Agreed. We should implement policies that prevent guns from getting into the hands of children, regardless of whether they're gang members or not.

That'll be very very difficult. Even very restrictive weapon ownership countries like Netherlands and Sweden have a big violent gang problem. And a policy as strict as they have is just totally unthinkable in the political reality of the US.

So a policy stricter than the US can have isn't enough to solve this problem. That's why it's better to aim at reducing accidental underage gun deaths which is much more achievable.

It's so bizarre that America is the only country in the world that seems to face these kinds of problems.

As a Canadian who grew up in a household with a dozen firearms, I never once touched those firearms, and hardly ever saw them until I was taken to the range by my father and taught how to use them.

It wasn’t a problem for rural American kids to have access to guns in the 1950s. My dad routinely hunted small game before class.

America is the only first world country to border South and Central America, which is the region of the world with a homicide rate orders of magnitude above any other. It is no surprise violence spills over due to proximity.

I'm very interested in this border between South America and the US. most maps seem to be hiding it.

also, fun fact, when your government spends a hundred years assisting coups of democratic or socialist governments, those counties are going to have a lot of political instability.

> America is the only first world country to border South and Central America

The United States has one border with a central America country (Mexico). Please show on the map where it has a border with any south American country?

Are you seriously blaming the US's horrible society on all the latam countries they deliberately destabilized?

France have a border with South American countries, and is facing illegal incursion from Brazilian gangs in it's territory (and an army guy died for it last year if I remember correctly), still the gun violence in Guyana is pretty low (lower than Marseille). Not an excuse.

Yes, there are gangs in those countries, but the thing is that gang members they don’t kill each other at nearly the same rate as they do in the US.

Sweden’s murder rate is less than a fifth of the murder rate in the United States.

It seems like their policies do go a big way to solve the problem, as infeasible as they appear to be for the USA.

You can't compare murder rates in the US with Sweden.

They have a real welfare system, diminishing social inequalities and with that the feeding ground for crime.

we can do both

Sounds like a great idea…

…but it’s also worth pointing out that murder rates are also a lot lower than the US in other developed countries that don’t have Scandinavian levels of welfare transfers.

The other developed countries still have much lower income differences between rich and poor than the US though. I think this is a bigger contributor to US crime levels than its gun policy.

Also, I don't understand the focus on murder rates. Compare all violent crime at least.

Don’t know about Sweden but the Netherlands does not have a “big violent gang problem”.

It has a problem with a few small and very violent gangs that occasionally gun down people in broad daylight, in the middle of the street, completely disregarding the safety of the people around them, which is bad but nothing like the gang problems in the US or Latin America.

Sarcasm noted. Hopefully you understand a multi-pronged approach is needed.

I'm not being sarcastic.

A multi-pronged approach that involves reducing the amount of guns in American is a surefire way to reduce access to guns by children, both in gangs and out.

Sarcasm might’ve been the wrong word. I meant to say I see you reusing whatever words I write to disagree with them.