyone would be hard pressed to convince me otherwise. This is why I generally don’t comment on gun topics.
You can’t break apart gun statistics like that. It’s a package deal.
Well zero of those were someone taking a gun into a public area without a plan for who to kill other than racking up a body count; they all had targets, and a couple had additional casualties. So depending on who you talk to and the definition used depends on what you allow.
Your problem is more along the lines of what I addressed: people tend to change the definition based on what they are saying. If you use a conservative definition for what a mass shooting is to get 0 mass shootings in Australia (by using say mass gun murders or gun massacres excluding family and gang affiliation) then you can’t say there has been a mass shooting for every day of the year in the US each year. If you say there have been a dozen mass shootings in Australia since then, then you can say there have been over a thousand in the United States in the same timeframe.
Setting the definition is important, and sticking to it is the only way to hold a conversation.
Half is being generous, for the folks that support Open Carry.
I am of the belief that open carry makes sense primarily for remote areas of the country where it makes sense to keep a rifle or shotgun in your car, and a pistol on your hip in case of bears, mountain lions, boars, other ornery creatures. And perhaps that was its original intent, and nothing more!
It would make it easier to discuss such issues if there was a general agreement about how they are defined.
According to a Rand Corporation report on the issue, “the government has never defined mass shooting as a separate category, and there is not yet a universally accepted definition of the term.”
The New York Times, in an article about the Osmington shootings, noted “Experts typically define a mass shooting as the deaths of four people, excluding the gunman, in a single event.”.
Well getting the government to agree on a definition was attempted and lobbied against. That’s why I said any discussion needs to set the definition to be productive. Basically every major news investigation on the topic manages to, and so do the few studies on the subject. In general “an act of violence—excluding gang killings, domestic violence, or terrorist acts sponsored by an organization—in which a gunman kills at least four victims” or some variation is used more often than anything else. That’s a far cry from the mass killing measure law enforcement tracks.
Open carry also made sense when most firearms were large, bulky, difficult to conceal, and required a brace if you wanted more than one shot “Is that a blunderbuss in your knickerbockers, or are you just happy to see me?”
