I want to understand why we're taking another attempt at the sisyphean task of banning guns when less controversial mental healthcare reform is ripe for discussion. In the case of the Parkland shooter, everyone knew the killer was dangerous, but there was no reasonable mechanism for getting an appropriate combination of judges, law enforcement officers, and mental health care officials empowered to do anything about it.
Current U.S. law says mental health is only a problem after violence already happens. We need other mechanisms. And we need funding and accountability to make sure people are actually cared for and not just locked up in the prison system. Police officers are not psychiatrists and jails are not hospitals.
First I beg to differ- compare the EU to the U.S. or the U.S. to India, or to China for that matter or the U.S. to Brazil. Not just "countries". The US is one of the largest countries on Earth (by population and landmass), with one of the most diverse sets of population... It's really hard to even find a comparison.
And I can tell you've never used a gun, it's not really something you go - "yeah let's kill people for fun today". Most of the cases (literally all the ones I know of) do it for revenge, or how they feel about themselves, don't really think a hobby is playing into it - more likely it's that when guns are used we plaster their names all over every media outlet.
The comparison isn't favorable to the US.
Often this makes people feel isolated or ostracized, because they don't fit in or are being out down. Then you get mass murder or murder in general, because I you don't relate. Basically, you have no incentive to care for one another.
Lot of those groups hate each other. Many of them have lower status in society. And millions of people there have mental issues. People don't give shit about mental health there. If guns become normal there, it would be catastrophic.
I never said people kill for fun. When mass shooting happens, using gun feels normal. Because they have been using that weapon (gun) like it's supposed to (shooting practices and hunting) for a long time.
Sorry, but this is completely false.
I am not going to link to it for reasons of taste, but you can google "encyclopedia dramatica high score" for a very thorough run down on mass shootings. They occur globally and are by no means a phenomenon isolated to the US.
Compare the USA situation to countries at war or with armed insurgencies and, of course, it might seem even tame. If you aspire only to give your citizens the security of a corrupt developing world dictatorship then this comparison is probably useful.
I read the parent comment again and I don't see the phrase "at all" in there, so the clear implication (at least to me) is that they meant mass murders by gun happen far less often.
Next, I'm assuming that by "mass shootings" you mean the FPS, Single Player category on there (since the only other FPS aka shootings category is Co-op Mode which seems to be almost exclusively terrorism and gangs, not "common people").
Here is the raw data: https://pastebin.com/rfHy5KUu
Here is the aggregate by country: https://pastebin.com/NPi3kELY
USA has 'only' 4.3% of global population but 17 out of 50 top ED loner shootings and one third of deaths and almost half of injuries.
If that's not a phenomenon then I guess nothing is.
Perhaps I should just publish some results. Seriously, every time I debate a data scientist I just send them to the data. Heat correlates more with mass murder than anything... Like I don't really get it.
While of course no country can ever be mass shootings free and immune to them since a determined person (ISIS, Breivik, etc.) can always get a gun eventually I was just pointing out that based on the cited stats USA is standing out with regards to frequency (even compared to much more populous China, India, EU+UK+Norway, etc.) so there is some US specific phenomenon related to mass shootings (for whatever reason, gun availability, society, heat, magic, that's beside the point I was making).
Not sure what you mean by mentally ill, but they have definitely been used for that in Europe.
So, demolition derbys? Is there a higher rate of murder by car among people that participate in them?
Funny. I live in a country where gun ownership is common-ish. Curiously, per your theory, though - no mass shootings.
Gun ownership is not the root of all evil.
But, shooting is common. It's a hobby. A killing machine is normalized and it becomes a culture. So, those mentally ill men feels completely normal to shoot people when they go crazy.
Consider this: ramming car into objects becomes a hobby and people starts to do that and take pride in it. They practice it every week. Then, those mentally ills will start using those methods. And then government will ban riding a car. But, this is not happening, just a hypothesis. You can replace car with other objects you can think of here.
That's why countries where gun are banned for general population, does not have mass murder by "common people" like USA. There are mentally ill people everywhere, not just in USA. This is the point gun lovers don't understand.