The reality of gun violence in the US

[Zeus]

Oddly, it took a Canadian news site to tell me this

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/u-s-gun-ho ... -1.1858107

[SineSwiper]

U.S. gun homicides



Protip: If you're going to compare homicides of various countries, don't put the word "gun" in front of it.

[Zeus]

U.S. gun homicides



Protip: If you're going to compare homicides of various countries, don't put the word "gun" in front of it.

Umm, why? We're specifically talking about deaths due to guns. We don't wanna include suicides, beat downs, or any other kinds of murder, just guns where the US is so stupid about it with their laws. Why not discuss it? It's not like the US is the only country in the world with guns so of course you can compare

[Oracle]

Yea I'm not getting Sine's point, unless he's just sick of hearing about his fellow countrymen and women getting gunned down by psychos (although it's better now than it was in the 90s! Gotta love the media/social media).

[Don]

If you've a country where everyone has nuclear bombs, even if all these guys are really careful with them you'd obviously still end up with absolutely massive number of nuclear bomb related deaths. So the fact that USA is relatively careful with guns doesn't take away the fact that having guns at all is more likely to get yourself killed. Last month one of the senior guys was giving a speech about workplace safety and he's saying how he used to work in a TNT factory and nobody ever got hurt so nobody should get hurt in an IT center. But that doesn't account for the fact that there are certainly far more IT shops than TNT factories so the latter can be held to a higher standard. If TNT factories are as common as IT centers you'd surely have a lot of people getting blown up no matter how careful you are.

And no the bad guys isn't going to magically circumvent whatever gun control laws you have. There are plenty of messed up people who would want a tank or a lot of explosives to blow stuff up. That's why it's very hard to get yourself a tank and stuff that can be used as explosive are also watched carefully by the government. You can't just order tons of Ammonium Nitrate or whatever without having the government on your back. The fact that gun control works in other country says there isn't some kind of fundmental force of nature that wants guns to be free. It obviously can be controlled.

I believe statistics shows more people in US die from accidental weapon discharge than most country die from gun homicides. And it really shouldn't surprise anyone that if you're carrying a lot of weapons that can easily kill people, even if you're totally responsible for them it's still quite dangerous.

[Eric]

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colber ... nce-causes

And for you filthy Canadians who I love http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-co ... lip1006773

[Shrinweck]

I lived with three (what turned out to be) responsible gun owners when I was doing the roommate thing. Was never comfortable with it. One assured me that as long as I never burst into his room when he was sleeping and tried to rob him he would never take the shotgun out from under his pillow and murder me. I guess he was telling the truth. I should have checked under his pillow just to see if he actually kept it there. He was rarely home days. Another had an anger management problem and I'm pretty surprised considering how he'd fly off the handle that guns never took a part in this.

The third one I'm pretty sure was a small time pimp and cocaine dealer. Literally heard him have a conversation once:

"So... you're a pimp?"
"I ain't no pimp"
"But... okay. Women you know sleep with men and charge them, right?"
"Yeah."
"And then they give you a cut of what they charge."
"Yeah."
"So that makes you a pimp right?"
"No"

[Zeus]

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colber ... nce-causes

And for you filthy Canadians who I love http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-co ... lip1006773

Yeah, I saw that. Freakin' hilarious, especially the end when the guy "kicked himself in the balls". Amazing

I only wish I could find the clip of him calling RoboCop "an optimistic view of the future of Detroit". Fucking classic

[SineSwiper]

Umm, why? We're specifically talking about deaths due to guns. We don't wanna include suicides, beat downs, or any other kinds of murder, just guns where the US is so stupid about it with their laws. Why not discuss it? It's not like the US is the only country in the world with guns so of course you can compare

Because all of these arguments start like this: "Gun homicides are down since country X outlawed guns" and then proceed to compare it to the US. Or the fact that they compare other countries to the US, which has a unique demographic profile. Or the fact that gun homicides are somehow more important than, say, kniving homicides.

It's late, and I'm tired. However, some pointers when talking about this subject:

1. There is no such thing as an "assault weapon".

2. Every plane crash gets national attention. Yet, flying is the safest way to travel.

3. Banning a class of gun is either going to miss any practicality (ban gatling guns? who cares?) or infringe on legitimate classes for hunting and defense.

4. If you really want to look at "gun homicides", know that the class of gun that's used the most in homicides are handguns. Not shotguns, or "assault weapons", or sniper rifles. Handguns.

5. Trying to ban and get rid of all 300 million guns in the US is about as unenforceable as trying to deport all 11 million illegal immigrants from the country. And it would be a helluva lot bloodier.

There is middle ground in trying to enforce what we have or make it easier to access the right information. But, nobody wants to talk about middle ground. Emotions invade every argument and it falls back to both extremes.

[Don]

There's no difference between a knife homicide and a gun homicide but you got to try a lot harder to kill the same number of people with a knife compared to a gun. It's not like for every gun homicide you got a knife homicide to make up for that in other countries, because if they do they got to have a lot of people busy stabbing each other all day to even match the rate of gun homicides in US.

There's no intrinsic 'gun wants to be free'. You're basically repeating the 'guns are the strongest weapon ever' theme from manga. If Emperor Obama wants to take all your guns he can do so rather easily as long as the miltary backs him up. If the USA army simply left the homeland today and burned down all their production capacity before leaving and Canada invaded it'd be virtually impossible to hold them back with your 300 million handguns against any modern army. For a less violent approach, it's pretty clear that everything modern requires a ton of maintenance. If you restrict both guns, ammo, and maintenance you'll eventually have a bunch of unusable guns or no ammo to use them with. It'll probably take a generation or longer so it's probably not actually going to happen because whoever enacted that probably would be voted out of the office within 10 years and the next pro-gun guy will repeal it, but it's certainly doable.

In the end the gun debate is still a matter of politics and economics. If you get rid of guns it's going to cost $X to do it. Maybe half of the guys would've died from gun homicides don't but if $X is too much then it's something we can live without, especially if doing so also faces strong political opposition. I mean Obamacare is getting a lot of resistance too, and how can you argue against something that will surely save some lives? Because it costs too much. If I recall the overall death rate in US isn't really any worse than other countries so you can say more people die to guns but less people die to other stuff (that are not substitue for guns) and it's about even, and if it's about saving lives, obesity is far more dangerous anyway.

[Don]

By the way the plane statistics is pretty misleading and it shows how statistics can be manipulated. On a per trip basis an airplane is about as safe as a motorcycle, which is one of the less safe ways to travel. In terms of distance traveled, especially if you do passenger-miles, it's obviously one of the safest thing around. Everyone knows the only real danger in an airplane is the takeoff and the landing, and beyond that it's not really any more risky to travel 100 miles versus 10000 miles while airborne. But it's not like it somehow makes you feel better knowing your airplane traveled 2000 miles safely before crashing at the landing. Of course the stuff you need to travel in airplane usually have prohibitive if not impossible alternatives, and it's not like people regularly die from riding on motorcycles so it's still pretty safe overall.