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I just want to say two important things..
First the recent school shooting is a tragedy and we should all be sad about the death of any children, especially as a victim of muder.
Second, we have to realize, for the sake ofperspective, how unfathomably rare it is for a child to die in a school shooting in america. It seems common because america is huge and the news makes this stuff public. But the numbers are more telling.
To put some numbers to it the chance of a child dyingin a school shooting in a public shool on any given day is 1 in 614 million. For comparison the chance of a person getting struck by lightening on any given day is **less** than 1 in 370 million.
In other words a child is more than **twice** as likely in the USA to get struck by lightening as they are to die in a school shooting.
Should we still mourne and be outraged by it... sure.. does that mean it is a problem that is common enough to be a huge concern... not really. We should probably put more effort into addressing the "lightening problem" than we should be about addressing school shootings.
I'm a little bit confused here.
Are you saying that school (or other mass) shootings are as "natural" as lightning?
@pj i am not. I am saying it is half as common as lightening to get killed in a school shooting.
@freemo
I do not agree with this statement:
“We should probably put more effort into addressing the “lightening problem” than we should be about addressing school shootings.”
The question is: “What can we do about it as a society?”
You can see the storm coming and you can choose not to go outside or you may try to find shelter and protect yourself in some other way, but a child who has to be in school supposedly safe under adult supervision doesn’t have such a privilege.
How can we consider ourselves a civilized society if we don’t have the means to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of individuals that should not have them?
You need a license to drive a car and you can’t buy cigarettes and alcohol under a certain age but you can carry a gun or even an army-style assault rifle no questions asked.
Interesting theory about why guns are so loved in the US:
White Southerners started cultivating the tradition of the home arsenal immediately after the Civil War because of insecurities and racial fears. During the rest of the 19th century, those anxieties metamorphosized into a fetishization of the firearm to the point that, in the present day, gun owners view their weapons as adding meaning and a sense of purpose to their lives.
@freemo @pj Sources for my comment:
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002107670/historian-uncovers-the-racist-roots-of-the-2nd-amendment\
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/opinion/second-amendment-slavery-james-madison.html
I take that view from the publications of these historians.
The often stated view of individuals being armed against the government seems to me to be a bit shakier in view of how the fledgling US government responded to things like the Whiskey rebellion. If they sincerely wanted individuals to be able to shoot federal agents, they would not have responded so strongly to those attacks.
@freemo @pj Slavery was definitely not the only factor in drafting the 2nd amendment.
Also, the colonies were more rural at that time than most of the USA is now and the country as a whole was in a more precarious state.
I feel that a lot of the division on gun rights in the USA is a rural/urban divide. Living at my uncle’s ranch in West Texas, you really need a gun for pest control, etc. In the college town where I live now, a gun really has zero utility. So residents of those two regions will have a legitimate difference of opinion.
Finding that guns provide a “sense of meaning to your life” as stated in the Scientific American article is not something I would be able to accept anyway. Neither do I get a sense of self from my car, house, etc.
Many, especially younger, people get a sense of self from things such as guns, cars, and boats, but that’s not the point.
A “well-regulated militia” doesn’t mean everyone can simply buy an assault rifle at the nearby grocery store. You can’t do this in Switzerland or Israel where I believe everyone that is supposed to, have a gun, but, afaik, there are no mass shootings like in the US.
Something is wrong with a society where you can’t drive a car without a permit or even a medical exam if you are of a certain age, but you can own a gun without any restrictions.
Yes. Let the bad drivers expunge themselves naturally, either by dying after hitting a tree or being killed when they hit someone having a gun.๐
If you take this stance then requiring proof of competence or professional credentials from let’s say, engineers, medical personnel, and similar jobs where one can do lots of harm if they don’t know what they are doing is also an attack on their freedom.
Everyone should be allowed to build and sell highrises and airplanes using whatever or no standards, as they like. That’s their freedom. If people die when one of those fails, who cares, they should have known better and protected themselves.
Alternatively, their families (with guns) can get such bad actors permanently out of business so only the “good ones” will remain.
Actually, this may work๐
Many states dont require boating licenses, works out just fine for the boaters. You also dont need a license to fly an ultralight plane, even with a passanger, works out well there too.
As for high rises, same thing, make sure someone is checking the highrise meets code in its planning and building phase, as long as it does its safe to build regardless of ghe credentials of the person who designed it.
We have countless examples of this sort of stuff being very workable and safe without needing licensing by having other mechanisms that ensure safety.
That’s all I’m asking: effective collective “mechanisms that ensure safety” enforced by the community, elected government, or whatever, that work for the vast majority of their constituents.
Giving everyone guns and saying that this is for their protection just doesn’t work for most people, despite what Jefferson was thinking when he said that having a gun will more likely prevent someone from attacking them.
What we know is that gubs arent the solution, but we know they arent the problem either. Banning them in a violent society makes things more violent. Im willing to suspect in a peaceful society banning them or not has no effect.
The solutions lie in changing our environments to be healthy, and improving access to mental health (which by the way is the exact opposite of what woukd haplen kf we toom away gun rights from people who seek therapy and get diagnosed)
No the right vs privilage argument is secondary for me... im a scientist i care about what works. What i know is the numbers show almost every time, you ban guns it either has no net benefit or, more kften, causes violent acts, especially rape, to sky rocket.
I support guns because banning them takes lives.
And the whole schizophrenic thing... doesnt matter if you thinknifs a privilage or a right. If you tell people they will no longer have access to guns and the ability tonuse it to protect themselves if thry go seek therapy and happen to get a mental health diagnosis, then leople will avoid therapy... you just made things way worse not better.
@freemo @rrb I donโt understand how's having a gun to protect oneself from a sick (or just evil) person is a better solution than making sure those people can't get a gun in the first place.
Using more guns to protect against bad people with guns is only good for gun manufacturers.
And nobody is asking the outright *banning* of guns, just to make sure peoplw that want them have the capacity to use them safely.
This is not in the Wild West anymore. I thought the government as an instrument of a civilized society was responsible for the protection of its citizens, especially the weak.
You say these people would be alive today if only they had guns. I believe some of them may have owned one, and one of the people killed, a police officer Const. Heidi Stevenson had used her and died anyway:
No its not the wild west, and in theory polkce shoukd orotect us... but in practice thst makes little sense. Police come when you call them and there is going to be a delay no matter how well funded. You cant even call police if your being jumped or raped most of the time.
In the end its great to talk about ideals and what shoukd be or shouldnt be. But we have to schknowledge reality, and the reality is that in most incidents the police will never be a reliable security.
For example only 46% of violent crimes in general are reported, i suspect much less for rape. Of those reported only 30% even result in an arrest. Its clear from these numbers very very few, if any, rape cases are acted on by police and prevented.
It is not just the police. Their role is to react to incidents and investigate afterward. I'm talking about #prevention. Gun ownership regulation is a part of it but not all.
The killer in this instance had a history of domestic abuse and obvious mental issues but nobody bothered to check his guns, two of which were smuggled from the US.
The issue with gun registration is that one day thr government may become oppressive and make guns illegal and thrn those registrations can be used by an oppessive govt.
The other issue is profiling. Cops might use registrations to target people as suspected and as such owning a gun, even if you never use it, makes you a target of wrongful arrest.
We already have a "one-way" system that is essentially a registrstion. As long as you have a gun or its serial number you can track it back to who owned it, but not the other way around. Assuming it is all legal of course.
This is a "strawman" argument. You can't base your current safety policies on the remote possibility that the government may one day become oppressive.
All governments are more or less oppressive but the good thing is that they don't survive for too long and inevitably collapse when they become too oppressive.
My argumebt was only half about that. The other hakf was about profiling, whicb we all know would and is an issue right now.
Having a gun in and of itself, something that is a rigbt, shoukd not be able to be used to generate suspicion, which is the only real ourpose of a register.
Now if you susoect someone because of actual evidence, then you have the right, and can, search the records and lookup based on the serial number.
Its the same reason cops cant look up who is poor in order to create a list of suspects for a robbery.
@freemo @pj Most gun sales are not record. Only 40% of sales are recorded:
https://www.aap.org/en/advocacy/state-advocacy/universal-background-checks-for-gun-purchases/
Most (60%) are not recorded with no background checks. This does not deal with 3-D printing of guns
Ok so just checked... all gu sales in all ststes by dealers (this appesrs to inckude gun shows) require record keeping.
Private sales only requires record keeping in 19 states, though these are demcrat states mostly so thry do represent thr overwhelming majority of the usa population.
I woukd be ok with supporting a federal law that extended the record keeping requirements on gun sales as they currently exist toninckude all private sales.
I think existing liability law could probably handle that well enough... if you have something stolen and were negligent about storage you might have some liability.
That said id be willing to explore it.
My only concern there is
1) the rules for storage cant be prohibitive such as requiring a safe which many people wont have money or access to
2) the user should be allowed to keep it unlocked and without a trigger lock at a minimum while they are home ao in the case of a home invasion thry have quick access to it
One might expect that if you keep a gun at home youd take reasonable precautions if you left town such as security camera or somethibg maybe. As long as the two concerns above are properly balanced i would consider more discussion about ways we could better address this.
@freemo @rrb @pj An interesting discussion. As someone who works in policing in canada I have been exposed to a lot of information about gun use in crime and the pros/cons of gun ownership and use in general. One of the aspects I think that you overlook when arguing that people would be safer if everyone carried around guns is that the vast majority of altercations, whether physical or otherwise, come about when otherwise reasonable individuals become emotionally disturbed or incensed (drugs and alcohol often contribute to this), then they make decisions they otherwise would not. A huge percentage of assaults/suicides by guns occur in residences where they are not safely stored, because individuals in the midst of an emotional episode can grab them and use them without a chance for a second thought. Suicide is also a huge one, you are *far* more likely to successfully commit suicide if there is a gun in your home and seeing as how the rate of suicidality in most developed countries keeps on increasing, probably the best reason to not own a gun is to protect you from yourself! And I think the argument for America being a naturally more violent country than other developed nations is not adequately supported by evidence, people in canada get into altercations all the time, but so few of them involve firearms that they are less likely to turn deadly, in fact, the communities within Canada that have the most fatal altercations are the very ones with the highest prevalence of gun ownership! Not having easy access to guns is certainly helping to prevent a ton of needless gun deaths. While it is true that a dedicated individual can acquire the necessary firepower to commit an atrocity, like what happened a few years ago in Nova Scotia, that event took years of planning and preparation; what gun control helps to prevent are the deaths that occur from more temporary insanities.
@freemo @rrb @pj I understand your points but I was not arguing for guns to be illegal. The vast majority of guns available to americans are also legal to buy and own in Canada, the difference however is that there is a much more involved process to acquiring guns, including mandatory safety courses. The process is especially detailed for those who wish to own handguns (statistically the most deadly firearm in developed nations). This process, along with the lack of cultural fixation on gun ownership is what keeps the numbers of guns in circulation down and not outright bans. These safety measures also helps us keep guns out of the hands of habitually violent criminals because there are far fewer black market guns to buy and fewer legal ones to steal. It would be amusing to an american to know how many petty criminals in canada resort to shooting each other with pellet and bb guns simply because it is so difficult for them to find actual guns, whether through theft or illegal purchase. And while many violent altercations will result in injury and death regardless of firearm involvement, it seems illogical to me to argue that those very altercations would be equally deadly if everyone was strapped. Also speaking to the attitude of police officers on the job here in Canada, there is definitely a whole lot of stress that is avoided because it is so rare that they have to deal with perps with access to guns. With the number of mental health related calls that police respond to daily here I couldnt imagine how they would feel if they knew that these people could very well have loaded firearms in their possession. I know quite a few cops with 30+ years on the job who only needed to draw their sidearm for a call a handfull of times in their entire careers! And it was not for lack of calls, but because they rarely felt that they needed them, because their perps werent packing heat.
Fair, though I think my response would apply equally in defense against restrictions as well... my general argument is, if you dont have a violent past then its up to you as a person to keep yourself in check, much as we do with alcohol.
@freemo @Clementulus @pj There is an epidemic of suicide among US veterans with PTSD. The issue is that usually there is never a second attempt and guns are more likely to make it be successful. Medical personnel try to advise people with PTSD to not have a firearm just to avoid the temptation. I would assume you are OK with people, on their own, removing the temptation, right? Congress has made it illegal for the VA to discuss firearms with patients.
Since I support access to suicide obviously I want those means to be effective (half-successful suicide in many cases is probably worse, brain damage and all just making their problems more).
I dont think we should be removing the temptation if that means removing the means to commit suicide no.. if anything we should provide easy access to the means to suicide... what we should be providing, however, is easy access to mental health and an environment where fewer people develop a state of wanting to commit suicide.. we should do our best to help provide support so people dont commit suicide. But in the end the access to suicide should be with no barriers.
@freemo @Clementulus @pj But explaining risk factors to patients so that they can think ahead and avoid putting there lives at risk in the future would be something your previous statements lead me to believe you should support.
I am fine with euthanasia and personal freedom of choice regarding suicide. But, informing people so they can plan ahead to avoid spur of the moment irrevocable decisions seems like a good idea.
I absolutely do support explaining risk factors to patience and causing them to think ahead.. but it has to be their choice, not forced on them.
For example if it were required that every gun shop have a mental health pamphlet explaining these risks and a number to call for consultation and they were encouraged to take one before buying a gun, id totally support that.
Hell I'd even support taxing guns and using that tax to pay for the psychologist to see them and have that conversation to ensure that it would be a free service.
But in the end if they want to buy the gun, they should be able to, even if they want to use it to die.
@Clementulus @rrb @pj
Well said and an excellent contribution to the conversation, so thank you for that.
So a lot to unload here.. I'll start with the easier part to address, the suicide.
I have a fairly unpopular opinion that suicide is a fundamental right that extends from bodily autonomy. Everyone has a right to commit suicide and we should not be in the business of blocking access to something based on it being an easy means for suicide. That said I do feel we should do our best as a society to provide a healthy environment, easy access to mental health, and generally do our best to make sure society does everything in its power to give people the means to not want to commit suicide. but in the end if thats what they want, they should have the right.
That said, as you say, a person may if they have a gun commit suicide where they wouldnt otherwise want to, it was just a rash spur of the moment thing.. well I think that is also for them to consider when they buy a gun... educate that and tell them "Hey if you buy a gun remember in a moment of insanity you might kill yourself, so now, while you are thinking rationally please consider locking it up, or maybe not buying one at all so that doesnt happen"... then if they still decide they want that gun and are ok with that risk, so be it, that is their choice.
So based on my views I can more or less dismiss the suicide argument.
A very similar argument is made when we talk about violent acts against another. You are right many of those decisions are because the gun is right there, and its in the heat of the moment. Well thats still the responsibility of the sober cool headed person to make and protect themselves from themselves You know what your like and the risks you may pose in the heat of the moment and you should use that to judge if you trust yourself with a gun or not. As for the government, it would protect against this through looking at past acts of violence. If someone has the tendency to pull out a gun and shoot someone in the heat of the moment, without a gun they are likly going to be punching or maybe stabbing people for similar reasons. So a past record of violence would ultimately serve as a protection and people with a history of violence should have a criminal record that prevents them from owning a gun in the first place.
In fact if we really wanted to use that logic to make guns illegal if we wanted to be fair we would have to make a lot of things illegal, including alcohol itself. We expect people to know and regulate themselves, if you are the type of person who looses control on alcohol and will drive drunk, then sober you should be refusing to drink alcohol... if you dont, thats on you. But we dont make alcohol illegal just because some people will act irrational if they have it.
I think we all know exactly the sort of people who are likely to succumb to temporary insanity, and the people who are like that know too. Clear headed them is responsible to plan ahead for momentary insanity them. Just as sober me is expected to make the right judgement calls to protect myself and others against drunk me, if there are any such concerns.