The problem with a lot of anti-gun measures is that the proponents readily admit that they would not have stopped any particular shooter. For instance, people talk about background checks, but this shooter and many others did not have a history and were not known to police. They would have passes a background check.
Often times the person acquiring the gun already broke a number of gun laws. Either straw purchase, borrowed someones gun, carrying across state lines, etc. So throwing more laws at it won't necessarily help. Enforcement of existing laws could help but is obviously difficult. Not to mention that gun violence is much higher in cities/counties/states with the most gun control measures. You can say that they just get the guns from elsewhere and national restrictions need to be imposed, but we should see SOME effect. Wyoming should have a higher murder rate than Michigan.
So the conversation from anti-gun people basically amounts to less guns everywhere, but that genie might be out of the bottle already. There are already hundreds of millions of guns in the US and it would be impractical to seize even a tiny percent of them.
But note that there were always guns in America. In fact, guns were often brought to high schools. In 1969, most public high schools in NYC had a shooting club. And yet there were no school shootings.
https://nypost.com/2018/03/31/when-toting-guns-in-high-schoo...
Legislation won’t change anything. <the war on drugs has entered the chat> Proponents of stricter gun control are being idealistic.
Having kids in school right now, we are both quite concerned about the current state of affairs when it comes to school shootings. Making guns illegal won’t stop anyone touched enough to shoot up a school/gay bar/concert/grocery store. They’re going to find a way to do it. To think otherwise is ignorance.
I would “only” expect gun control regulation to deter impulsive killings (including a lot of suicide). But it won’t deter criminals who are savvy to the black market, and it’s plausible that they might be more emboldened to victimize more people from the “civilian” population (as opposed to police or rival criminals) if they have more assurance that they’re unarmed. That effect is probably exacerbated in an era of de-policing (if criminals can rely on a hamstrung police force and a disarmed civilian population, they’re probably going to be even bolder).
Apparently you've never been to Baltimore and/or forget what it was like to be 18. Show me a law prohibiting or vastly restricting something and I'll show you a very healthy black market for said thing.
This guy clearly had spent months saving up for a fucking Daniel Defense (gucci) AR on fast food wages, he absolutely had the time and dedication to have found another equally lethal method. If ARs didn't exist he'd have undoubtable used something else equally lethal.
Again, this goes to my original point. What does this mean? You can't just hand-wave policy.
> Social media
>> All countries have that
> Violent video games
>> All other countries have that
> Media reporting on violence
>> All other countries have that
> Mental illness
>> Other countries have it worse
> Lack of Religion
>> Some other countries have that
At some point we are left with just one variable that is different from these other countries
https://www.factsinstitute.com/ranking/countries-by-murder-r...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...
If the alternative to making guns much harder to access is to conscript everyone in the country for a few years to try and beat the gun culture out of them, good freakin luck
We should also adjust for known dependent variables, like population, population density, crime rates, number of guns in circulation (i.e., we would intuitively expect fewer mass shootings from a small, sparse, low-abiding country with few guns in circulation irrespective of gun laws)—Australia has only 8% of the US population and only 10% of the density—not sure about crime rates. I also suspect there were fewer guns in circulation prior to 1996, so even if officials could get the same share removed from the US market, it would likely leave more guns in circulation than in America (even adjusting for population, etc)—I also doubt Americans would be as willing to give up their guns as Australians were in ‘96, so the odds that America could get the same share of guns off the market as Australia did seems unlikely.
That said, I’ve read that Australia’s gun count has crept back up to pre-96 levels (not sure if that is per capita or not), which is interesting—potentially it suggests there’s something else going on: either it matters what type of guns are banned (e.g., semi-automatic handguns), or perhaps there’s an altogether different reason or hidden factor behind the decline in Australian mass shootings.
In any case, mass shootings is probably the wrong metric, but rather we probably want to look at number of mass murder deaths overall (presumably some people switch to stabbings or arson, but both of these are probably result in fewer fatalities). It’s also not clear to me why we fixate on mass murders/shootings rather than homicides overall—is it really worse when 10 people are killed all at once rather than 10000 people killed individually?
The UK for example changed gun laws after a mass school shooting 26 years ago. Not a single one since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_shooting
Another one in 2018:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Moss_Side_shooting
And another in 2010:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbria_shootings
And in 2009:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massereene_Barracks_shooting
Britain has also had numerous mass stabbings, bombings, and vehicle ramming attacks.
School mass shootings. The last one in the UK definitely was in 1996 (17 dead), after which gun control laws were tightened : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre
But let's take a look at your examples :
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_shooting (2021)
6 dead.
It was the first fatal mass shooting in the UK since the Cumbria shootings of 2010. In response, the Home Office announced that it would issue updated guidelines for firearms licence applications.
>Another one in 2018: >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Moss_Side_shooting
No fatalities.
Mass shootings are rare in the UK, with the most recent previous being a spree shooting in Cumbria in 2010, and the one before a school shooting in Dunblane in 1996.
> And another in 2010: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbria_shootings
12 dead.
Along with the 1987 Hungerford massacre and the 1996 Dunblane school massacre, it is one of the worst criminal acts involving firearms in British history.
>And in 2009: >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massereene_Barracks_shooting
2 soldiers dead.
That's a total of 37 deaths to mass shootings in the UK in 26 years. Let's see where the US is at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...
202 mass shootings, 221 deaths in the first 4 months of 2022
What was your point again ?
The deadliest mass shooting of all time happened in France in 2015 and the second deadliest happened in Norway in 2011 (yes, deadlier than any American mass shooting). Europe has had a large number of mass killings. Here's a PARTIAL list (since there are no activist groups compiling lists of "mass" "shootings" in Europe like there are in the US, it's difficult to find them without scanning old news articles) of SCHOOL shootings in Europe over the last twenty years (and yes it is fair to compare the US to all of Europe due to population and size; European countries are equivalent to American states (which have varying degrees of gun control)): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31515008. Additionally, there have been a lot of European mass killings that weren't targeted at schools like the Manchester Arena Bombing, Charlie Hebdo, the aforementioned Bataclan and Oslo massacres, the Nice truck attack, the various vehicle ramming attacks in London and elsewhere in Europe, and more. Your gun bans haven't prevented crazies from killing massive amounts of innocents, neither with guns nor with other methods.
My original sentence :
> The UK for example changed gun laws after a mass school shooting 26 years ago. Not a single one since.
I don't know what to say if you didn't double check when I corrected you. Learn to read ? To argue honestly ?
BTW, TWENTY-ONE new mass shootings in the US since you wrote this desperately disingenuous reply. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...
Also cable TV news. The need to drive viewers to consume a surfeit of airtime probably lead to a lot of socially damaging choices. I'd say it's a qualitatively different thing than the nightly news.
Another important question is what things did exist in 1969 that don't exist now (or are far, far weaker).
Neither did the US, before cable TV news.
Somehow in my country (Poland) and in most of Europe they do not find a way to get the guns. Most of incidents of this class is done with knife or with some kind of vehicle (car or truck). I think that throughout history we had like literally one or two shootings in schools and I don't think in any one instance there was automatic weapon involved.
To think that this kind of prohibition of gun possession does not work You have to be really ignorant of what really is happening in other countries.
Now I'm sure my friend had to go through more extensive vetting than they have in the US. But here's the strange part: many US mass shooters would pass these checks anyway. Not all, certainly. But many would. So when you say "they do not find a way to get the guns", you're suggesting that the potential mass murderers are out there, looking for a way, but failing to get the guns. But clearly they should be succeeding occasionally, the legal way. And yet we don't see it. Why not?
We need to know what else is different about the US. But why complicate things by comparing the US to vastly different countries? Why not compare it to a mostly similar country: itself from the recent past. The US has had essentially the same gun laws forever. There have been 2 major overhauls to US gun ownership: one in the 30s and one in the 60s. Other than that, basically no changes. But these mass killings are fairly new, having started in earnest in the late 90s. Why? It's not surprising that the body count has increased, since AR-15s are more deadly than the kind of guns Americans used to commonly own 30 years ago. They have become incredibly popular in recent years and are very cheap and accessible now. But as I pointed out earlier, there's nothing stopping anyone from racking up a huge number of victims using the kind of semi automatic pistol that has been around for over 100 years, and we do see this in the US.
This question weighs on my mind all the time. What is different about the US? I feel as though I know the answer, but it's ephemeral, hard to put words on it. Everything is more extreme here. Success, failure, happiness, misery, love, hate. So in a sense it's not that surprising that the crimes are more extreme too. But I know that's not a very useful observation. I just know that it's 100% possible for people to be able to own guns, and for this stuff to not happen. Hopefully it's possible in America too.
You are heavily underestimating how comparatively hard is to get any kind of gun here. Literally no one in my family and not one of my close friends and event my neighbors in my apartment block have access to ANY kind of gun. Sure there is possibility if You have lots of time and money and if you are relatively stable person to get a gun (I used to know a guy who was a member of shooting club and thus was able to buy himself a gun), but this process has so many hoops that it is actively discouraging from obtaining one just because you fancy one (as an impulse buy). And thus I believe that it makes it a lot harder for unstable people to get hands on them when they got the impuls to do some damage (I believe that planning and persistence required to get gun here is antithesis to what makes those people go on killing spree).
>> So when you say "they do not find a way to get the guns", you're suggesting that the potential mass murderers are out there, looking for a way, but failing to get the guns. But clearly they should be succeeding occasionally, the legal way. And yet we don't see it. Why not?]
I think that's because they are a lot persistent that You believe them to be. Emotions and planning do not go together well. And there is also social element here - You have to be in a sport club and be vouched by others to get to the guns. This two things put together seems to eliminate almost all individuals that would otherwise blow out tunneling their anger through guns.
>Sure there is possibility if You have lots of time and money
You seem to be unaware of Polish gun laws. Black powder traditional firearms are virtually unregulated in Poland. A replica black powder revolver is a fully competent self defense revolver. Watch paul harrell or a number of videos about these weapons and you'll understand a Polish person can get a damn good lethal revolver with basically no barriers. It's my understanding you may even be able to conceal carry them completely legally as well, without any license whatsoever.
And this kind of guns requires skills to use - I do not believe that mass shooting is even possible with it.
As I said the main barrier is that there is no possibility to impulse buy. There is also culture apect (here in Poland guns are not popular and almost no one knows how to use them).
You do not need the european gun card to buy these in Poland. You can have shipped (like from https://saguaro-arms.com/) or just from a private transaction. You do not need the gun card to buy the powder in a private (or "gifted") transaction either.
>And this kind of guns requires skills to use
A percussion black powder revolver takes a little more skill than a cartridge one, but not much. It's also quite deadly.
>I do not believe that mass shooting is even possible with it
Yes if you ignore the entire 18th and most of the 19th century, during which masses of people were killed with these weapons.
>As I said the main barrier is that there is no possibility to impulse buy.
Private sale is unregulated [0]. Conceal carry appears to be legal without permit [0]. Just as here in US I can get a pistol legally in 5 minutes with no checks or registration or permit, same can be done for a black powder revolver in Poland.
Watch Paul Harrell explain these firearms, they're no joke and I recommend every Polish resident consider one for self defense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCYaiRmcYVI
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Poland#:~:text=Unl....
>> they're no joke and I recommend every Polish resident consider one for self defense
Defense from what? Poland is rather safe country at this point and most of what's going on here is simple robberies which when combined with easy access to guns would quite easily change to manslaughter galore. And I like our gun statistics and would love them stay this way (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...)
Also the Texas shooter bought his gun online, which is more of a hassle than buying a black powder revolver online in Poland. Buying that shooter's rifle requires shipping to a dealer and then a background check. Buying the blackpowder weapons requires neither.
> my opinion a key to understand why I'm not afraid to send children to school here.
The homicide rate of elementary school students in the US is 0.7 per ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND per year. The rate of unintentional injury resulting in death is roughly at least double for all age groups. If you are terrified of a one in a hundred thousand chance, but not a double or better chance of unintentional injury resulting in death then you are simply an irrational actor. If you feel safe with a ~2 per 100,000 unintentional injury then you should feel only slightly less safe adding in homicides (which Poland isn't free of either). If the thought of school shooting death would terrify you from sending your kid to school then you should be cowering in fear at the chance your child will sustain some unintentional injury on the play ground or in transit to school.
And this is all ignoring the fact that if you're a Pole moving to America and you don't get involved in drugs or gangs then your odds of suffering from violent crime absolutely plummets.
>Defense from what? Poland is rather safe country
Poland is not free from violence and cities near your border are being bombed by a murderous dictator. If you want to be defenseless that's your prerogative.
>easy access to guns
Which Poland already has. I could fly to Poland tomorrow as a tourist and have a revolver the next day and a reliable semi-auto pistol or carbine a couple weeks later (3d printed, durable for 1000+ rounds). All from buying unregulated components within EU and without any sort of permit card.
Oh wow I did not know that they require this now - this is somehow amazing because You are actually providing arguments for my side of debate (according to this https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2018/02/28/walmart-st... walmart self regulated itself despite moderate law).
In all You have few good arguments for You thing (which is I assume gun in every household?). I just do not get why anyone would want that. The idea that You can somehow defend yourself without any additional risk is pure fantasy (as they say if you take out gun better be ready to use it) - I believe that one of the greatest inventions of human kind is state/government monopoly on violence. This of course can and actually was abused many times but no implementation of idea is perfect but this does not mean that the idea itself is invalid.
And just to finish I think I must comment on this: >> Poland is not free from violence and cities near your border are being bombed by a murderous dictator. If you want to be defenseless that's your prerogative
What kind of fantasy land are You living that You think that You can actually defend from bombardment, or tanks, or organized military units with gun? You might have seen too many action movies. If by accident You are part of any kind of paramilitary organization that by all means - sure you can try to stop some military man coming Your way but You do not need to posses private guns for that - one armory per district is more than enough to hand out whatever You may need (as it actually was done in Ukraine - the guns were handed out after the war started).
Perhaps in the same 'fantasy' land where the Chechens actually did that exact thing against the same army I'm referring to, and in fact established an independent nation that was at one point even recognized by Russia?
Also I'm referring to defense against common criminals, which even Poland has, who might want violence. Of course the common criminal can easily get a gun, it's only the law abiding innocent who may have reservation about getting a gun in Poland.
> I believe that one of the greatest inventions of human kind is state/government monopoly on violence.
The state has the monopoly on 'legitimate' violence according to these theories, but the state never has a monopoly on all violence. I'd like to note the many Jews in Poland who were genocided after being disarmed. And to note during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, smuggled and captured arms were used by common citizens to at least kill off a few Nazis so there would be one less Nazi to oppress the citizens.
You can simply take a quick drive just about anywhere and notice it. There is some kind of sickness that has taken hold. I couldn't even begin to list all the reasons why I think this has happened, but American society to me seems so far past the point of no return. One example I have is that I commuted a good bit before the pandemic - anecdotally I noticed an uptick in road rage in that politically charged circa 2015/16' + year range. I'm not sure if the data would back it up, but things seemed to be spilling over into real life to me.
Going off on a tangent here, but I am prior military and also a gun owner with permit to carry concealed. I do armed security once a month and some extra days for special events here and there. I was raised around weapons and I vividly remember going out by myself at 12 years old with a rifle and plinking, hunting and whatnot. At this point I own mostly sporting rifles and do some occasional reloading. Everything is locked away and if something happens to me they will have to grind the safe open. It is safe to say that I respect guns and their capabilities a lot, but I don't feel that's true with a large amount of the gun population. I personally know several.
If there was some kind of miracle opportunity presented to me that all this violence would magically stop if Americans got rid of their firearms, I would take that offer no questions asked. I have small children myself and have had tears in my eyes several times this week thinking about the horrific act in Texas.
I've racked my brain several times over the years about this and have no clue what the solution could be on a grand scale. I don't think our politicians are capable of realistic debate to any kind of solution either - everything is so politically charged anymore and that tribal stuff defeats the whole purpose. I agree with certain points from both sides of the spectrum, but either way seems hopeless. I don't want to see anymore senseless killings, but I also need to have the ability to protect myself and my family in this increasingly sick country.
Stay safe out there.
According to this, the current gun homicide rate is actually lower than at the end of the 80s.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-da...
What gun control proponents miss about the US is that we literally have more guns than people.
I don't know of a feasible way to take even a meaningful fraction of those out of civilian hands, just at a practical enforcement level.
Never mind the political nightmare taking guns away en masse would produce. It might just actually trigger a civil war here.
It's like with this old saying about how You eat an elephant (a piece at a time). Same here - this can be done slowly and gradually. It does not have to be done out right.
They could start with limiting current sale of guns (by bringing some control over to who can buy what and when). Introduce some sort licences (but maybe for guns bought after the law was introduced). And than taxing the shit out of bullets (for personal use). Prohibit trade of guns between people (only b2c, this could be quite hard and unpopular but could address the problem of existing guns). And then start to buy guns of people with sufficient premium on price.
This could be costly but I believe that over the time would eliminate this strange culture of mass gun possession.
Lack of political will = the voting public doesn't want it, literally. If the public wanted it, federal and state legislatures would be in session right now to pass such laws.
Why doesn't the public want it? All the things you suggest hassle legitimate firearms owners, which is a significant voting bloc, driving them right into the arms of the extremist 2nd A. groups and spiking firearms sales drastically every time new harsh legislation is proposed, making the problem even worse.
So why insist on following the same losing strategy that has been followed by gun control advocates in the past? It is culture and public perception that needs to change and addressing that is not something that can be fixed by legislation.
Since when this stopped the politician from serving their own intrests (and intrests of the money behind them)?
But You are right it would be better to change the culture but the problem is that there is not a lot of money in taking away guns and at the same time there is a lack of ideological front that could influence people (for example churches somehow do not have problem with guns)
The Uvalde shooter purchased his a few days prior to the attack. Who knows what might have happened if he hadn't been able to.
Mass distribution/encouragement of antidepressants.
https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.147.2.2...
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
Edit: In case you're busy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3513220/
Pro-tip: you're wrong, it would take time, but it would help. I think handguns should be highly regulated, along with magazines over 10 rounds. If you are licensed to own them, you need to have them in a secure location with some way to ascertain they have been tampered with and you are responsible if they are mis-used.
There is plenty of low hanging fruit, but we go after stuff like silencers or "assault style" weapons instead of good common sense rules like limiting ammunition that can be purchased without being consumed at a range.
With bigger population you'll see a greater number of rare events
And even if we could wrangle the hundreds of millions in circulation, 3D printing democratizes gun manufacture and seems prohibitively hard to regulate.
> Wyoming should have a higher murder rate than Michigan. … In fact, guns were often brought to high schools. In 1969, most public high schools in NYC had a shooting club. And yet there were no school shootings.
I haven’t heard these observations before; I would be really interested to hear potential explanations debated.
You'll never hear it though. It goes into differences in regional culture and socialization. Anyone that isn't laughably wrong on the topic knows damn well to keep their mouth shut.
Just as you don’t see soldiers on military bases walking around with guns on their hips for fun, there were strict rules around high school shooting ranges - kids didn’t take guns home and had strict protocols around handling, etc.
The big difference now is you have a fetishization of guns combined with a low intensity insurgency. If you ask a more prolific gun person about why they are collecting weapons, the answer in 1965 was likely to be about antique or other technical factors. In 1995 they were worried about Clinton taking the guns away, so buy before it’s too late. In 2015, many are talking about fighting the government.
Marginal personalities are attracted to the power of weapons and attention.
Guns are just tools. I have a few shotguns and rifles for skeet and hunting. No different than golf clubs.
What is different is the context. Check out an “American Rifleman” magazine from 1969 and compare to today.
Most recent mass shooters have acted for personal reasons. They were not insurgents fighting the government.
I grew up in the midwest, where pheasant hunting was (and still is) popular. Many people had gun racks in their cars, and often parked with the guns in plain sight.
We had little crime and very few incidents of gun violence.
There are 3 recommended policy changes in there.
The 3 policy changes in the paper :
``` Evidence suggests that three priority policies would have the greatest impact in reducing overall firearm homicide rates:
• Universal background checks;
• Prohibition of gun possession by people with a history of any violent misdemeanor, threatened violence, or serious alcohol-related crime or subject to a domestic violence restraining order. This must be accompanied by: (1) a requirement that firearms already in their possession be surrendered; (2) a procedure for confiscating guns if they are not relinquished voluntarily; and (3) procedures for confiscating guns in situations where a person becomes prohibited from owning firearms after having passed an earlier background check;
• Extreme risk protection order laws that allow removal of firearms from an individual who, after due process, is deemed to represent a threat to themselves or others
```
Break that one down.
Universal for everyone, or just those who want to buy a gun? If I buy a gun because I pass the background check, and then snap and shoot up my place of employ 4 years later, what good was the background check? Who pays for the background check? Who does the background check? What do they check? HIPPA laws would eliminate anything health/medical related. Do they comb all the discoverable social media accounts? Are we just checking criminal history? Should a background check be re-done every 2, 3, 5, n years?
I like the idea, but I've been chewing on this problem for the past few days and I don't think background checks would be as simple or effective as we would all like them to be. This is not an argument against background checks in that I think they're a bad idea. I don't think they would do much.
I'd like to see the Feds designate all schools crime as federal crimes since they interfere with the civil rights of students. Then make school shootings automatic death penalty, unauthorized guns would have a hefty sentence like they did with drug dealers.
https://mdsp.maryland.gov/Organization/Pages/CriminalInvesti...
Sure hasn't worked in Baltimore.
If we test this out in more places, we can have better evidence than, say, what you or myself think are a good or bad idea. :)
I would take anti-gun people more seriously if they actually paid attention to what this entails. For one, anti-gun enthusiast would stop going on about "assault rifles", because only around 200 people a year in the US are killed by rifle homicides. It's totally negligible. Less frequent than blunt instrument homicides. Yet, that's exactly what anti-gun people focus on.
This is a facially absurd claim to make based on the extremely motivated behavior of tens of millions of Americans.
> are likely to amplify poor decisions into death and serious injury
For a very questionable definition of "likely". As someone who actually performs explicit risk calculations, I am vastly more worried about hundreds of other risk sources to which I have daily exposure.
I would capture marginal utility by making life more risky and less fearful, so I'm certainly not going to accept the piss-poor risk reduction returns of going after assault rifles.
Do some research on who is actually dying, who is killing, and with what weapons. I think no honest and well-adjusted person who does that can agree with popular gun control initiatives.
Spoken like someone who lives in a city where you can't use a gun. There is a reason why guns laws are unpopular in rural areas: guns are very useful in rural areas. There is no way to safely shoot a gun in a urban area (except a few gun ranges), so any possible use is dwarfed by the danger.
For a more concrete example. My father in law lives in Michigan. His house is seated next to 40 acres of forest. There are often coyotes and other wild animals that will approach his house when they're hungry. If you're unaware, coyotes will hunt, stalk, and kill cats, dogs, and small children.
To protect my children (3-5 years old) and his dogs, he shoots them.
In my beautiful 3rd world country (yeah we remained non-aligned during the cold war), Tigers and Leopards have a tendency to come near human settlements and attack domesticated animals.
Over here, killing animals (apart from chicken, fish, duck etc, which people regularly eat) is illegal. That means your can't kill snakes, deers, wild pigs, crocodiles and you certainly cannot kill Tiger, Leopards etc (because they're kind of endangered...).
If you do and they find out, you're going to jail. It doesn't matter whether the aforementioned wild animals killed your animals or humans.
So what do you do if presence of wild animals have been detected? You tell the authorities; they'll set traps, capture the animal, and release it to the forests.
By the way, recently, there was an appeal to the government to declare wild boar as pests, so that it can be killed because wild boars destroy crops and stuff. Government declined, because if the boars are killed, the big cats would starve.
This might all seem strange, but over here tiger/lion/leopard population was dwindling in the last century. But their population is now at a healthy level.
-----
About the gun situation here: nobody really has guns. Except very few maybe. There's plenty of crimes, but those don't involve a gun. Guns definitely would not be a solution to minimize the crime situation here.
Snakes protected though, as are wolves. There is a problem with people killing them anyway. They are not the major animals rural people target - because they are endangered there are not many.
> You tell the authorities; they'll set traps, capture the animal, and release it to the forests.
This is something that they used to do over here. Then we discovered that when you release wild animals far from home they don't know their way around, and so they have trouble finding enough to eat, where to drink, a place to live. They are thus not in great physical shape when they encounter whatever lived there already and so are easy kill. Predators are either lone or pack animals - either way a stranger is something to kill. As such releasing a trapped animal is cruel. Unless you find a place where there is nothing else of the type, but even then we have to ask about if they have the correct genes, turns out animals of the same species get natural selection for DNA that helps in their location.
Illegal here, both killing deers and eating its meat (even if you didn't kill it).
Good thing in my opinion. Else there would be no deers left here.
In the US, the hunting practices are very sustainable.
Traps are the best bet of your list and are a lot harder to use. And then you still need to kill the animal, release is cruel to the animal and harmful to whatever is naturally where you release it
Surely you're aware of the second amendment. I'm not sure how your proposition and said amendment can live in the paradigm.
So yes, it did make a difference (and also shows that "let's arm teachers" is a ridiculous solution)
Assault rifles account for only 3% [1] of total gun related deaths. But it is what anti-gun folks focus on as a scape goat. Foolish, emotional, knee-jerk thinking because it is a "Big scary looking weapon". We all lose because the focus is on something mostly ineffective. Perhaps, we can focus our energy on other aspects than "Big scary" weapons.
Have you taken a look at CA AR-15/long-gun laws? It is the most useless regulations one can conceive (finger guard, 10 round magazine, breaking-gun to reload). All it takes is 2 mins to reverse the CA-compliant changes. The lawmakers are fooling us with ineffective policies that don't do anything to prevent these shootings.
Perhaps we can argue about number of children killed in this incident, but the sample size is 1 and standard deviation is infinite.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-da...
Revolver rounds would not penetrate, and a carbine would allow him to be flanked much more easily.
EDIT: laws keep honest people in line, but they also give us the ability to punish the dishonest.
And if that's asking too much then maybe the country really is too big and diverse to be governed as a single nation. Anyway, just thinking out loud.
I think many gun owners would agree.
Yeah, for some reason people keep going on about the ability for any 18 yo nutcase to go into a shop and buy a military-grade weapon designed to shred organs beyond all repair*, enabling them to efficiently slaughter as many school children as possible before terrorized and outgunned LEOs finally have the guts to take them out.
These pesky humans and their dislike of living in fear of violent death for their children... Can't they just think about this in spreadsheet terms and look at the totally negligible numbers, like the rest of us psychos ? C'mon...
*https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/what-i-...
Secondly, do you think that is unreasonable amount of ammunition? What kinds of legal limitations would you propose?
For reference, that's about enough ammo for one person for less than an hour of time at a gun range. Any responsible gun owner is going to be at the range with some regularity, and would go through at least that much in one day.
1. People don't just practice at formal ranges. Some have personal property where they practice. There are also competitions and events of all sorts in which copious ammo is needed.
2. You can actually make your own ammo (usually by using used casings from previous ammo)
3. In times of civil unrest (like the riots of 2020) 50 may be nowhere near enough. In high pressure situations it may take a full clip/magazine to take down a single opponent.
4. I am not a hunter, but I somewhat doubt 50 rounds of ammo would be enough for hunting.
5. The vast majority of people with copious ammunition are law abiding citizens, and so this would involve a confiscation and restriction on the behavior of citizens who have not and will never commit such crimes.
6. Considering how poorly we've done and restricting access to weed and other drugs, I see no reason that any such legislation would actually be effective.
2. Good, I'm totally aware of this and aware of the limitations.
3. Show me where people were forced to defend their property by filling someone with bullets in the 2020 (riots, your word). No standard magazine holds 50, so your argument is not in good faith.
4. It's plenty, Hunters worry about noise from shooting, cost (if they are hunting for food), and the environment. They don't fill the forest with lead.
5. Nobody said confiscation, build your stockpiles. This is about selling/reselling.
6. Sure, people feel the same about those; they have a similar risk. (sarcasm)
This is extraordinarily rare.
>People shouldn't point a gun at someone unless their life is in danger and they're prepared to take a life, but they do and people get shot by accident, or road rage turns deadly.
Brandishing weapons is illegal in every state and not pointing the muzzle of a gun at anything you don't intend to destroy is basic gun safety.
>Not to mention the suicides. If you own a gun ideation can turn into action in less than 30 seconds and it can seem like a painless, easy way to go.
There's no evidence to suggest that gun ownership causes higher levels of suicide. Additionally, suicide isn't a crime.
Literally 5 seconds to google:
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/06/handgun-owner...
> Additionally, suicide isn't a crime.
Why would that matter? Restricting access to guns is not aimed at reducing crime, but tragedies.
Emphasis mine. This says nothing about suicide rates, just suicide by gun rates.
Yes, people who own guns are more likely to kill themselves with a gun. This is obvious.
People who own stairs are more likely to fall down the stairs. People who have a dog are more likely to be bitten by a dog. Etc, etc.
Literally the second link in google search "gun ownership suicide" after that previous one.
"four-fold increase overall in the risk of suicide"
There is more going on in US suicide statistics than merely the presence of guns.
But you can compare suicide rates between people in the same state who are gun owners and not. They did and it turned out that gun owners have 4 times higher risk of suicide (by any method) than others.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/handgun-ownersh...
"four-fold increase overall in the risk of suicide"
You can just as easily compare suicide rates as you can compare murder rates (which gun control advocates are inclined to do). Of course, you are right about confounding factors, which is why we should be careful about the conclusions we draw. However, I think we can safely conclude that the presence or absence of guns may not be the only factor in determining the suicide rate.
> But you can compare suicide rates between people in the same state who are gun owners and not. They did and it turned out that gun owners have 4 times higher risk of suicide (by any method) than others.
Not really much better than comparing across countries. There is more in common between these two groups, but it still isn't some randomized control trial.
CCW holders have a much lower crime rate than those without. Does that mean that if we take away their permits (and their guns) those same individuals will commit more crime? Probably not.
Likewise, while taking away guns probably will have some influence on the suicide rate, I doubt very much (or not as much as people think).
Not a scientific study, but having known gun owners who were either suicidal or successfully committed suicide, they tend to be the kind of people (men, typically) who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. The suicidal tendencies come on strong when they feel either like they have failed the people who depend upon them, or that people don't need them anymore. Taking away their guns might keep them from committing suicide long enough for them to get help (or for the feeling to pass) but that is by no means a guarantee. We also cannot ignore the consequences of taking the guns: a psychological loss of agency, and potentially physical loss of security, etc. It's not a simple problem to solve.
You can just as easily compare mass of the moon to temperature of the Sun or any two numbers really. By "can't" I meant that there's barely any reason to do it especially when pondering the influence of a single factor.
> However, I think we can safely conclude that the presence or absence of guns may not be the only factor in determining the suicide rate.
Yes. I hope nobody thinks it's the only factor determining suicide rates difference between the countries. Because I don't think there's a single observation that could indicate that it's the only factor.
> Not really much better than comparing across countries. There is more in common between these two groups, but it still isn't some randomized control trial.
Vastly better than comparing across countries. Especially if one of those countries is USA that is very different from other countries.
And it's randomized in a sense that there was no additional criterion other than gun ownership to separate two groups. The only other factors worth looking at would be the ones that correlate with gun ownership. Like being conservative for example. It might be that being conservative makes you more prone to suicide even if you don't own a gun. Further research is needed.
> Likewise, while taking away guns probably will have some influence on the suicide rate, I doubt very much (or not as much as people think).
If there's a 4 fold increase of the probability of suicide for people owning a gun then if you take the guns away, number of suicides in this group will drop by some significant amount (depending on how much of this increase comes from guns, and how much comes from factors that correlate with gun ownership). To keep the suicide rates roughly the same overall people who currently don't own a gun would have to start suicinding more because now there's nobody owning a gun and I can't imagine any possible mechanism that might cause it.
> We also cannot ignore the consequences of taking the guns: a psychological loss of agency, and potentially physical loss of security, etc. It's not a simple problem to solve.
I agree it's a thing that needs to be considered. However part of this sense of agency is agency to take their own lives in quick and simple fashion.
I think that in some cases stripping someone of sense of agency might be beneficial.
For the suicide to be attempted you don't only need to be depressed but also you need to feel enough agency to take your life.
Part of the problem with some of antidepressants is that they don't change your outlook on life but they give you energy. So the world still looks horrible but now you feel empowered to finally do something about it and you kill yourself.
But the argument about guns is not really about, let's ban guns to lower suicide rates. It's way more about, let's ban guns to prevent people who broke down from slaugtering dozen other people each.
True enough. So while I could carry on with the debate about suicide, I think it would be more productive to respond to this argument.
By virtually every measure banning guns to prevent mass shootings is a terrible idea.
There are (conservatively) 80 million gun owners, and hundreds of millions of guns in the US. It would be completely impossible to take all of those guns, or to ban the sale of new ones, and even if you could that would still be depriving tens of millions of citizens a right guaranteed to them by the constitution for no fault of their own.
You might argue it is worth depriving citizens of this right if it improves public safety. The evidence is not in favor of this position. This right is not simply some mere hypothetical right to overthrow tyrants, but the right to self defense (including the effective means of that defense). Reasonable estimates (produced by the CDC) put the number of defensive gun uses per year in the hundreds of thousands. If you look at the rates of homicide by state, and compare that with the rates of gun ownership in that state, you find that the correlations are (weakly) negative. The places in this country that have the worst homicide rates also have the strictest gun laws.
Mass shootings, while horrific, are a tiny fraction of the total number of homicides in this country. We definitely must address mass shootings, but our plans must be both realistic and not compromise the safety of many thousands more.
There are no doubt many factors that contribute to the occurrence of mass shootings. However, one of the biggest factors that contributes to the deadliness of mass shootings is the presence of gun free zones. The vast majority of mass shootings happen in gun free zones, and the evidence suggests that the average number of deaths in mass shootings is arguably much lower if there is an armed citizen putting up a defense.
If you want an evidence-based piece of legislation that would curb mass shootings, the elimination of gun free zones should be at the top of your list. It would certainly reduce the average body count of these events. It also stands to reason that if you don't have as many people dying from such events, the appeal of committing a mass shooting (to someone who is seeking fame and a sense of control by killing lots of people) is going to go down considerably.
Except the single most important one. That it worked in every country that did this in response to mass shootings.
> depriving tens of millions of citizens a right guaranteed to them by the constitution for no fault of their own
If you actually cared about the constitution itself not the fairly modern interpretation reinforced by lobbying group paid with money from gun manufacturing industry, you'd be strongly advocating for the state governents to have right to equip and maintain armed forces independent of federal goverment. Bacause that was the letter and the intention of the second amendment while it was written.
It was not about citizens owning guns. It was about states owning sufficient army to counter federal governemnt if it descended into tyranny.
> Mass shootings, while horrific, are a tiny fraction of the total number of homicides in this country. We definitely must address mass shootings, but our plans must be both realistic and not compromise the safety of many thousands more.
However mass shooting are a thing that very large percentage of people is not willing to accept as the cost of increased security. Especially since any security benefits of having country drowning in guns and ammo are very hard to prove conclusively.
> The places in this country that have the worst homicide rates also have the strictest gun laws.
It doesn't really matter if a person can cross state border with a gun that is easily and cheaply available with zero hassle on the other side of the border.
Specify what you mean by "worked". There is little evidence that these regulations had any appreciable impact on homicides or other crimes.[1]
> If you actually cared about the constitution itself not the fairly modern interpretation reinforced by lobbying group paid with money from gun manufacturing industry, you'd be strongly advocating for the state governents to have right to equip and maintain armed forces independent of federal goverment. Bacause that was the letter and the intention of the second amendment while it was written.
The large majority of funding for gun rights activism comes from grass roots donors[2]
Your interpretation of the constitution has no basis. Let's go over the top 3 reasons why:
1. The text specifically says "the right of the people" (emphasis mine). The Bill of Rights is pretty explicit about specifying rights which apply to the people and those which specifically deal with the rights of states.
2. Militia has historically included every able-bodied male of fighting age, not just state militias, and this definition is even encoded in the federal law in United States Code Title 10 section 246
3. There is no evidence to suggest that disarming the American population was even conceivable in the early republic, and the kinds of arms that were privately owned at the time of the revolution included warships with canons.
I really must ask: what (in your opinion) would have to change about the text of the 2nd amendment for it to mean what I think it means?
> However mass shooting are a thing that very large percentage of people is not willing to accept as the cost of increased security. Especially since any security benefits of having country drowning in guns and ammo are very hard to prove conclusively.
I didn't say we had to accept mass shootings, just that our response should not be a knee-jerk reaction to media firestorms that fail to achieve their objective or even result in more overall deaths (not to mention a more authoritarian state). We've already accepted a stupid amount of security theater due to media-driven panics - let's not continue the trend.
> It doesn't really matter if a person can cross state border with a gun that is easily and cheaply available with zero hassle on the other side of the border.
Why aren't there more murders in the state the gun was purchased?
---
[1] https://mises.org/power-market/why-gun-control-doesnt-explai...
[2] https://money.cnn.com/news/cnnmoney-investigates/nra-funding...
Apparently they were banned because vice president was there and that was the requirement of his security entourage.
So representative of the federal government forbade law abiding citizens from carrying a gun within the premises. Somehow there was no opposition to that.
Even if this convention was a "gun-free" zone in the normal sense (i.e. a lightly guarded school or shopping mall) gun owners are fairly orderly and law-abiding folk. They generally don't rebel against authority and carry guns into gun-free zones, even it objectively puts them at greater physical risk.
But this does not sound like normal circumstances. The whole problem with gun-free zones is that there is often no one close enough to provide an armed response to a mass shooter. As the saying goes "when seconds count, the cops are minutes away". An event with actual security (presumably Secret Service) there is an entirely different tradeoff.
I don't know the security details for that event, but presumably there are security plans that would assure most gun owners of their safety. Is your plan to provide that level of security to all gun-free zones?
As is mass shootings, when considering the population…what’s different is that all murder/suicides are now perfectly announced to everyone, almost instantly.
This problem needs several factors to resolve, and perfectly doing all of them (hardening soft targets, mental health response, reduction in the availability of guns, intervention in situations of parental abuse and neglect) will still not, 100%, make the problem go away. It’s a factor of a large population, people with a moral/ethical gap - possibly due to external factors, with ready access to very effective tools, broadcast to a passive population instantly - which brings revenue to the media.
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/32630640/5385318...
Are you required to know basic gun safety in order to obtain one?
The age gate means that society at one point thought that basic gun safety would be learned before a certain age or maturity would set in or something like that. Society is what has changed.
My body, my choice. Suicide is not a valid reason to restrict guns.
(Also as a side note to Moderators - some people in this thread are unnecessarily flagging comments that supports gun control. Lot of people speak about free speech , hope that is practiced here.)
https://www.foxnews.com/world/canadas-trudeau-freeze-handgun...
Now question is this. Which option seems more sane to you? You decide.
-evidence that assault weapons ban significantly reduced firearm related mortality in USA in 1994 for 10 years.
There are tests to allow people to drive a car though.
Oh really?
Also, we put our lives in the hands of tech all the time.
If private weapons were a threat to the state, they would not be allowed.
General: "Commander, send the tanks to blast the protesters. They're exercising their constitutionally protected right to carry arms, for gods sake!"
Commander: =|
And it's so easy for the first bullet to fly when there are so many guns around.
As evinced by all the people attacking the military all the time?
This is exactly what happened during the civil war. Union army was reluctant and refused to engage in combat, letting Confederate forces withdraw instead. Some yahoo ambushed a well known Union Officer and killed him to support the confederacy and the gloves came off.
Imagine how quickly knowledge of this sort of incident would spread in todays world vs 1861.
Looks pretty good so far.
Don't be scared about tyrrany. You already have it in the form of two party system ruled by the homogeneous clique of oligarchs.
I'd personally like to live in a society where people were mostly vegan, there were no cars, and there were no firearms.
Whether or not we should force that is another question, but it sure sounds nice.
Veganism to reduce carbon emissions and animal suffering, a car-less society to improve communities and public health, and the right to bear arms for the security of a free state are all lofty ideals. However, we have no examples or reasons to believe that enforcing the first two by decree is even feasible, nor can we imagine the unpredictable side effects. On the other hand, there are many examples of states where gun ownership is heavily regulated, restricted, or virtually banned which however remain secure and free and with no obvious downside.
But most importantly, in order to buy a gun you need to get a license. This means medical check, passing a theory test, passing a psychological test and passing a practical test at the shooting range. It's not trivial at all.
The culture is completely different to US. Everyone is keeping their weapons in a safe. No bedside tables, car glove boxes or other nonsense. I've never heard of a child taking their parents' gun.
Qua guns, teenagers in other countries don't have easy access to concealable firearms. Dad doesn't have one, and you can't waltz into a store around the block to get one.
The Uvalde shooter purchased his weapon a few days prior. Most school shooters do. Anything making that harder helps.
cars?
Guns are exclusively designed to take lives. Would be useless without their ability to effectively kill things, and most humans outside of America don't think it's important for civilians to be armed.
And guns aren't intended to kill children in the halls of an elementary school, but here we are. Intended use isn't a relevant part of the conversation, it's cost/benefit. We pay a cost, we get a benefit. Cars cost lives. Legal guns cost lives. Vending machines cost lives. If 10,000 people a year died from vending machines, we'd be having the same conversation as we are with guns, even if their intended use is handing out snacks
We as a society need to decide where our line is with all of these things. Just because someone has a different line than you doesn't mean they are devaluing the cost, they may just place greater value on the benefit.
> most humans outside of America don't think it's important for civilians to be armed
Most people outside of America think strict religious laws are a good idea. So what?
Most of the rest of the world live in pretty restrictive societies on a large number of axis.
I stop reading after that ridiculous statement.
Um...
I know you can shoot targets with them, but that doesn't seem like the principal use.
What else do you think a gun is designed to do, beyond killing things?
The guns the biathletes use in the Winter Olympics aren’t “meant to kill”.
They have the same essential design as most low-caliber rifles that are explicitly designed for hunting - i.e., designed for killing.
That design came from centuries of seeking more efficient, efficacious ways to kill with guns.
Sure, they're tweaked to be optimal for very formalized, competitive shooting, not military combat, but they'd still serve very well for executions, sniping, and the like.
See also biathlon's roots in military training: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biathlon#History
That is their entire purpose.
-60 percent or more US states have no gun registration, I know as I live in Indiana which changed to a no gun registration state despite objections from their own citizens and cops.
-Among religious right guns are seen as a male status symbols
-Can we cure this economically by requiring liability insurance in addition to gun registration? It work by, if you have a past history of danger signs then you would be accessed via insurance companies the largest liability insurance price of owning a gun. Similar to vehicle registration and liability insuranceGun registrations just tell the government, or anyone who can access the registration where to get guns. Registrations don't stop anything and only serve to create more criminals from otherwise innocent people if they don't file paperwork on time. Also, in the U.S. any form of government list of people is heavily suspect regardless of guns, a vast majority of people simply don't want anything that can let the government easily track them. Social Security is barely tolerated for keeping massive amounts of seniors from starving to death, even then the creation of the SSN was hugely controversial.
In fact nobody benefits. IIRC owning a gun increases your odds of being shot dead by 3-4x.
> Registrations don't stop anything and only serve to create more criminals from otherwise innocent people if they don't file paperwork on time.
It works everywhere else in the world.
Unfortunately like automobiles all this would due is punish the honest people. The people who most should have this insurance just wouldn't buy it.
People may have issues with the NRA, but their basic stance - enforcing existing gun laws - seems like a reasonable start. We haven’t even met that threshold yet.
They don't care about gun rights, they care about the stock price of arms manufacturers.
There's a (already fairly 'culty') church here where every adult male wears a pistol to church.
When was there ever gun registration in Indiana?
People should safely store their fire-arms, but they don't and guns get stolen and sold illegally, or used by their teenage child.
People shouldn't point a gun at someone unless their life is in danger and they're prepared to take a life, but they do and people get shot by accident, or road rage turns deadly.
Not to mention the suicides. If you own a gun ideation can turn into action in less than 30 seconds and it can seem like a painless, easy way to go.
And when everyone is armed everyone wants to be armed. Cops pull their guns quickly out of fear of armed criminals. Regular people want to own a gun because they feel like everyone else does, and they're now less safe unless they also get one.
Growing up outside the US I never saw any guns. I don't know of anyone who had a gun. I don't know of anyone who knew anyone who had a gun. I remember seeing military members in parades carrying guns because it was one of the few times I'd actually seen one. Cops didn't walk around armed. There are other ways to kill people but guns are an especially effective, intuitive, and easy way to do so.