Lol these fucking people think they are in a video game. — Streetlight

, he yelled from his glass prison.

What role are you playing?

That of the broken prisoner with Stockholm syndrome, or the king's dog?

Neither can stand to see others defy the power they so meekly subjugated themselves to.

Can you explain how making it easy for people in violent neighbourhoods to get guns makes them less violent? It seems you are making the argument for gun control here.

he yelled from his glass prison. — Tzeentch

he yelled surrounded by the real life corpses of children as he fantasied about being opppresseedddd.

Guns used in-self defense are also pretty rare. They are far more likely to be used for suicide. So again we have arguments founded on adult fantasy.

Maybe threat of violence? Like the ‘nuclear deterrent’ idea … it is a stretch though.

In the US the problem in society seems to run far deeper than people shoot each other because they have access to guns. If the guns were removed would we see more knife crime? If so then the problem is the people and having guns does not make someone kill.

Remove/address what is driving people to commit such insane crimes would be a better path to take rather than blaming guns for violence.

Note: I understand the title of the thread is aimed specifically at gun control. My point is why everyone is obsessed with this debate rather than focusing more carefully on what drives someone to kill in the manner they do in the US whilst in other countries this kind of thing is rare.

Government serves us by enforcing a system of social relations that's conducive to mutually beneficial interaction and general personal security. The cost is we play ball and obey the law. Overall, it's a reasonable trade. Fretting about Mad Max scenarios, or fantasising about vanquishing tanks and planes with guns is a sad and delusional way to live, and completely unnecessary.

specifically at gun control. My point is why everyone is obsessed with this debate rather than focusing more carefully on what drives someone to kill in the manner they do in the US whilst in other countries this kind of thing is rare. — I like sushi

Mental health problems exist in every country. Access to guns is the distinguishing factor.

This is an assumption that it is THE underlying factor.

Like I said, what if guns were taken out of circulation yet the degree of violence continued with cases of stabbings that effectively made little difference to the kill count?

Maybe it more or less something to do with items like education, wealth disparities and employment. Maybe lack of paid holidays? Extortionate healthcare?

Blanketing the issue with ‘guns’ seems a tad naive to me. I can see it is useful as a device for political haranguing to gain votes though.

Why Does the U.S. Have So Many Mass Shootings? Research Is Clear: Guns.

But there is one quirk that consistently puzzles America’s fans and critics alike. Why, they ask, does it experience so many mass shootings?

Perhaps, some speculate, it is because American society is unusually violent. Or its racial divisions have frayed the bonds of society. Or its citizens lack proper mental care under a health care system that draws frequent derision abroad.

These explanations share one thing in common: Though seemingly sensible, all have been debunked by research on shootings elsewhere in the world. Instead, an ever-growing body of research consistently reaches the same conclusion.

The only variable that can explain the high rate of mass shootings in America is its astronomical number of guns.

...

Worldwide, Mr. Lankford found, a country’s rate of gun ownership correlated with the odds it would experience a mass shooting. This relationship held even when he excluded the United States, indicating that it could not be explained by some other factor particular to his home country. And it held when he controlled for homicide rates, suggesting that mass shootings were better explained by a society’s access to guns than by its baseline level of violence.

...

If mental health made the difference, then data would show that Americans have more mental health problems than do people in other countries with fewer mass shootings. But the mental health care spending rate in the United States, the number of mental health professionals per capita and the rate of severe mental disorders are all in line with those of other wealthy countries.

A 2015 study estimated that only 4 percent of American gun deaths could be attributed to mental health issues. And Mr. Lankford, in an email, said countries with high suicide rates tended to have low rates of mass shootings — the opposite of what you would expect if mental health problems correlated with mass shootings.

Whether a population plays more or fewer video games also appears to have no impact. Americans are no more likely to play video games than people in any other developed country.

Racial diversity or other factors associated with social cohesion also show little correlation with gun deaths. Among European countries, there is little association between immigration or other diversity metrics and the rates of gun murders or mass shootings.

...

America’s gun homicide rate was 33 per million people in 2009, far exceeding the average among developed countries. In Canada and Britain, it was 5 per million and 0.7 per million, respectively, which also corresponds with differences in gun ownership.

Americans sometimes see this as an expression of deeper problems with crime, a notion ingrained, in part, by a series of films portraying urban gang violence in the early 1990s. But the United States is not actually more prone to crime than other developed countries, according to a landmark 1999 study by Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins of the University of California, Berkeley.

Rather, they found, in data that has since been repeatedly confirmed, that American crime is simply more lethal. A New Yorker is just as likely to be robbed as a Londoner, for instance, but the New Yorker is 54 times more likely to be killed in the process.

They concluded that the discrepancy, like so many other anomalies of American violence, came down to guns.

More gun ownership corresponds with more gun murders across virtually every axis: among developed countries, among American states, among American towns and cities and when controlling for crime rates. And gun control legislation tends to reduce gun murders, according to a recent analysis of 130 studies from 10 countries.

The late, great Warren Zevon described the curious blend of fear, loss of self-esteem, belligerence (or perhaps chest-thumping) and eagerness which characterizes the gun culture and so much else in our Great Republic in his song Rottweiler Blues. Have a listen. And by the way, I own three shotguns, and just you try to take them away!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_0e4chKXQ4

Like I said, what if guns were taken out of circulation yet the degree of violence continued with cases of stabbings that effectively made little difference to the kill count? — I like sushi

Real world experience shows that it does make a difference. See this.

I'd say history and in recent times the track record of the United States military (the world's most advanced military) speak to the contrary.

Peasants with rifles are apparently not so easy to get rid of, no matter how much barbarism one is willing to resort to. — Tzeentch

So you've said before, yet provision of any actual historical data examples remains lacking.

Can you explain how making it easy for people in violent neighbourhoods to get guns makes them less violent? It seems you are making the argument for gun control here. — Baden

ppl in violent neighborhoods go through the same background checks as everyone else. the texas shooter surely had a background check. people can also lie on background checks and maybe they can get away with some lies like on mental health because mental health is usually confidential.

sure we can use more gun control, sure we can raise the age to 21... but will this stop a determined mass shooter? i'm a skeptic on this one. guns are readily available, especially in texas. parents buy them for kids. average gun owner owns 3. iirc about a quarter of guns acquired are not purchased thru a licensed dealer.

we all want these shootings to stop but the enforcement aspect is very very difficult.

Government serves us by enforcing a system of social relations that's conducive to mutually beneficial interaction and general personal security. The cost is we play ball and obey the law. Overall, it's a reasonable trade. — Baden

As of right now? I would probably agree.

But given the events of the last years, it is not obvious that things should stay that way.

Fretting about Mad Max scenarios, or fantasising about vanquishing tanks and planes with guns is a sad and delusional way to live, and completely unnecessary. — Baden

You speak as though the United States military, with all their planes, tanks, cruise missiles and artillery strikes never lost a war against armed peasants, when in fact that's all they did in the past decades.

The difference would be that in those wars the US could afford not to care about the land and people they destroyed.

Because you're afraid to give up the Call of Duty simulator in your head. — Streetlight

not cod, gta.

It is exactly what would stop it. — Tzeentch

No, it would do nothing to stop it.

What you’re doing is repeating propaganda. You’ve been sold an idea, and a silly one. It’s a fantasy created to justify the grotesque amount of guns in the United States.

All people like you do is enable the continued killing of children. That’s all.

My point is why everyone is obsessed with this debate rather than focusing more carefully on what drives someone to kill in the manner they do in the US whilst in other countries this kind of thing is rare. — I like sushi

The reason for these deaths is the gun supply. You have mental health issues around the world. The US is an outlier on deaths and mass shootings because of the amount of guns combined with the ease of access/ownership to guns.

Speculation about what drives people to do what they do — who knows. Upbringing, culture, material conditions, lack of healthcare, poor education, abuse/neglect, etc. True, the US is awful in many respects — without guns. Add hundreds of millions of guns, including assault weapons, into the mix — with very few regulations — and you have a recipe for exactly what we see.

All enabled by those who have been brainwashed by the weapons manufacturing industry to fetishize guns and the 2nd amendment. We can be real men if we own one. We can defend ourselves — like the Vietnamese — when Big Government comes for us one day. Etc. You see them crawling out from under their rocks right here on the forum.

If you lived up a mountain or in the middle of a forest, it might not be too easy to take you out, though I doubt you'd survive long there anyhow, and 99% of Americans don't live up mountains or in forests; they live in urban areas or on open land. In the amazingly unlikely event your government went nuts and decided to wipe you all out and the military said, 'fine, let's do it', it would take an even more amazingly unlikely scenario for you stand a hope in hell against them. Anyhow, the fact that you spend more than milliseconds of your time entertaining this is suggestive of an inability to rationally assess risk. You're more likely to be killed by a shark in your bathtub than to live out this fantasy.

Besides, if your government killed y'all who would be left to buy guns? This whole misadventure sounds bad for business, which apart from anything else, guarantees it won't happen

Like I said, what if guns were taken out of circulation yet the degree of violence continued with cases of stabbings that effectively made little difference to the kill count? — I like sushi

Is this supposed to be serious?

“What if”? We know the answer. Look around the world. Less guns, less mass shootings. Same rates of mental illness.

Making this obvious problem about mentally illness is an NRA talking point. Stop imitating Ted Cruz.

one point that hasn't been mentioned here is that guns are basically the easiest way for one to kill themselves, so taking away peoples' guns removes the possibility of a quick, easy suicide. don't you dare take that from gun owners.

we all want these shootings to stop but the enforcement aspect is very very difficult. — Moses

No it isn’t. It’s only difficult in this country because of the fetishizing of the 2nd amendment and cultivation of gun culture. The NRA has had enormous political power for decades. They’ve done such a good job brainwashing the population that even if they disappeared, the gun obsession would continue.

@Baden

Are you going to transfer the post from "Easy Plan for Gun Control" here.

Mental health.

Second amendment as holy writ.

Arming teachers (i.e., MORE guns).

Viet Cong.

Protecting ourselves from big government.

“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
_____


Just off the top of my head. Expect all of the above from the gun fetishists. :yawn:

Meanwhile, a lot more kids will have to die.

When I get to a desktop, yes.

No it isn’t. — Xtrix

it is. klebold and harris got their weapons from friends/acquaintances as other mass shooters have. the government is simply not able to keep guns out of the hands of bad people. we can ban felons from holding guns and try to screen them out, but again if a determined felon wants a gun he's likely going to get one if he has friends. you just think the government/law enforcement has a much wider reach/capabilities than it actually does. there are more guns than people in this country and any attempt to confiscate would be met with serious backlash as it should.

have you looked into why the texas shooter did what he did? it didn't have much to do with gun culture. he was from a broken home, no upward mobility, worked at wendy's full time, no hope, bullied relentlessly over a speech impediment, wasn't graduating hs, got called a faggot by his peers for wearing eyeliner. other shooters draw on racist manifestos. blaming it all on gun culture is not accurate.

iirc he was challenging ppl to boxing matches out in the park before doing the shooting someone should have flagged him as dangerous. stop the problem before it gets to that point. we need strong communities that can catch things like this. he showed many red flags.

We're really running the gamut on what gun proponents are asking us to imagine. On one end we're being asked by @Tzeentch to envision a vague government takeover that requires wide gun ownership to counter. Maybe if he repeats the phrase "armed peasants" in a mirror three times it will come true. On the other hand, we're also asked by @Moses to not use political imagination at all! Enforcement is too difficult, we cannot possible stop a determined mass shooter. So we're simultaneously being asked to use the fullest extent of our political imagination, i.e. a government takeover, in order to comprehend the necessity of gun ownership, as well as restrain our political imagination in order to accept the futility of gun control.

Both of course are examples of American exceptionalism; Americans being exceptionally stupid and myopic when there are plenty of comparative examples to limit and control gun ownership in other countries. Australia confiscated over half a million privately-owned guns through a mandatory government buy-back program, which helped decrease the suicide rate by 57% (down 74% in 2010) and homicide by 42% seven years after implementation. Japan requires a background check including criminal records, a mental health check, a strict limit on what type of gun they can buy, and a strict limit on how many gun shops are allowed to operate in each prefecture. America can also reinstate the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which, as you can see from the chart, helped limit deaths from mass shootings until the GOP allowed it to expire in 2004.



The US government can also clamp down on firearm manufactures from making certain firearms, which coupled with mandatory buybacks, can greatly limit the amount of semi-automatics and automatics from the marketplace. The government can also end gun-maker liability protections (and impose heavy heavy fines and hold executives responsible).

This is a philosophy forum so it might be worth considering that the US has a different culture to other cultures around the world.

I am being rational. I am stating that removing guns may not really change that people want to kill other en masse in the US. Obviously the ready availability guns eases mass murder BUT it is a symptom of some unstable minds. We can speculate what causes first then maybe dig to the root of the societal unrest that causes many to walk around in fear in the US.

It is interesting to see how people from US react when living in Europe. They feel safe. Is the fear due to guns? Maybe. It would seem to be the most obvious reason people are scared knowing so many people have guns. I am just asking if there is something else being missed.

I’m not from the US and find carrying guns bizarre. I am not interested in your politicking or attempts to paint me whatever colour suits your biases. I don’t care for it in the slightest but go ahead and continue if you want to be met with silence.

I know all this. That was not my point.

Yes, clearly there is an issue with gun control. I am from a country where I have literally never seen an armed police officer let alone someone else carrying a gun.

US culture is not like other countries. I am just saying there may be a much deeper problem in US society because it is a cultural attitude held, and impressed, by the ruling body.

The US is a strange country.