This weekend’s mass shootings come as the country mourns the victims of its deadliest mass shooting this year. Days earlier, 18 people were killed in a shooting in Lewiston, Maine.
This weekend’s mass shootings come as the country mourns the victims of its deadliest mass shooting this year. Days earlier, 18 people were killed in a shooting in Lewiston, Maine.
I’ll just leave this here for anyone who’s like, it’s those high crime cities, etc etc and denies that guns are the problem. Other western countries are horrified by the US’s stance towards guns and don’t have to deal with this, because, and stay with me here, they have less guns, and guns kill people really quickly and easily compared to other weapons. There ya go.
Gun deaths aren’t as interesting here since it includes suicide. Sure, no access to guns makes suicide harder (and probably less likely), but the causes there aren’t related at all to mass shootings.
I prefer to track gun crime (and other violent crime) separately, such as:
The causes behind each are often wildly different, and the solutions should also vary. In some cases, taking away guns is part of the solution, but in others, individuals will use other tools.
Why isn’t the huge amount of gun suicide not interesting to you? They are victims of guns as much as anyone else. For most, suicidal ideation is a temporary state they recover from, and later regret attempting if they survive. Success rate with gun suicide is way higher than other methods, turning this generally temporary psychosis into permanent and untreatable death.
And what is this other killing tool that’s just as effective and easily accessible as a gun?
Of course easy access to guns isn’t the only problem. But I would argue it’s far and away the largest for most of these issues, and explains the massive divide you see between the United States and other countries that are otherwise quite similar. There’s no real solution to these things without reducing the amount and access to firearms.
Homicide specific chart showing the immense gap:
Source: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (Global Burden of Disease 2019), Small Arms Survey (Civilian Firearm Holdings 2017)
It is interesting, it’s just interesting separately from other gun-related issues because the causes are quite different.
For example, simply requiring guns be securely stored (with annual checks by police or gun sellers) could drastically change suicide numbers because it would make guns less easily accessible. But that’s probably less effective in resolving issues with homicides, since those are often planned further in advance. Likewise, red flag laws are probably more effective with suicidal people or those who are likely to commit mass shootings (both tend to have more obvious mental health issues), whereas they’re probably less effective with homicidal people since those who would report them would be worried about retaliation (i.e. they’re probably already domestic violence victims).
So that’s why I think they should be tracked separately. Some policies could impact all, but most would probably only impact one or two metrics.
That really depends on the type of crime. For hate crimes and other forms of mass murder, cars are apparently relatively common. For homicides, knives are readily accessible and effective. For suicide, perhaps car exhaust? Self-hanging is also pretty common (my friend used a belt when he killed himself). Idk, I try to avoid thinking about such things.
They have some of their own unique individual contributors as well sure, but easy access to firearms is a contributor they all share. Better gun control would help some of these things in different amounts.
For the issue of suicide, there is extensive research on how the access to firearms in particular is a problem.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1916744
I’m not saying it would prevent every suicide, but reducing access to guns would prevent many of them.
Too often when gun controls are discussed no matter what specific problem, people just say, “well this regulation wouldn’t have prevented this particular shooting so it’s useless and we shouldn’t even try any regulations.” Gun controls don’t have to prevent all gun problems to still have a big benefit and save many lives. We shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good when it comes to solutions to these problems that America’s gun culture have made so much worse than they need to be.
Sure. My point is that lumping everything together doesn’t really tell anything interesting about gun violence/crime, it just says there’s a lot of gun-related deaths. It’s not really actionable.
We should be looking at groups of gun-related violence/crime and come up with solutions that target each one.
It’s absolutely actionable! With gun control. All these other countries have these problems too, but they’re way less of a problem without so many guns. There’s no such thing as a solution to gun violence that doesn’t address guns.
Right, but it’s how you address guns that’s interesting, especially when taking into account the 2nd amendment.
I’m just trying to convince people we should attempt something, any kind of gun control. So many people on America are stuck on this, there’s just no helping it, nothing we can do, thinking. The onion headline “no way to prevent this, says only nation where this regularly happens” bears constant repeating.
If that involves needing to get rid of the second ammendment, so be it. I think it’d be fine to stay with effective regulations if the current conservative courts didn’t have such an insane understanding of it, basically forbidding any form of gun regulation.
Damn, those bears in Alaska must have yoked bear arms.
But seriously, looks like Hawai’i and Massachusetts need to tutor the rest of the class.
Also this data is starting to turn green and grow mold. I’d be interested in what this landscape looks like now that it’s a decade later.