Secret Service agents protecting President Joe Biden’s granddaughter have opened fire after three people tried to break into an unmarked Secret Service vehicle in Washington.
I addressed the which state is which, I addressed the under-20s dying of gun homicide. If I didn’t address them enough please feel free to ask for detail on whatever part of it you wish to focus on.
As for the other key point (US has more gun homicide than Germany or AU)- that one’s more complicated.
There’s an obvious answer that there’s more guns in USA, thus more gun homicide- much the same as you get more drownings in Miami (where everyone’s at the beach) than Kansas (where there’s no water).
However I think focusing on homicide rate by weapon is of limited use. I think overall homicide rate is more important-- if in one place the homicide rate is 1/10million and most of them are stabbings and in another place the homicide rate is 1/10million and most of them are shootings, neither one is safer than the other.
I suspect USA has higher overall homicide rate than either of those two places. But I think the root causes for that are the ‘hard problems’ we ignore- poverty, drugs, gangs, hopelessness, etc. DE and AU have decent modern health care systems and actually take care of their population. Mental health care is available and affordable. Strong social safety net keeps people out of extreme poverty. Thus- less drug use, less gangs, and of course less violence from the gangs.
I’m sure there’s some part of that difference that comes from side effects of our gun policies, so don’t think I’m being obtuse. Just that I don’t think it’s anywhere near the direct causation you seem to be claiming.
Are you from the US? I’m assuming not. I mean no offense by this.
What most people from other places don’t recognize is that the US is in effect 50 different countries. Each state has their own regulations, that in some cases are wildly different from the next.
That applies to gun laws also.
So it’s most incorrect to say ‘we tried nothing and it didn’t work’, when in reality we’ve tried 50 different things. That is the beauty of your link, if you look at the state by state data. There’s 50 different visions of what gun policy should be, and 50 different outcomes. And this really does run the gamut. There are a few national-level laws, for example every gun store purchase must have a background check, and some case law that has defined what the government can and can’t do to regulate, but for the most part it’s up to each state to write their own policy.
In DC for example, you had a scheme that would fit in well anywhere in Europe- you need training and licensing to even get a permit to buy a gun, each gun has to be registered and test-fired before it can be delivered to the buyer. From beginning to end the process of buying a gun (which you couldn’t even carry) took months and a dozen visits to various government agencies. I’ve heard it’s since gotten a bit less strict, but it was like that for a LONG time.
DC has the highest rate of gun violence in the nation and has for a very long time.
Hawaii has gun control that’s similarly strict, and has among the lowest gun homicide rate in the nation.
In Vermont for example you have what everyone accuses the entire USA of having- anyone can buy as many guns as they want with no training or licensing, and you can carry your gun loaded without a permit or proof of training. This is sometimes called ‘Constitutional Carry’ (the Constitution is your carry permit). Buying a gun is easy, other than the Federally-mandated background check, you can walk into a gun store and walk out with a gun in less than an hour.
Vermont has among the highest gun ownership rate, but among the lowest gun homicide rate.
Alaska is similar to Vermont (Constitutional Carry, high gun ownership rate) but among the highest gun homicide rate.
What those 4 states should tell you, is that gun policy or gun ownership rate are not necessarily drivers of gun homicide rate. Something else is going on that drives gun homicide rate.
So’s the E.U. they got it to work. The excuses Americans will make for allowing themselves to ignore the dead kid problem is astounding. And you’re right, there is more that drives homicide rate, like lack of social services, 10% of your population living without food security on an annual basis, 54% of your adult population reading below a 6th grade literacy level, there’s a lot of big problems and you aren’t fixing any of them.
And you’re right, there is more that drives homicide rate, like lack of social services, 10% of your population living without food security on an annual basis, 54% of your adult population reading below a 6th grade literacy level, there’s a lot of big problems and you aren’t fixing any of them.
And on this I am in 100% agreement. It’s fucking shameful that we don’t take care of our own people. But our government spends money it doesn’t have like there’s no tomorrow; our military is bigger than the next 10 in the world combined (including all of our enemies) and we continue to fund it at absurd rates, we have billions of $ worth of domestic spying invading our privacy. And while we fight over whether we protect kids with more guns or less guns, we then throw them in schools where teachers are barely able to scrape by, send them into a cutthroat society where corporations fuck over the employees with no remorse, and where if you’re not rich you probably can’t afford much in the way of decent health care.
Quite frankly it’s shameful. It’s appalling. If it or any part of it was imposed upon us by force by another nation, we’d all go to war and support using nukes against them. But we do it to ourselves so we smile and nod and say ‘oh he got cancer and went bankrupt and couldn’t afford treatment and died’ like that’s the way things are supposed to be.
And then in our politics we fight over should we elect this loser or that psycho, should we have more guns or less guns, should we have more immigration or more border security, meanwhile upward mobility is down, quality of life is down, the wealth of the nation is being extracted by big companies, and we’re too distracted by random shit to fix the underlying problems.
So if you think I’m one of the ‘Murica, fuck yeah!’ people, I’m not. I love my country and I’m proud to be American, but I’m not proud of what my nation has become lately.
So’s the E.U. they got it to work. The excuses Americans will make for allowing themselves to ignore the dead kid problem is astounding.
I would agree with this, but it’s not about guns (especially since most of those kids are shot with illegal guns by people who can’t legally own guns).
The problem is poverty. And we do fuck all about that.
What about the other two more important statistics? Stop killing kids with your emotional support weapons you fucking cowards.
the ‘key statistics’ at the top–
I addressed the which state is which, I addressed the under-20s dying of gun homicide. If I didn’t address them enough please feel free to ask for detail on whatever part of it you wish to focus on.
As for the other key point (US has more gun homicide than Germany or AU)- that one’s more complicated.
There’s an obvious answer that there’s more guns in USA, thus more gun homicide- much the same as you get more drownings in Miami (where everyone’s at the beach) than Kansas (where there’s no water).
However I think focusing on homicide rate by weapon is of limited use. I think overall homicide rate is more important-- if in one place the homicide rate is 1/10million and most of them are stabbings and in another place the homicide rate is 1/10million and most of them are shootings, neither one is safer than the other.
I suspect USA has higher overall homicide rate than either of those two places. But I think the root causes for that are the ‘hard problems’ we ignore- poverty, drugs, gangs, hopelessness, etc. DE and AU have decent modern health care systems and actually take care of their population. Mental health care is available and affordable. Strong social safety net keeps people out of extreme poverty. Thus- less drug use, less gangs, and of course less violence from the gangs.
I’m sure there’s some part of that difference that comes from side effects of our gun policies, so don’t think I’m being obtuse. Just that I don’t think it’s anywhere near the direct causation you seem to be claiming.
It doesn’t matter what you think when there’s evidence of what works.
“We’ve tried nothing, and it hasn’t worked!” Says only country where this happens regularly.
Are you from the US? I’m assuming not. I mean no offense by this.
What most people from other places don’t recognize is that the US is in effect 50 different countries. Each state has their own regulations, that in some cases are wildly different from the next.
That applies to gun laws also.
So it’s most incorrect to say ‘we tried nothing and it didn’t work’, when in reality we’ve tried 50 different things. That is the beauty of your link, if you look at the state by state data. There’s 50 different visions of what gun policy should be, and 50 different outcomes. And this really does run the gamut. There are a few national-level laws, for example every gun store purchase must have a background check, and some case law that has defined what the government can and can’t do to regulate, but for the most part it’s up to each state to write their own policy.
In DC for example, you had a scheme that would fit in well anywhere in Europe- you need training and licensing to even get a permit to buy a gun, each gun has to be registered and test-fired before it can be delivered to the buyer. From beginning to end the process of buying a gun (which you couldn’t even carry) took months and a dozen visits to various government agencies. I’ve heard it’s since gotten a bit less strict, but it was like that for a LONG time.
DC has the highest rate of gun violence in the nation and has for a very long time.
Hawaii has gun control that’s similarly strict, and has among the lowest gun homicide rate in the nation.
In Vermont for example you have what everyone accuses the entire USA of having- anyone can buy as many guns as they want with no training or licensing, and you can carry your gun loaded without a permit or proof of training. This is sometimes called ‘Constitutional Carry’ (the Constitution is your carry permit). Buying a gun is easy, other than the Federally-mandated background check, you can walk into a gun store and walk out with a gun in less than an hour.
Vermont has among the highest gun ownership rate, but among the lowest gun homicide rate.
Alaska is similar to Vermont (Constitutional Carry, high gun ownership rate) but among the highest gun homicide rate.
What those 4 states should tell you, is that gun policy or gun ownership rate are not necessarily drivers of gun homicide rate. Something else is going on that drives gun homicide rate.
So’s the E.U. they got it to work. The excuses Americans will make for allowing themselves to ignore the dead kid problem is astounding. And you’re right, there is more that drives homicide rate, like lack of social services, 10% of your population living without food security on an annual basis, 54% of your adult population reading below a 6th grade literacy level, there’s a lot of big problems and you aren’t fixing any of them.
And on this I am in 100% agreement. It’s fucking shameful that we don’t take care of our own people. But our government spends money it doesn’t have like there’s no tomorrow; our military is bigger than the next 10 in the world combined (including all of our enemies) and we continue to fund it at absurd rates, we have billions of $ worth of domestic spying invading our privacy. And while we fight over whether we protect kids with more guns or less guns, we then throw them in schools where teachers are barely able to scrape by, send them into a cutthroat society where corporations fuck over the employees with no remorse, and where if you’re not rich you probably can’t afford much in the way of decent health care.
Quite frankly it’s shameful. It’s appalling. If it or any part of it was imposed upon us by force by another nation, we’d all go to war and support using nukes against them. But we do it to ourselves so we smile and nod and say ‘oh he got cancer and went bankrupt and couldn’t afford treatment and died’ like that’s the way things are supposed to be.
And then in our politics we fight over should we elect this loser or that psycho, should we have more guns or less guns, should we have more immigration or more border security, meanwhile upward mobility is down, quality of life is down, the wealth of the nation is being extracted by big companies, and we’re too distracted by random shit to fix the underlying problems.
So if you think I’m one of the ‘Murica, fuck yeah!’ people, I’m not. I love my country and I’m proud to be American, but I’m not proud of what my nation has become lately.
I would agree with this, but it’s not about guns (especially since most of those kids are shot with illegal guns by people who can’t legally own guns).
The problem is poverty. And we do fuck all about that.