It's also politics. If you actually wanted to solve the problem, well, like two thirds of US firearms fatalities are suicides. So a real solution is going to look like "improve mental health" and not "restrict who can buy a gun" or else you're only going to be diverting people to other methods of suicide, or keeping people "alive" but still in such a precarious mental state that the only thing preventing them from taking their own life is access to an effective means. Neither of which is actually acceptable.
But from a political perspective, proposing useless gun restrictions makes the other team have to spend political capital to oppose them, because even if they're completely ineffective at their stated purpose, they upset or inconvenience the other team's constituents. Which seems to be the goal of modern US politics.
I think that this is a poor target. How do you set out directly targeting mental health? What are the biggest causes of mental health issues?
https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/learn/index.htm
CDC lists causes such as childhood trauma, trauma from medical issues, biological factors, alcohol or drugs, and loneliness or isolation.
How do you set out to tackle loneliness or isolation? How do you help prevent alcohol or drug addiction? What are the reasons that people become addicted to drugs or alcohol?
> Use and misuse of alcohol, nicotine, and illicit drugs, and misuse of prescription drugs cost Americans more than $700 billion a year in increased health care costs, crime, and lost productivity.
https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior...
> Some must cope with the early loss of a parent, violence, or sexual abuse. While not everyone who faces these stresses develops a mood disorder — in fact, most do not — stress plays an important role in depression.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/what-causes-dep...
This is a big interconnected problem. My point is that just giving directly to mental health resources rings hollow. A tougher holistic approach needs to examine why American society just plain sucks for so many people. Why do people want to kill themselves or others? Why does life suck so much for so many? We have a rotten system and drug addiction/gun violence/suicide are symptoms and not causes.
My 2 rambling cents.
Not having your media contributing to hyper-polarization of your populace through algorithm enforced bubbling, or riling them up through fear mongering helps. Lack of public works may also be a contributing factor. One thing I will say for the Great Depression/New Deal generation: they didn't have anywhere near the isolation issues our generation seems to grapple with.
> How do you help prevent alcohol or drug addiction? What are the reasons that people become addicted to drugs or alcohol?
Inability to escape or alter their situation except by altered mental state. Get people something they can constructively do (and fairly pay then for their time) and it's amazing how positive coping skills materialize.
For those with non-economic contributing factors, a big part of it seems to be social enablement, removing them from the stressor, etc... Which a robust framework of social services may help more with as long as you don't start trying to turn reaching out into a life tainting thing (no publically available by default records for info brokers to suck up that would adversely effect future prospects).
Also, unironically, a better justice system, post-release process.
These aren't hard. Just not terribly popular, due to the fact you have to pay people to help other people improve their lot. Or literally just inspect to make sure people are effectively using resources available to get their stuff straight.
On many occasions in the past, I’ve found that doing anything often works better than doing nothing, like the US usually advocates.
Turns out that there are no perfect solutions, but there are a lot of partial solutions that in aggregate add up to the mental health the rest of the developed world has.
Politicians generally don't understand this. Average people don't understand this. But it's still true.
For example, before 9/11 the assumption was that hijackers would try to ransom the passengers for money, so it was better not to resist so they didn't hurt anybody. After 9/11, the assumption had to be that they were planning to crash the plane, at which point all the passengers resist and a hundred passengers can easily take on half a dozen hijackers and it's well worth the risk of one or two getting hurt in the process.
So by 9/12, another 9/11 was no longer possible. It was already solved. None of the government action that followed was actually necessary and the TSA is completely pointless.
I did not say to do nothing. I said it will probably take a holistic approach. Holistic means look at the issue as a whole rather than trying to attack one symptom. A holistic approach would likely implement plenty of small partial solutions.
I do agree that therapy and free healthcare would help and are needed, but alone they are not a solution.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/5/11592622/this-is-fine-meme...
I don't think they are mutually exclusive, mental health can incorporate a systems approach. It seems patently foolish to ignore lifestyle factors like diet, exercise, sleep or social factors like friends, family, religion & other communal institutions.
Ship 'em to North Korea. A little perspective will work wonders.
While I agree with the message I don't think this will sell well. Many people do not even have the faintest idea of what depression is like and understand it as an illness. So they see it as a personal choice and therefore not a thing for the government to solve. Similar to drugs. This is of course despite the connections to environmental causes and government regulations. You greatly decrease rates of depression and drug usage, which are highly correlated, by the same thing. Making life better and less stressful. That even helps non-depressed and non-drug users.
Despite that, I think we should just talk about other types of gun violence. The vast majority of which involve hand guns. Which if you understand this, makes the national conversation seem extremely odd.
I'd encourage everyone to watch Sapolsky's lecture on Depression[0].
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc
[0^] My running hypothesis is that the since we have a new fiasco every other day that it causes over stimulation (like a stress response) and causes socio-motor retardation (analogous to psychomotor retardation)
It's important to point out that you can do comparisons between the US and other countries where guns are far more restricted and a lot of the US gun mortality shows up as other forms of suicide.
> because even if they're completely ineffective at their stated purpose
Ineffective measures are actually politically superior: They don't cure their ill, so you can keep using them again and again.
If $random_gun_restriction actually worked passing it would diminish your ability to campaign on gun issues in the future. This bad incentive applies on all sides too, not just pro-gun control. The gun control lobby is one of the single most effective promotional tools of anti-gun-control politicians.
The pairing of politics to problem is a challenge in that solving a problem means shifting focus to a different problem set. A different problem set will likely emerge a different politics which is effectively a threat to the people engaged in the current politics.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
> we did not have the ability to control for differences between the two countries including poverty, unemployment, health systems, cultural, or other differences
The authors go on to suggest that they may in fact be underestimating the amount of suicides that could be averted with reduced gun ownership, but there are an awful lot of confounding factors that are simply not addressed in this paper.
Adjusted for how armed Americans are, gun violence in this country is tiny. And seeing what an armed citizenry can do against the full American force (Afghanistan), an armed population is a necessity against tyranny in America.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/...
There is approx. 393,000,000 firearms owned by civilians in the US. About 60% of all adult firearm deaths are by suicide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_ownership
Handguns accounted for 91% of firearm homicides.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
Pretty hard to miss the intent.
Arm the homeless is what I say when I'm feeling spicy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act
the bill was crafted with the goal of disarming members of the Black Panther Party who were conducting armed patrols of Oakland neighborhoods, in what would later be termed copwatching.[1][2] They garnered national attention after Black Panthers members, bearing arms, marched upon the California State Capitol to protest the bill.
Why are we comparing to Afghanistan? You can look much closer to home - at America - and see that this specific armed population just spent half a decade doing absolutely jack shit about tyranny.
I'm not sure how anyone can argue that a population with weapons can't hold off a tyrannical government. It is the same reason Marx said that under no means should we disarm the populous. I think people often forget that a government can't just kill all its population. Not only can you not rule over the dead but you also are going to have a hard time interacting in global trade (thanks globalism, but this even held true in the 1700's). It is kinda odd that this sentiment also often comes out of a country where some farmers fought off the country with the biggest navy and had an empire so great that the sun never set on it. Civil wars are extremely costly to countries. Also I'm not sure why everyone thinks that people from the military (including generals and entire battalions) wouldn't defect. That's also pretty common when looking at history.
With help from the country with the biggest army and the biggest ongoing beef with the country with the biggest navy.
But, I guess, its still a little surprising, since that part gets minimized in the farmers national mythology.
Afghanistan was lost because of our tolerance of corruption and intolerance for spending money on a speck of dirt. Oppression of the US will be far more worth the money to a tyranny.
If the second amendment actually said what gun people say it does (literalist/"strict constructionalist"), then I can use these arms as well:
- grenades?
- bazookas?
- artillery?
- explosives?
- chemical weapons?
- biological weapons?
- nuclear/dirtynuke weapons?
Where are you, as an apparently ardent 2nd amendment person likely living in at least a suburban population density comfortable with allowing your fellow Americans to arm themselves with?
At somewhere along that chain, almost all non-crazy 2nd amendment people "nope out" of allowing those arms. Maybe your typical gun rights person would allow grenades, MAYBE bazookas.
Major explosives or anything else? Nope.
But you'd need to get to the chem/bio/nuke arms to have any real deterrent to the US Army.
Your pea shooter militia is a fantasy. The US army has more than cannons, horses, and muskets now.
That's the whole thing. I think the most literal interpretation is that people have a right to bear arms, and you cant infringe that, by telling them they can't bear any arms. Obviously reasonable people will differ here, but I don't think it's fair to say that it unambiguously grants the right to bear any kind of arms at all.
Certainly the founders—you know, the violent, enlightened revolutionaries who lead the first colonial overthrow in history—wouldn't have favored limiting certain arms to only thugs of a future tyrannical government. Why would they write the first Constitution in history to enable future state-sponsored goons to persecute the people of the United States?
After McDonald v. Chicago, no restrictions on arms appear Constitutional (hence the collapse of intrastate weapon laws over the past decade), except, I suppose, as punishment for a crime due to the 13th.
The founders didn't want a federal military, they wanted each state to run their own military.
The founders didn't want a strong federal government, they wanted to states to be highly sovereign.
The founders put in the bill of rights to limit the federal government's actions, not state government actions.
The government completely changed after the civil war with the 14th amendment. The constitution was written primarily to limit the powers of the federal government. States were free to put, for example, requirements on religion to run for office.
McDonald v. Chicago would have been appalling to the founders, because it's the federal government trampling over the rights of a state government.
I'm mostly going off Jefferson's "tree of liberty" letter [1], maybe there was dissent amongst other founders?
As far as federal vs. state military, I dunno, references? Each state would have their own navy...? Doesn't seem to fit with Jefferson's willingness to launch a preemptive strike on African pirates at the beginning of his presidency [2].
Agreed on strong states, hence the Tenth, and the impact of the Fourteenth, though I'm actually currently trying to get a better handle on that one (e.g. not entirely clear on equal protection yet).
Disagree on McDonald, doesn't seem like the design allows for states to pass laws that take away rights explicitly enumerated in the federal Constitution. States can "exceed" enumerated rights (like California's affirmative right to free speech), but can't cancel them out. Any sources suggesting otherwise?
1. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jefffed.html#105
2. https://www.city-journal.org/html/jefferson-versus-muslim-pi...
Depends on which founding father you were talking about. Jeffersonians preferred weak central government and autonomous states while Hamiltonians preferred strong central government. It's what lead to the creation of political parties in Washington's administration.
>The founders put in the bill of rights to limit the federal government's actions, not state government actions.
The Bill of Rights limits both, that's why both state, local and federal laws can be deemed unconstitutional.
> The Bill of Rights limits both
No, it doesn’t.
Guarantees equivalent to most provisions of the Bill of Rights have been applied to the States through the 14th Amendment under the Incorporation Doctrine.
https://sixthamendment.org/the-right-to-counsel/history-of-t...
The founders very much didn't at the time of the founding. The framers by the time of the Constitution (a little over a decade later, and many of the same people) had moved quite a bit toward a strong central government based on the immediately-revealed practical problems with the abstract vision at the founding in functioning in the real world. Woth more experience, more practical problems were revealed; the Civil War being a key, but far from the only important, point in that process.
The Solonian Constitution was created by Solon in the early 6th century BC.[1] At the time of Solon the Athenian State was almost falling to pieces in consequence of dissensions between the parties into which the population was divided. Solon wanted to revise or abolish the older laws of Draco. Solon promulgated a code of laws embracing the whole of public and private life, the salutary effects[2] of which lasted long after the end of his constitution.
Under Solon's reforms, all debts were abolished and all debt-slaves were freed. The status of the hectemoroi (the "one-sixth workers"), who farmed in an early form of serfdom, was also abolished. These reforms were known as the Seisachtheia.[3] Solon's constitution reduced the power of the old aristocracy by making wealth rather than birth a criterion for holding political positions, a system called timokratia (timocracy). Citizens were also divided based on their land production: Pentacosiomedimnoi, Hippeis, Zeugitae, and Thetes.[4] The lower assembly was given the right to hear appeals, and Solon also created the higher assembly. Both of these were meant to decrease the power of the Areopagus, the aristocratic council. The only parts of Draco's code that Solon kept were the laws regarding homicide. The constitution was written as poetry, and as soon as it was introduced, Solon went into self-imposed exile for 10 years so he would not be tempted to take power as a tyrant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solonian_Constitution
See also Aristotle's "Constitution of Athens", on the constitutions of Athens, Sparta and Thebes, and with a title that makes it clear that "constitution" was an established term at least since Aristotle's times.
Finally see wikipedia's article on pre-modern constitutions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution#Pre-modern_consti...
Modern constitutions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution#Modern_constituti...
And (modern) democratic constitutions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution#Democratic_consti...
For more examples of constitutions before the United States Constitution.
Sort by "date ratified": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions
So you've already stated that it isn't reasonable to allow the other "arms". So why is anything more than a single shot barrel-loaded rifle allowed?
Of course the reason is that there is a massive industry in making guns and a rabid source of people that can be scared into buying their wares. The reason the laws are the way they are is because of the economics of the lobby and not any principle.
It's unreasonable to restrict ownership of arms unless you want to restrict violence to the government and organized criminals, which the founders most certainly did not intend.
Police killed more Americans in 2019 than mass shooters, how can you make an argument in favor of the cops and courts controlling weaponry? Did you miss the police brutality protests last summer?
I also don't understand how citizens of the US are meant to protect themselves against police with the weapons they're free to carry. Is the idea that US citizens are going to use their weapons to resist the police from arresting them? Isn't that just going to cause no end of bloodshed?
The vast majority of these incidents happen to hardened criminals that almost no one in their right mind would support. A small fraction of these incidents involve innocent people, or people involved in situations where violence is not the answer and de-escalation would have been a better outcome.
The police have a large amount of support because the people involved in these incidents are, generally speaking, bad people that the majority would prefer to be in prison. Most people don't think the police are an oppressive force that should be fought against with lethal violence.
Absolutely agreed though, it's a very internally inconsistent viewpoint from my perspective.
Not saying our focus on mass shootings over suicide necessarily makes sense, but the collective trauma of 20 kids dying in a school shooting is arguably higher than the equivalent number of deaths by suicides.
Now, try asking in a debate the proportion of crimes committed with legal weapons vs illegal weapons and watch your opponent start dancing around the question! Good luck getting a straight answer.
Even at that point, "legally obtained" still included borrowing one from a friend or family member.
That's interesting! Why would they hide such stats?
The pro-2A response to gun control requests based on crime is often to say "don't ban my guns - just make 'felon in possession of a gun' a life-without-parole offense".
Citation needed here. Especially in the south.
Most of them come from purchases at gun shows (as laws are considerably laxer on private sales). The serial numbers are filed off, then they're hidden in abandoned buildings by a person who rents the guns out to be used in murders. The same illegal guns are typically used in numerous murders, making it more difficult to trace them back to any particular person, if they are found.
For instance: if there was a free online study (in person test) "critical thinking" series of classes, where you could become accredited as a person who knows at least the basics of how lying works, statistics can be manipulated, science is hard, etc, etc, etc... if you had that credential, it could be included in stats.
"While 85% of people say they're really worried about X, only 12% of critical-thinking accredited citizens consider it something worth focusing on."
Like those lists of "over 500 scientists have signed a document saying 5G is harmful to health so it must be true". When actually half of the people on the list aren't real people and the rest of them are political scientologists, dentists and people who know absolutely nothing about radio waves.
If the worry is, "this is one more way to convince non-critical people of things," I'm pretty sure that's a lost cause to begin with.
Having a giant political flamewar about how critical thinking should work has good potential to result in mutual destruction.
If you really play it out in your head, critical thinking is pretty hard to abuse because it tends to lean away from blind trust.
Every trick that could be taught to get people not to trust your enemy, is one less way you can take advantage of them yourself.
People don’t investigate statements that conform to their biases. And if the statement is something they don’t want to believe, people will deploy the full force of their “critical thinking” toolkit to fight it, while allowing themselves to become vulnerable to all sorts of fallacies and cognitive blinders as long as it only obscures the inconvenient facts.
Further, at least some people will be clever enough to use critical thinking on their own beliefs. Maybe some will only use it to further entrench, but not all. And it only takes a few amazing people to push society forwards; that's all we've ever really had.
It's the same thing as the War on Terror. The enemy in the War on Terror is Terror, i.e. Fear. The only way to win the War on Terror is to overcome your fear and not sacrifice your principles because you're afraid.
The British had it in the 20th Century. Stiff upper lip. Or you'll do more damage to yourself than the enemy can.
It would be a highly controversial dashboard, I guarantee it, likely unpopular with both political parties.
The problem is that assuaging fear is often more important (to irrational people) than saving lives.
For example, guns. Very few people die because of mass shootings. Your chances of dying in a mass shooting are virtually nil. Yet, every time one happens there's a big frenzy to enact anti-gun policies. So you have all this talk of "bump stocks" and "ghost guns" and "assault weapons" and whatnot, but it's all just smoke and mirrors to assuage fears. The goal isn't to save lives. The goal is to assuage fears. I don't take any gun policy seriously that purports to save lives if it isn't focused on handguns and suicides.