Zero comments on a 19 hour old post regarding another deadly shooting. Unsurprising, but still sad. As a society, we have chosen Guns Over People. At this point it is a collective choice. We...
Zero comments on a 19 hour old post regarding another deadly shooting. Unsurprising, but still sad.
As a society, we have chosen Guns Over People. At this point it is a collective choice. We prefer mass shootings to gun control. Painfully outrageous.
The best comment on this situation I've read so far is this: "The violent murder of school children is a debatable topic in the US." I know this particular post isn't about a school shooting, but...
The best comment on this situation I've read so far is this: "The violent murder of school children is a debatable topic in the US."
I know this particular post isn't about a school shooting, but I think the point still stands.
I was actually just wondering how the userbase of Tildes falls on the gun control issue. Though I suspect the nature of more thought out replies than just sound bites leads people here to be more...
I was actually just wondering how the userbase of Tildes falls on the gun control issue. Though I suspect the nature of more thought out replies than just sound bites leads people here to be more on the side of sensible gun control and not either of the extremes.
I can't speak for everyone, but as one of the "old guard" here (both a long-er time Tildes user and an older-than-most-here person) I can share my opinion: I am a gun owner. Being in Texas, I grew...
I can't speak for everyone, but as one of the "old guard" here (both a long-er time Tildes user and an older-than-most-here person) I can share my opinion:
I am a gun owner.
Being in Texas, I grew up with guns just being around most of the time. I was issued a gun in high school that I had to keep, clean, and learn to shoot. I have over a dozen firearms of various makes, models, and calibers. I can provide a list of them off the top of my head, their history, my history with them, and reasons I have each. I mostly have weird guns. I like the mechanics and engineering of them or the odd history behind them. I have a gun "wish list" of others I'd like to add to my collection.
My wife has about half as many firearms as I have. She, despite not growing up with firearms and having only fired one round prior to meeting me, is about as close to being a "natural" in regards to shooting as I have ever seen in person. The first gun I bought her was a pink snub nose revolver (her request and all her guns are colorful), it's not known to be an absurdly accurate firearm, within about three trips to the range we found she can reliably put all six rounds in a 1" bullseye at 25 yards out with it. Her first experience with a rifle had her put 9 out of 10 rounds in a 2" bullseye at 50 yards on iron sights. The last round was outside that circle, but still on the target, because the wind blew her hair in her face just as she pulled the trigger.
We do not post pictures of guns, we do not post pictures of ourselves with guns, we own no gun merch, we have no gun stickers, we do not follow gun social media, we do not go to gun rallies, events, or conferences, we do not hang out with people who call themselves gun enthusiasts, we are very far from being right wing. We do not hunt. Our guns have and will only put holes in paper. I do not walk around with a gun in my pocket waiting to use it because of some imagined slight against my pride. Guns are not a replacement for a personality.
We find it abhorrent that either of us can walk into a gun store, slap down cash, and walk out with a gun in under 15 minutes.
I have sold some of my guns to private individuals, I had no way to background check them, no way to know their mental state, if they had a restraining order, or were otherwise disallowed from owning a gun. The only thing I had at my disposal was a self imposed requirement that they show me a Texas CHL, which at the very least it proved that at the time they obtained it they had passed all the checks to ensure they could legally own a gun.
We are big fans of gun control.
There is no reason I should be able to get a gun in 15 minutes.
There is no reason I should be able to get a gun in under a week or maybe even a month.
There is no reason I should be able to have multiple firearms on me and just walk around in public with them either concealed or fully on display (open carry).
There is no reason I shouldn't be able to log into the NICS system to check on the status of an individual I'm selling a firearm to (or just flat out require it go through a dealer).
While I find the mechanics of handguns most interesting, there's no real reason handguns should even be legal.
The fact that many (perhaps even most) news stories about mass shootings include something along the lines of "the gun(s) were obtained legally" that right wingers lean on to support their "see, gun laws wouldn't have prevented this" view is evidence enough that gun control is obviously too lax.
Being that this is the US, I don't think there is a feasible way to implement gun control as strict as we'd like it to be, but in a perfect world (ignoring the impossible of an outright ban) the "well regulated militia" part of the 2nd Amendment would be just as enforced as the "shall not be infringed" part, with the bare minimum being belonging to a shooting sports club that demonstrates that you are capable of operating them safely, along with a myriad of checks on your ability to own them responsibly, and preferably not even allowed to take the firearms home.
I have no idea about now, because where Tildes was on this issue 6 months ago is going to be mostly irrelevant after the influx but historically it was there's a few gun enthusiasts here but I...
I have no idea about now, because where Tildes was on this issue 6 months ago is going to be mostly irrelevant after the influx but historically it was there's a few gun enthusiasts here but I think they're all supporters of gun control. I think what is considered effective 'gun control' has had a bit of range to it.
It's often an explicitly American topic, so discussion can sometimes end up being ships-in-the-night style when non-Americans try and weigh-in. I myself have been guilty of this in the past, so I mostly try and avoid the topic now.
I myself am an American and prior military. My position myself is not that we should have a blanket ban of all guns. I've used them in both personal and professional settings. The issue is that...
I myself am an American and prior military. My position myself is not that we should have a blanket ban of all guns. I've used them in both personal and professional settings.
The issue is that guns require nothing to be able to obtain. There is no training requirement, there is no licensing necessary, there are no real barriers to entry to getting virtually any type of weapon that you could want other than money, and there's no need to get your gun registered with the state. All of those things that I just listed are things that are requirements for a vehicle. You have to pass a test of your knowledge, you have to take a practical exam to demonstrate your training, you have to have your vehicle registered to the state for it to be legal to be on public property.
Why we don't have these things are mind boggling. And that's before we even get into the topic of what guns should even be available. I still have yet to see a compelling argument for why assault rifles should be available for the general public. There's really no need and it makes killing a bunch of people at once so much easier.
Guns have use in recreation, between hunting and just general recreational shooting. But just regulate them like we already do with other things that are privileged rights.
Wow. As an European, this is mind bending. I always knew that it was easy to acquire a gun in the states, but somehow I always assumed, that this means it is easy as in "taking a drivers test",...
there are no real barriers to entry to getting virtually any type of weapon that you could want other than money
Wow. As an European, this is mind bending.
I always knew that it was easy to acquire a gun in the states, but somehow I always assumed, that this means it is easy as in "taking a drivers test", not as in "getting some takeout".
A friend of mine recently got his hunters license, which entails a multi week course in flora and fauna and multiple lessons in gun safety before they were even allowed near a gun. After finishing both a practical and theoretical exam, he can now legally acquire some long weapons like rifles, as long as they aren't automatic.
This is in Germany by the way.
I mean, it's kind of both? It's a lot easier to get a driver's license in the US than it is in Europe, too. Edit: Also, like with driver's licenses, there's different levels. It still mostly boils...
I always knew that it was easy to acquire a gun in the states, but somehow I always assumed, that this means it is easy as in "taking a drivers test", not as in "getting some takeout".
I mean, it's kind of both? It's a lot easier to get a driver's license in the US than it is in Europe, too.
Edit: Also, like with driver's licenses, there's different levels. It still mostly boils down to having the time and money to jump through the hoops, but some guns are more regulated than others. You can buy a hunting rifle with just a background check, but (in almost all states) if you want to concealed carry a handgun, you're going to need to take some basic safety classes and get an actual license, too. If you want a machine gun or a cannon or anything like that, you need to spend a fortune on taxes and certifications and you're subject to random inspections by the ATF for as long as you own the gun. It's not a coincidence that honest to god automatic weapons just don't get used in crimes here. There's something like three of them that have ever been committed in US history, and almost all of them were by dirty cops using their duty weapons back in the 30s.
Just because possession is restricted doesn't mean they're impossible to get, and I don't even mean that in the black market sense. A lot of states only require background checks for licensed...
Just because possession is restricted doesn't mean they're impossible to get, and I don't even mean that in the black market sense. A lot of states only require background checks for licensed dealers, so someone restricted from owning one can still attain one through a private sale. Several recent mass shootings have been committed by people who shouldn't have had any weapons because they were restricted.
The restriction is also dependent on authorities A) knowing that this person has a gun when they shouldn't, and B) taking action to confiscate them and prevent them from attaining more. I believe at least one of the recent mass shootings had the shooter's firearms recently confiscated before the event, but somehow they were either returned or the shooter attained more.
Also, one major difference from automobiles: automobiles require you to register ownership with the government if you intend to use them, but guns don't. Some types of firearms do require it, but many states don't have that for handguns, rifles and shotguns. That means we can't always track ownership, which is one of the more concerning parts to me.
The first portion of my response was solely to the premise that it's "harder to get a car than a gun". Which is objectively false. If your position is that guns should be even harder to get, then...
The first portion of my response was solely to the premise that it's "harder to get a car than a gun". Which is objectively false. If your position is that guns should be even harder to get, then I have no problem with that. The issue is purely hyperbolic statements that sound true enough, so they get repeated and don't really do anything but detract from the main point.
automobiles require you to register ownership with the government if you intend to use them, but guns don't
As I addressed in my previous post, this is absolutely false. You do not have to register a vehicle only being used on private property in most jurisdictions. If the goal is to implement wide-scale gun registration, comparing them to other things that don't have to be registered when used on private property is sort of self-defeating.
Honestly, as an American, I'm not entirely sure where I stand. Guns are neat; I've shot them in the past, they're fun. I have buddies that own some, I have a buddy that owns about a dozen, I have...
Honestly, as an American, I'm not entirely sure where I stand.
Guns are neat; I've shot them in the past, they're fun. I have buddies that own some, I have a buddy that owns about a dozen, I have zero desire to own one myself. Guns ought to be regulated more, but it seems to me that nothing outside of an outright ban on guns would really make the difference; my friend who owns all those guns inherited most of them and due to this, it seems to me that if someone wants to get their hands on one, they'll be able to one way or another, so I'm just not sure what to do in this regard.
I don't necessarily think I agree with guns being totally banned, as even though I'm not particularly interested in them, some people like them and it seems as though everyone I know who has them is pretty responsible, even though they can be used to commit mass murder. Again, I'm pretty damn conflicted on this entire issue.
I have legitimately sat down with people on the side of lax gun control and asked them pointed questions but just never get a satisfying answer. States with less gun control have the highest...
I have legitimately sat down with people on the side of lax gun control and asked them pointed questions but just never get a satisfying answer.
States with less gun control have the highest violent crime - don't you think we should at least try the opposite? (Frequently the response is that it's the blue cities in those states, but I'd like to point out - it's still in your state with your state laws and gun regulation)
In the best case scenario of a school shooting we've seen recently, 6 people were still killed before police killed the shooter - are you saying that's acceptable?
Other countries have tried and succeeded by enabling gun control, why isn't it worth just trying?
If crime suddenly dropped dramatically, would you still feel the need for guns? If they aren't to protect you anymore, what are they for?
I've been looking for an opportunity to put into words how I feel about this. So I can play devil's advocate here. I personally am not a fan of guns. I don't own any, and I don't plan on it any...
I've been looking for an opportunity to put into words how I feel about this. So I can play devil's advocate here.
I personally am not a fan of guns. I don't own any, and I don't plan on it any time soon.
I think America in particular does have a problem with guns. From the studies I've seen, I also believe stronger gun control does correlate with fewer gun deaths.
Where I start to feel uncomfortable is when we talk about taking away people's right to buy a gun when that action doesn't directly harm anyone. Yes, statistically, it probably does harm society and indirectly leads to more deaths. But that starts to feel similar to other flimsy arguments I hear about things like people's romantic preferences affecting society negatively (or any number of things some people like and others don't: Fast cars, SUVs, unhealthy food, drag shows, on and on). Don't get me wrong, again, I agree that guns are harmful to our society and think consensual adults doing whatever they want romantically is healthy for society.
But can I justify my personal beliefs about guns enough to codify them into a law that forces everyone else to live by them? I certainly get annoyed when others try to do the same for their beliefs.
I don't drink alcohol. It's just not to my taste. Independent of my preferences, I also think alcohol is a net negative for society. I think we could find studies that bear this out. Use of alcohol likely correlates with violence, domestic abuse, poverty, car accidents, etc. I think alcohol kills a lot of people.
But I think prohibition is not the answer (and I think most Americans would agree). It seems like a simple solution. People are doing something that harms us all. Let's make it illegal to do that. Problem solved. But any kind of big social problem like this is more complicated than that. Simple solutions that just force people to act the way you want are tempting but are not the kind of thing I want my government to do.
I don't think government is inherently bad or anything. I am all for making society better through government action. I just think the government is better at additive action. I am happy to pay taxes and have them spent on social programs, education, PSAs, studies, etc.
Problems like gun violence are hard and complicated because they involve human behavior. I think gun violence is linked with a lot of other more pressing social problems like poverty, inequality, and lack of empathy. everything is interrelated and that's why it's so hard and frustrating to fix these problems. You kind of have to work on them slowly and all at the same time. Why do people abuse alcohol? What personal issues are they trying to escape? Can we help them solve those issues? Why do people buy guns? What are they afraid of? How can we help them feel secure without a gun?
Here is a rough tangent but I think it applies: I think most people who get an abortion do so because they are in a situation where they feel they have no better options. The worst thing you could do for them is to take away the option for an abortion. If stopping abortions is important to some people, I wish they would help by trying to eliminate the same issues of poverty, inequality, etc. They are all linked. Happy, secure, free people probably have fewer abortions. Sex education and access to birth control could also help prevent the situation in the first place.
This is just another example of how I think the priority of the government should be to help first and restrict rights last.
All that said I am not against government regulation either. Buildings need to be safe, and people working with dangerous chemicals need to know what they are doing and keep safety a priority. So I think a reasonable gun regulation would be to make sure everyone who buys one takes a safety course and gets a license. Cars are dangerous as well and you need to get a license for them. So a similar DMV-type model would be fine with me. But I would stress that I wouldn't want it used to restrict people from buying guns. At no point in the process should someone be able to arbitrarily limit the number of licenses or fail an applicant on their safety training course without specific transparent reasons. There should always be a path to gun ownership for anyone willing to cooperate with safety regulations.
I say this because I think the ideal for some people in red states would be to have guns legal for white Republicans only. I think some of them would not be above some Jim Crow type laws to make that happen. Here in California, we got jump-started on gun control laws when Regan was governor and wanted to get guns out of the hands of the Black Panthers.
I usually end up voting for candidates who support gun control laws though. Most of my other views line up with theirs and guns really aren't that important to me. Even if draconian gun control laws were passed I wouldn't bother pushing back that hard, we would still have much more important issues to solve in America than that. My biggest annoyance really is that we spend so much time and effort arguing about gun rights when I think we should just drop it and focus on helping people.
I do think it's a complicated nuanced issue and would be happy to hear what people think I am missing though.
The big issue I see here is that many of the things that affect our society negatively are things people hurt themselves with, while guns are often being used to hurt others. It's much more...
But that starts to feel similar to other flimsy arguments I hear about things like people's romantic preferences affecting society negatively (or any number of things some people like and others don't: Fast cars, SUVs, unhealthy food, drag shows, on and on). Don't get me wrong, again, I agree that guns are harmful to our society and think consensual adults doing whatever they want romantically is healthy for society.
The big issue I see here is that many of the things that affect our society negatively are things people hurt themselves with, while guns are often being used to hurt others. It's much more difficult to kill a bunch of people with a hamburger than a handgun. And even then the US is not above regulating things that do only hurt the users as we've seen extensively in the war on drugs.
While I do agree there is much more to the issue than simply guns, all of these should be done in tandem. Gun restrictions on top of access to mental healthcare and social safety nets to help prevent poverty in which crime is the only way to survive would all work in tandem to drastically reduce gun crime in the US. We have plenty of examples of such working, there is no single cure-all for the problems we have and that gets weaponized by those who don't want change because they will always point to one of the other problems when you try to fix one of them.
We let perfection stand in the way of progress far too often.
While not illegal, they are heavily regulated and nobody bats an eye. You can buy any car you want, as long as it’s street legal and you have a license for that type of vehicle. You can buy any...
Fast cars, SUVs, unhealthy food
While not illegal, they are heavily regulated and nobody bats an eye. You can buy any car you want, as long as it’s street legal and you have a license for that type of vehicle. You can buy any liquor you want, as long as it was produced following regulatory standards and you’re of legal age and can provide ID. Even fast food restaurants have warning labels, minimum regulatory requirements they must follow, and nutritional value info on the menu in some states.
I personally think that, just as there are different license classifications and requirements for different vehicle types, there should be something similar for gun ownership. Mandatory classes, licensing, registration, insurance, periodic re-testing etc. We have a DMV, why don’t we have an equivalent for guns?
From my understanding of the counterpoints, it's either "we need guns because guns are so prevalent because we need guns because guns are so prevalent etc." or that the constitution and its...
From my understanding of the counterpoints, it's either "we need guns because guns are so prevalent because we need guns because guns are so prevalent etc." or that the constitution and its (recent) 2nd Amendment interpretation are immutable laws spoken by God Himself, and that no amount of violence against the innocent can equate the spiritual fulfillment a firearm in America can provide.
There's no reason, it's an ingrained and firearms-industry-funded mental block that Americans have to fight through. Anyone who bothers to think about the subject before deciding their conclusion can see how gun control measures could save countless lives. Arguments against gun control tend to simply be excuses to avoid changing one's emotional perspective.
This is one of the most frustrating topics in American politics, right up there with anti-science vaccine fear-mongering. It's the entirety of human progress against insecure and misinformed holdouts.
As someone from Germany I cannot really comment much on it. Feels surreal and absurd to be to even have that issue still as a modem society and all wake around with guns like some modern but...
As someone from Germany I cannot really comment much on it. Feels surreal and absurd to be to even have that issue still as a modem society and all wake around with guns like some modern but feudal state.
I'm from the Netherlands and all I can say is that I find this whole thing to be absolutely horrible, especially for a supposedly civilized country like the USA. I just don't understand how people...
I'm from the Netherlands and all I can say is that I find this whole thing to be absolutely horrible, especially for a supposedly civilized country like the USA. I just don't understand how people could be against better gun control and I've debated many Americans about this but it just doesn't anything.
It's absolutely mind-boggling that many (most?) Americans seem to accept shootings like these as a fact of life, as if they're a natural occurrence like rain or snow and you can't do anything to prevent them.
I think most Americans are for reasonable gun control, including most gun advocates, but we've got ideological gridlock where both sides are talking past each other rather than about real,...
I think most Americans are for reasonable gun control, including most gun advocates, but we've got ideological gridlock where both sides are talking past each other rather than about real, substantive proposals.
A recent example is the Governor of California's new amendment prosposal. To his credit it's the first proposal I've seen in a while that pays lip-service to preserving the rights in the 2nd Amendment instead of dismissing them. However it bans "assault weapons" which is a common, yet amorphous, term that does not have a specific or legal definition and that makes this proposal a non-starter.
Gun violence has been on a decline for decades but it's hard to know that with the media over-hyping every incident. It is true that mass shootings have seen a steep incline in the past several years. That's a very specific problem of hopeless, lone individuals choosing to commit suicide by cop, and destroying many other lives on their way out. Those people need help, and that requires specific solutions that most gun control proposals won't address. You probably heard of or saw the video out of France last week of the guy running around a park stabbing children with a knife. Obviously that's a different problem with different causes, but there's some public policy overlap in that even one time is too many, and the real solution is not to ban the weapon (which is impossible) but to address why people are feeling so hopeless and disconnected that they would turn to such an act.
The Netherlands is a very different place than the USA. It's more comparable to, say, a single US state in many respects, particularly in population. Americans don't accept mass shootings as a fact of life, but I can see how it might look like that from consuming American media (which has many problems, and is causing many problems).
Gang related violence is not a mass shooting. It seems a large portion of new users here are also about not reading the articles. Everyone wants gun control but has no clue that this was done with...
Gang related violence is not a mass shooting. It seems a large portion of new users here are also about not reading the articles.
Everyone wants gun control but has no clue that this was done with handguns, not "assault rifles"...and once again inner city violence is where 99% of our violence comes from.
Fix society, the guns aren't the issue, our society is.
Did we read the same article? Both of those taken together suggest to me that we don't currently know whether it was one or multiple attackers, and whether they were racists, gang members or any...
Did we read the same article?
An unknown number of suspects fired multiple rounds from multiple weapons into the crowd, according to the sheriff.
Authorities have not identified a suspect or possible motive for the shooting, and details about the individuals who were harmed in the attack have not been made public.
Both of those taken together suggest to me that we don't currently know whether it was one or multiple attackers, and whether they were racists, gang members or any other group, or what their motivations were.
On top of that, it's a suburban village, and not inner-city crime.
If you have a source for why it's gang related, let's hear it.
Multiple weapons, no suspects caught and multiple injuries but one death. Not only that but there was a fight prior to this. 20 miles from Chicago...this is gang related. Do you think gang members...
Multiple weapons, no suspects caught and multiple injuries but one death. Not only that but there was a fight prior to this. 20 miles from Chicago...this is gang related. Do you think gang members just hang out in a single block?
You are drawing a lot of conclusions that don’t seem to be supported by the article. This happened at a Juneteenth celebration, and the article implies the fight was somewhere else.
You are drawing a lot of conclusions that don’t seem to be supported by the article. This happened at a Juneteenth celebration, and the article implies the fight was somewhere else.
Police patrolling the area were called away around that time to respond to another report alleging a fight had happened nearby. They returned to the gathering after hearing gunshots, the DuPage County Sheriff's Office said in a news release.
Witnesses and law enforcement said the Juneteenth celebration was peaceful until the shooting started.
This was a huge block party, nearby could have been just a few houses down from the event. This isn't some random event that doesn't happen, this stuff happens all the time in chicago and it's...
which was attended by more than 200 teenagers and young adults.
This was a huge block party, nearby could have been just a few houses down from the event.
This isn't some random event that doesn't happen, this stuff happens all the time in chicago and it's surrounding areas.
Why not? Are gang members not human beings? Do gang members only kill other gang members? They don't kill or maim innocent people? What exactly is your definition of a mass shooting then?
Gang related violence is not a mass shooting.
Why not? Are gang members not human beings? Do gang members only kill other gang members? They don't kill or maim innocent people?
What exactly is your definition of a mass shooting then?
No they're human, but they're not mass shooters. The term mass shootings is directly designed to make people think we have random mass killings every day, when we don't. We definitely have a...
Why not? Are gang members not human beings? Do gang members only kill other gang members? They don't kill or maim innocent people?
No they're human, but they're not mass shooters. The term mass shootings is directly designed to make people think we have random mass killings every day, when we don't. We definitely have a problem, but the media portrays it, like this piece, as something that happens constantly and is done with "assault rifles". It's data manipulation for pure propaganda reasons. Our society has changed, the guns haven't.
If people really wanted to curb the violence and the deaths (not just from firearms), then just doing half of what's listed here would reduce them 1000xs more than another AWB, which had no reduction in deaths.
Ending the War on Drugs
Ending Qualified immunity
Properly funding our schools and not just rich white suburb schools.
Build more schools and hire more teachers for proper pay so the class room sizes aren't 30-40 kids for one teacher.
Single Payer healthcare
UBI (at least start talking about it) once AI takes over most of the blue collar jobs.
End for profit prisons
Enforce the laws already on the books
Make sure there are safety nets for poor families so the kids don't turn to violence/gangs to survive.
Increase the minimum wage
Recreate our mental healthcare so kids don't turn to the internet for support. And to help veterans not end up as a suicide number.
Actively make a law to solidify Pro-choice rights. More unwanted children do not help our situation.
Banning Insider Trading for Congress
Term limits
Ranked Choice Voting so we can move away from a 2 party system.
Sorry to say, but your definition of a mass shooting is asinine and it shows how your society has grown accustomed to this type of thing. That's just terrible. If many people (like 3 or more) are...
Sorry to say, but your definition of a mass shooting is asinine and it shows how your society has grown accustomed to this type of thing. That's just terrible.
If many people (like 3 or more) are shot in one event, that is a mass shooting. It doesn't matter who gets shot or who does the shooting. Outside the USA it's national news when one person gets shot (or killed). If more than one person gets shot everybody talks about it all week. If three people got shot everybody would call that a mass shooting.
All the things you listed are good things to fix, but another good thing to tackle is the amount of guns on the street. Many other countries face the same or similar issues the USA faces, but there is one major difference: guns.
“Gang violence” and “Chicago” are popular deflections by gun nuts in the US. All the things the commenter said need to be fixed in our society (I agree with most of what they said) are great...
“Gang violence” and “Chicago” are popular deflections by gun nuts in the US.
All the things the commenter said need to be fixed in our society (I agree with most of what they said) are great platitudes, but “fix society” is another thing that sounds good but is a deflection.
It’s a longer way of saying “guns don’t kill people, people do” when in reality it’s people with guns that kill people. The common denominator is always guns.
They're basically saying that EVERYTHING ELSE has to be fixed before you can even consider tackling the gun problem. That's not how it works. You can tackle multiple issues at once. That's how I...
All the things the commenter said need to be fixed in our society (I agree with most of what they said) are great platitudes, but “fix society” is another thing that sounds good but is a deflection.
They're basically saying that EVERYTHING ELSE has to be fixed before you can even consider tackling the gun problem. That's not how it works. You can tackle multiple issues at once.
It’s a longer way of saying “guns don’t kill people, people do” when in reality it’s people with guns that kill people. The common denominator is always guns.
That's how I feel too. Sure, you can kill people with many things like knives or even your hands but killing people with guns is just so much easier. Literally anybody can kill with a gun, that's why you see very young children kill people with guns but you rarely (if ever) see them kill people with knives or their bare hands. This just seems like common sense to me. The entire reason guns were ever invented was to make killing easier and more efficient. That is why mankind went from throwing rocks to the bow and arrow, from the bow and arrow to the musket and from the musket to the modern rifle (with more steps in between but you get the idea).
No it's not, it's pointing out that the majority of our murders via firearms in the USA are from gang and drug violence. And the majority of that comes from inner cities. This is a fact. What's...
“Gang violence” and “Chicago” are popular deflections by gun nuts in the US.
No it's not, it's pointing out that the majority of our murders via firearms in the USA are from gang and drug violence. And the majority of that comes from inner cities. This is a fact. What's more is that the majority of people in the USA do not live in large cities. Roughly 80% of us live in small towns at best, not massive cities. That leaves 20% of the USA creating 90+% of the gun violence.
but “fix society” is another thing that sounds good but is a deflection. It’s a longer way of saying “guns don’t kill people, people do” when in reality it’s people with guns that kill people. The common denominator is always guns.
It's not though, the USA has always had a lot of firearms in civilian hands, these lone mass shootings that have happened in the last few decades are completely new thing. Kids used to bring their rifles to school to go hunting after the school day. What changed? The guns or our society? Do remember 2/3rds of all firearm deaths are suicide. 1/3rd which is the remaining 14k~ is what's left, 1k of that a year on average is the police killing people and then 85%+ is gang and drug violence. The 2k~ deaths left, include, domestic violence, then random killings and then finally the few 50~ deaths a year from mass shootings.
The numbers don't lie, people are worried more about those 50ish deaths a year than the rest. It's what gets eyes to the screen and why another AWB will not do anything to actually curb our violence... because it's not a gun problem...it's a societal one.
No it's not, mass shootings are recent. In fact our gang and drug violence has gone way down since the 70s this used to be worse, and if you dug up the amount of defined mass shootings of 3 or...
Sorry to say, but your definition of a mass shooting is asinine and it shows how your society has grown accustomed to this type of thing. That's just terrible.
No it's not, mass shootings are recent. In fact our gang and drug violence has gone way down since the 70s this used to be worse, and if you dug up the amount of defined mass shootings of 3 or more 40 years ago it would have made the shootings of today look like a joke, but they weren't reported on like they are today. So everyone thinks it's some new phenomenon.
If many people (like 3 or more) are shot in one event, that is a mass shooting.
No it's not, this goal post has been continually moved to create propaganda for anti gun groups.
It doesn't matter who gets shot or who does the shooting.
I mean it really does, shootings like this happen constantly in gang areas and white picket fence white people don't bat an eye, because it's black on black crime. The second it happens to anyone else it's major news and played over and over on TV and the media.
Outside the USA it's national news when one person gets shot (or killed). If more than one person gets shot everybody talks about it all week. If three people got shot everybody would call that a mass shooting.
You mean in Europe, and people do the same here, except 1/3rd want to act like it happens every day randomly.
All the things you listed are good things to fix, but another good thing to tackle is the amount of guns on the street.
Unless they go door to door, it's not happening. They don't even go after kids in the inner cities who post on FB their Glocks with giggle switches. The ATF doesn't want to go after actual criminals, that's to dangerous, it's easier to make millions of law abiding citizens with random rulings that don't make any sense.
Many other countries face the same or similar issues the USA faces, but there is one major difference: guns.
No they don't. They have safety nets and support for their population, along with a much less diverse population than the USA.
The distinction between gang violence and non-gang violence in mass shootings is idiotic and shows a complete lack of humanity. It most definitely is. Your racism is showing. If more than a couple...
No it's not, mass shootings are recent. In fact our gang and drug violence has gone way down since the 70s this used to be worse, and if you dug up the amount of defined mass shootings of 3 or more 40 years ago it would have made the shootings of today look like a joke, but they weren't reported on like they are today. So everyone thinks it's some new phenomenon.
The distinction between gang violence and non-gang violence in mass shootings is idiotic and shows a complete lack of humanity.
No it's not, this goal post has been continually moved to create propaganda for anti gun groups.
It most definitely is.
I mean it really does, shootings like this happen constantly in gang areas and white picket fence white people don't bat an eye, because it's black on black crime. The second it happens to anyone else it's major news and played over and over on TV and the media.
Your racism is showing. If more than a couple of people are shot, that is a mass shooting. Their class, skin color, level of wealth or whatever else you can come up with doesn't change that simple fact.
No they don't. They have safety nets and support for their population, along with a much less diverse population than the USA.
You are misinformed and/or ignorant. The USA is not unique, I know that American exceptionalism is ingrained in your education and culture but it's utterly and completely false. Please read more from non-American sources and open your mind.
The thing is if your house is flooding from a pipe leak, temporarily cutting off the water supply until the problem is found and resolved doesn’t make you anti-water, and it doesn’t make it a...
The thing is if your house is flooding from a pipe leak, temporarily cutting off the water supply until the problem is found and resolved doesn’t make you anti-water, and it doesn’t make it a waste of time and effort.
I don’t see why we can’t implement good-sense gun regulation and reform while still implementing all the other things you mentioned?
Because there aren't any "good-sense" gun laws that actually do anything to reduce actual gun violence, they don't even enforce the 20k laws on the books now. Why would more feel good laws that...
Because there aren't any "good-sense" gun laws that actually do anything to reduce actual gun violence, they don't even enforce the 20k laws on the books now. Why would more feel good laws that won't actually do anything, but drive people to vote for one side or the other.
The distinction is that gangs and solo shooters have different causes and require different public policy solutions. Speaking (very) generally: one is looking for emotional and financial support,...
Why not?
The distinction is that gangs and solo shooters have different causes and require different public policy solutions. Speaking (very) generally: one is looking for emotional and financial support, camaraderie, and a family and the other has reached the lonely desperation of wanting to commit suicide-by-police, and to gain some recognition on the way out.
In both cases, the amount of damage would obviously be reduced if they only had access to, say, knives but it wouldn't address the core problems (and a smaller subset would still have access to guns, even if they were outlawed). Those outliers are a signal that the population as a whole is under stress and our time and effort would be better spent tracking down and fixing what is turning people to such desperation.
Nothing about that makes gang violence NOT a mass shooting. A mass shooting is about the number of victims involved. The easy availability of guns IS one of the core problems. There being a...
The distinction is that gangs and solo shooters have different causes and require different public policy solutions. Speaking (very) generally: one is looking for emotional and financial support, camaraderie, and a family and the other has reached the lonely desperation of wanting to commit suicide-by-police, and to gain some recognition on the way out.
Nothing about that makes gang violence NOT a mass shooting. A mass shooting is about the number of victims involved.
The distinction is that gangs and solo shooters have different causes and require different public policy solutions. Speaking (very) generally: one is looking for emotional and financial support, camaraderie, and a family and the other has reached the lonely desperation of wanting to commit suicide-by-police, and to gain some recognition on the way out.
The easy availability of guns IS one of the core problems. There being a different cause for the shooting has no bearing on whether it's a mass shooting or not. A mass shooting is about the numbers. 10 people shot? That's a mass shooting full stop.
Zero comments on a 19 hour old post regarding another deadly shooting. Unsurprising, but still sad.
As a society, we have chosen Guns Over People. At this point it is a collective choice. We prefer mass shootings to gun control. Painfully outrageous.
The best comment on this situation I've read so far is this: "The violent murder of school children is a debatable topic in the US."
I know this particular post isn't about a school shooting, but I think the point still stands.
I was actually just wondering how the userbase of Tildes falls on the gun control issue. Though I suspect the nature of more thought out replies than just sound bites leads people here to be more on the side of sensible gun control and not either of the extremes.
I can't speak for everyone, but as one of the "old guard" here (both a long-er time Tildes user and an older-than-most-here person) I can share my opinion:
I am a gun owner.
Being in Texas, I grew up with guns just being around most of the time. I was issued a gun in high school that I had to keep, clean, and learn to shoot. I have over a dozen firearms of various makes, models, and calibers. I can provide a list of them off the top of my head, their history, my history with them, and reasons I have each. I mostly have weird guns. I like the mechanics and engineering of them or the odd history behind them. I have a gun "wish list" of others I'd like to add to my collection.
My wife has about half as many firearms as I have. She, despite not growing up with firearms and having only fired one round prior to meeting me, is about as close to being a "natural" in regards to shooting as I have ever seen in person. The first gun I bought her was a pink snub nose revolver (her request and all her guns are colorful), it's not known to be an absurdly accurate firearm, within about three trips to the range we found she can reliably put all six rounds in a 1" bullseye at 25 yards out with it. Her first experience with a rifle had her put 9 out of 10 rounds in a 2" bullseye at 50 yards on iron sights. The last round was outside that circle, but still on the target, because the wind blew her hair in her face just as she pulled the trigger.
We do not post pictures of guns, we do not post pictures of ourselves with guns, we own no gun merch, we have no gun stickers, we do not follow gun social media, we do not go to gun rallies, events, or conferences, we do not hang out with people who call themselves gun enthusiasts, we are very far from being right wing. We do not hunt. Our guns have and will only put holes in paper. I do not walk around with a gun in my pocket waiting to use it because of some imagined slight against my pride. Guns are not a replacement for a personality.
We find it abhorrent that either of us can walk into a gun store, slap down cash, and walk out with a gun in under 15 minutes.
I have sold some of my guns to private individuals, I had no way to background check them, no way to know their mental state, if they had a restraining order, or were otherwise disallowed from owning a gun. The only thing I had at my disposal was a self imposed requirement that they show me a Texas CHL, which at the very least it proved that at the time they obtained it they had passed all the checks to ensure they could legally own a gun.
We are big fans of gun control.
There is no reason I should be able to get a gun in 15 minutes.
There is no reason I should be able to get a gun in under a week or maybe even a month.
There is no reason I should be able to have multiple firearms on me and just walk around in public with them either concealed or fully on display (open carry).
There is no reason I shouldn't be able to log into the NICS system to check on the status of an individual I'm selling a firearm to (or just flat out require it go through a dealer).
While I find the mechanics of handguns most interesting, there's no real reason handguns should even be legal.
The fact that many (perhaps even most) news stories about mass shootings include something along the lines of "the gun(s) were obtained legally" that right wingers lean on to support their "see, gun laws wouldn't have prevented this" view is evidence enough that gun control is obviously too lax.
Being that this is the US, I don't think there is a feasible way to implement gun control as strict as we'd like it to be, but in a perfect world (ignoring the impossible of an outright ban) the "well regulated militia" part of the 2nd Amendment would be just as enforced as the "shall not be infringed" part, with the bare minimum being belonging to a shooting sports club that demonstrates that you are capable of operating them safely, along with a myriad of checks on your ability to own them responsibly, and preferably not even allowed to take the firearms home.
I have no idea about now, because where Tildes was on this issue 6 months ago is going to be mostly irrelevant after the influx but historically it was there's a few gun enthusiasts here but I think they're all supporters of gun control. I think what is considered effective 'gun control' has had a bit of range to it.
It's often an explicitly American topic, so discussion can sometimes end up being ships-in-the-night style when non-Americans try and weigh-in. I myself have been guilty of this in the past, so I mostly try and avoid the topic now.
I myself am an American and prior military. My position myself is not that we should have a blanket ban of all guns. I've used them in both personal and professional settings.
The issue is that guns require nothing to be able to obtain. There is no training requirement, there is no licensing necessary, there are no real barriers to entry to getting virtually any type of weapon that you could want other than money, and there's no need to get your gun registered with the state. All of those things that I just listed are things that are requirements for a vehicle. You have to pass a test of your knowledge, you have to take a practical exam to demonstrate your training, you have to have your vehicle registered to the state for it to be legal to be on public property.
Why we don't have these things are mind boggling. And that's before we even get into the topic of what guns should even be available. I still have yet to see a compelling argument for why assault rifles should be available for the general public. There's really no need and it makes killing a bunch of people at once so much easier.
Guns have use in recreation, between hunting and just general recreational shooting. But just regulate them like we already do with other things that are privileged rights.
Wow. As an European, this is mind bending.
I always knew that it was easy to acquire a gun in the states, but somehow I always assumed, that this means it is easy as in "taking a drivers test", not as in "getting some takeout".
A friend of mine recently got his hunters license, which entails a multi week course in flora and fauna and multiple lessons in gun safety before they were even allowed near a gun. After finishing both a practical and theoretical exam, he can now legally acquire some long weapons like rifles, as long as they aren't automatic.
This is in Germany by the way.
I mean, it's kind of both? It's a lot easier to get a driver's license in the US than it is in Europe, too.
Edit: Also, like with driver's licenses, there's different levels. It still mostly boils down to having the time and money to jump through the hoops, but some guns are more regulated than others. You can buy a hunting rifle with just a background check, but (in almost all states) if you want to concealed carry a handgun, you're going to need to take some basic safety classes and get an actual license, too. If you want a machine gun or a cannon or anything like that, you need to spend a fortune on taxes and certifications and you're subject to random inspections by the ATF for as long as you own the gun. It's not a coincidence that honest to god automatic weapons just don't get used in crimes here. There's something like three of them that have ever been committed in US history, and almost all of them were by dirty cops using their duty weapons back in the 30s.
Just because possession is restricted doesn't mean they're impossible to get, and I don't even mean that in the black market sense. A lot of states only require background checks for licensed dealers, so someone restricted from owning one can still attain one through a private sale. Several recent mass shootings have been committed by people who shouldn't have had any weapons because they were restricted.
The restriction is also dependent on authorities A) knowing that this person has a gun when they shouldn't, and B) taking action to confiscate them and prevent them from attaining more. I believe at least one of the recent mass shootings had the shooter's firearms recently confiscated before the event, but somehow they were either returned or the shooter attained more.
Also, one major difference from automobiles: automobiles require you to register ownership with the government if you intend to use them, but guns don't. Some types of firearms do require it, but many states don't have that for handguns, rifles and shotguns. That means we can't always track ownership, which is one of the more concerning parts to me.
The first portion of my response was solely to the premise that it's "harder to get a car than a gun". Which is objectively false. If your position is that guns should be even harder to get, then I have no problem with that. The issue is purely hyperbolic statements that sound true enough, so they get repeated and don't really do anything but detract from the main point.
As I addressed in my previous post, this is absolutely false. You do not have to register a vehicle only being used on private property in most jurisdictions. If the goal is to implement wide-scale gun registration, comparing them to other things that don't have to be registered when used on private property is sort of self-defeating.
Honestly, as an American, I'm not entirely sure where I stand.
Guns are neat; I've shot them in the past, they're fun. I have buddies that own some, I have a buddy that owns about a dozen, I have zero desire to own one myself. Guns ought to be regulated more, but it seems to me that nothing outside of an outright ban on guns would really make the difference; my friend who owns all those guns inherited most of them and due to this, it seems to me that if someone wants to get their hands on one, they'll be able to one way or another, so I'm just not sure what to do in this regard.
I don't necessarily think I agree with guns being totally banned, as even though I'm not particularly interested in them, some people like them and it seems as though everyone I know who has them is pretty responsible, even though they can be used to commit mass murder. Again, I'm pretty damn conflicted on this entire issue.
I have legitimately sat down with people on the side of lax gun control and asked them pointed questions but just never get a satisfying answer.
States with less gun control have the highest violent crime - don't you think we should at least try the opposite? (Frequently the response is that it's the blue cities in those states, but I'd like to point out - it's still in your state with your state laws and gun regulation)
In the best case scenario of a school shooting we've seen recently, 6 people were still killed before police killed the shooter - are you saying that's acceptable?
Other countries have tried and succeeded by enabling gun control, why isn't it worth just trying?
If crime suddenly dropped dramatically, would you still feel the need for guns? If they aren't to protect you anymore, what are they for?
I've been looking for an opportunity to put into words how I feel about this. So I can play devil's advocate here.
I personally am not a fan of guns. I don't own any, and I don't plan on it any time soon.
I think America in particular does have a problem with guns. From the studies I've seen, I also believe stronger gun control does correlate with fewer gun deaths.
Where I start to feel uncomfortable is when we talk about taking away people's right to buy a gun when that action doesn't directly harm anyone. Yes, statistically, it probably does harm society and indirectly leads to more deaths. But that starts to feel similar to other flimsy arguments I hear about things like people's romantic preferences affecting society negatively (or any number of things some people like and others don't: Fast cars, SUVs, unhealthy food, drag shows, on and on). Don't get me wrong, again, I agree that guns are harmful to our society and think consensual adults doing whatever they want romantically is healthy for society.
But can I justify my personal beliefs about guns enough to codify them into a law that forces everyone else to live by them? I certainly get annoyed when others try to do the same for their beliefs.
I don't drink alcohol. It's just not to my taste. Independent of my preferences, I also think alcohol is a net negative for society. I think we could find studies that bear this out. Use of alcohol likely correlates with violence, domestic abuse, poverty, car accidents, etc. I think alcohol kills a lot of people.
But I think prohibition is not the answer (and I think most Americans would agree). It seems like a simple solution. People are doing something that harms us all. Let's make it illegal to do that. Problem solved. But any kind of big social problem like this is more complicated than that. Simple solutions that just force people to act the way you want are tempting but are not the kind of thing I want my government to do.
I don't think government is inherently bad or anything. I am all for making society better through government action. I just think the government is better at additive action. I am happy to pay taxes and have them spent on social programs, education, PSAs, studies, etc.
Problems like gun violence are hard and complicated because they involve human behavior. I think gun violence is linked with a lot of other more pressing social problems like poverty, inequality, and lack of empathy. everything is interrelated and that's why it's so hard and frustrating to fix these problems. You kind of have to work on them slowly and all at the same time. Why do people abuse alcohol? What personal issues are they trying to escape? Can we help them solve those issues? Why do people buy guns? What are they afraid of? How can we help them feel secure without a gun?
Here is a rough tangent but I think it applies: I think most people who get an abortion do so because they are in a situation where they feel they have no better options. The worst thing you could do for them is to take away the option for an abortion. If stopping abortions is important to some people, I wish they would help by trying to eliminate the same issues of poverty, inequality, etc. They are all linked. Happy, secure, free people probably have fewer abortions. Sex education and access to birth control could also help prevent the situation in the first place.
This is just another example of how I think the priority of the government should be to help first and restrict rights last.
All that said I am not against government regulation either. Buildings need to be safe, and people working with dangerous chemicals need to know what they are doing and keep safety a priority. So I think a reasonable gun regulation would be to make sure everyone who buys one takes a safety course and gets a license. Cars are dangerous as well and you need to get a license for them. So a similar DMV-type model would be fine with me. But I would stress that I wouldn't want it used to restrict people from buying guns. At no point in the process should someone be able to arbitrarily limit the number of licenses or fail an applicant on their safety training course without specific transparent reasons. There should always be a path to gun ownership for anyone willing to cooperate with safety regulations.
I say this because I think the ideal for some people in red states would be to have guns legal for white Republicans only. I think some of them would not be above some Jim Crow type laws to make that happen. Here in California, we got jump-started on gun control laws when Regan was governor and wanted to get guns out of the hands of the Black Panthers.
I usually end up voting for candidates who support gun control laws though. Most of my other views line up with theirs and guns really aren't that important to me. Even if draconian gun control laws were passed I wouldn't bother pushing back that hard, we would still have much more important issues to solve in America than that. My biggest annoyance really is that we spend so much time and effort arguing about gun rights when I think we should just drop it and focus on helping people.
I do think it's a complicated nuanced issue and would be happy to hear what people think I am missing though.
The big issue I see here is that many of the things that affect our society negatively are things people hurt themselves with, while guns are often being used to hurt others. It's much more difficult to kill a bunch of people with a hamburger than a handgun. And even then the US is not above regulating things that do only hurt the users as we've seen extensively in the war on drugs.
While I do agree there is much more to the issue than simply guns, all of these should be done in tandem. Gun restrictions on top of access to mental healthcare and social safety nets to help prevent poverty in which crime is the only way to survive would all work in tandem to drastically reduce gun crime in the US. We have plenty of examples of such working, there is no single cure-all for the problems we have and that gets weaponized by those who don't want change because they will always point to one of the other problems when you try to fix one of them.
We let perfection stand in the way of progress far too often.
While not illegal, they are heavily regulated and nobody bats an eye. You can buy any car you want, as long as it’s street legal and you have a license for that type of vehicle. You can buy any liquor you want, as long as it was produced following regulatory standards and you’re of legal age and can provide ID. Even fast food restaurants have warning labels, minimum regulatory requirements they must follow, and nutritional value info on the menu in some states.
I personally think that, just as there are different license classifications and requirements for different vehicle types, there should be something similar for gun ownership. Mandatory classes, licensing, registration, insurance, periodic re-testing etc. We have a DMV, why don’t we have an equivalent for guns?
From my understanding of the counterpoints, it's either "we need guns because guns are so prevalent because we need guns because guns are so prevalent etc." or that the constitution and its (recent) 2nd Amendment interpretation are immutable laws spoken by God Himself, and that no amount of violence against the innocent can equate the spiritual fulfillment a firearm in America can provide.
There's no reason, it's an ingrained and firearms-industry-funded mental block that Americans have to fight through. Anyone who bothers to think about the subject before deciding their conclusion can see how gun control measures could save countless lives. Arguments against gun control tend to simply be excuses to avoid changing one's emotional perspective.
This is one of the most frustrating topics in American politics, right up there with anti-science vaccine fear-mongering. It's the entirety of human progress against insecure and misinformed holdouts.
As someone from Germany I cannot really comment much on it. Feels surreal and absurd to be to even have that issue still as a modem society and all wake around with guns like some modern but feudal state.
I'm from the Netherlands and all I can say is that I find this whole thing to be absolutely horrible, especially for a supposedly civilized country like the USA. I just don't understand how people could be against better gun control and I've debated many Americans about this but it just doesn't anything.
It's absolutely mind-boggling that many (most?) Americans seem to accept shootings like these as a fact of life, as if they're a natural occurrence like rain or snow and you can't do anything to prevent them.
I think most Americans are for reasonable gun control, including most gun advocates, but we've got ideological gridlock where both sides are talking past each other rather than about real, substantive proposals.
A recent example is the Governor of California's new amendment prosposal. To his credit it's the first proposal I've seen in a while that pays lip-service to preserving the rights in the 2nd Amendment instead of dismissing them. However it bans "assault weapons" which is a common, yet amorphous, term that does not have a specific or legal definition and that makes this proposal a non-starter.
Gun violence has been on a decline for decades but it's hard to know that with the media over-hyping every incident. It is true that mass shootings have seen a steep incline in the past several years. That's a very specific problem of hopeless, lone individuals choosing to commit suicide by cop, and destroying many other lives on their way out. Those people need help, and that requires specific solutions that most gun control proposals won't address. You probably heard of or saw the video out of France last week of the guy running around a park stabbing children with a knife. Obviously that's a different problem with different causes, but there's some public policy overlap in that even one time is too many, and the real solution is not to ban the weapon (which is impossible) but to address why people are feeling so hopeless and disconnected that they would turn to such an act.
The Netherlands is a very different place than the USA. It's more comparable to, say, a single US state in many respects, particularly in population. Americans don't accept mass shootings as a fact of life, but I can see how it might look like that from consuming American media (which has many problems, and is causing many problems).
We seriously need to make guns way harder to own already. It should be harder to get a gun than a car, not the other way around.
Gang related violence is not a mass shooting. It seems a large portion of new users here are also about not reading the articles.
Everyone wants gun control but has no clue that this was done with handguns, not "assault rifles"...and once again inner city violence is where 99% of our violence comes from.
Fix society, the guns aren't the issue, our society is.
Did we read the same article?
Both of those taken together suggest to me that we don't currently know whether it was one or multiple attackers, and whether they were racists, gang members or any other group, or what their motivations were.
On top of that, it's a suburban village, and not inner-city crime.
If you have a source for why it's gang related, let's hear it.
Multiple weapons, no suspects caught and multiple injuries but one death. Not only that but there was a fight prior to this. 20 miles from Chicago...this is gang related. Do you think gang members just hang out in a single block?
Again, fix society, it's not the firearms.
You are drawing a lot of conclusions that don’t seem to be supported by the article. This happened at a Juneteenth celebration, and the article implies the fight was somewhere else.
This was a huge block party, nearby could have been just a few houses down from the event.
This isn't some random event that doesn't happen, this stuff happens all the time in chicago and it's surrounding areas.
Why not? Are gang members not human beings? Do gang members only kill other gang members? They don't kill or maim innocent people?
What exactly is your definition of a mass shooting then?
No they're human, but they're not mass shooters. The term mass shootings is directly designed to make people think we have random mass killings every day, when we don't. We definitely have a problem, but the media portrays it, like this piece, as something that happens constantly and is done with "assault rifles". It's data manipulation for pure propaganda reasons. Our society has changed, the guns haven't.
If people really wanted to curb the violence and the deaths (not just from firearms), then just doing half of what's listed here would reduce them 1000xs more than another AWB, which had no reduction in deaths.
Ending the War on Drugs
Ending Qualified immunity
Properly funding our schools and not just rich white suburb schools.
Build more schools and hire more teachers for proper pay so the class room sizes aren't 30-40 kids for one teacher.
Single Payer healthcare
UBI (at least start talking about it) once AI takes over most of the blue collar jobs.
End for profit prisons
Enforce the laws already on the books
Make sure there are safety nets for poor families so the kids don't turn to violence/gangs to survive.
Increase the minimum wage
Recreate our mental healthcare so kids don't turn to the internet for support. And to help veterans not end up as a suicide number.
Actively make a law to solidify Pro-choice rights. More unwanted children do not help our situation.
Banning Insider Trading for Congress
Term limits
Ranked Choice Voting so we can move away from a 2 party system.
Sorry to say, but your definition of a mass shooting is asinine and it shows how your society has grown accustomed to this type of thing. That's just terrible.
If many people (like 3 or more) are shot in one event, that is a mass shooting. It doesn't matter who gets shot or who does the shooting. Outside the USA it's national news when one person gets shot (or killed). If more than one person gets shot everybody talks about it all week. If three people got shot everybody would call that a mass shooting.
All the things you listed are good things to fix, but another good thing to tackle is the amount of guns on the street. Many other countries face the same or similar issues the USA faces, but there is one major difference: guns.
“Gang violence” and “Chicago” are popular deflections by gun nuts in the US.
All the things the commenter said need to be fixed in our society (I agree with most of what they said) are great platitudes, but “fix society” is another thing that sounds good but is a deflection.
It’s a longer way of saying “guns don’t kill people, people do” when in reality it’s people with guns that kill people. The common denominator is always guns.
They're basically saying that EVERYTHING ELSE has to be fixed before you can even consider tackling the gun problem. That's not how it works. You can tackle multiple issues at once.
That's how I feel too. Sure, you can kill people with many things like knives or even your hands but killing people with guns is just so much easier. Literally anybody can kill with a gun, that's why you see very young children kill people with guns but you rarely (if ever) see them kill people with knives or their bare hands. This just seems like common sense to me. The entire reason guns were ever invented was to make killing easier and more efficient. That is why mankind went from throwing rocks to the bow and arrow, from the bow and arrow to the musket and from the musket to the modern rifle (with more steps in between but you get the idea).
No it's not, it's pointing out that the majority of our murders via firearms in the USA are from gang and drug violence. And the majority of that comes from inner cities. This is a fact. What's more is that the majority of people in the USA do not live in large cities. Roughly 80% of us live in small towns at best, not massive cities. That leaves 20% of the USA creating 90+% of the gun violence.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-03-26/u-s-urban-population-is-up-but-what-does-urban-really-mean
It's not though, the USA has always had a lot of firearms in civilian hands, these lone mass shootings that have happened in the last few decades are completely new thing. Kids used to bring their rifles to school to go hunting after the school day. What changed? The guns or our society? Do remember 2/3rds of all firearm deaths are suicide. 1/3rd which is the remaining 14k~ is what's left, 1k of that a year on average is the police killing people and then 85%+ is gang and drug violence. The 2k~ deaths left, include, domestic violence, then random killings and then finally the few 50~ deaths a year from mass shootings.
The numbers don't lie, people are worried more about those 50ish deaths a year than the rest. It's what gets eyes to the screen and why another AWB will not do anything to actually curb our violence... because it's not a gun problem...it's a societal one.
No it's not, mass shootings are recent. In fact our gang and drug violence has gone way down since the 70s this used to be worse, and if you dug up the amount of defined mass shootings of 3 or more 40 years ago it would have made the shootings of today look like a joke, but they weren't reported on like they are today. So everyone thinks it's some new phenomenon.
No it's not, this goal post has been continually moved to create propaganda for anti gun groups.
I mean it really does, shootings like this happen constantly in gang areas and white picket fence white people don't bat an eye, because it's black on black crime. The second it happens to anyone else it's major news and played over and over on TV and the media.
You mean in Europe, and people do the same here, except 1/3rd want to act like it happens every day randomly.
Unless they go door to door, it's not happening. They don't even go after kids in the inner cities who post on FB their Glocks with giggle switches. The ATF doesn't want to go after actual criminals, that's to dangerous, it's easier to make millions of law abiding citizens with random rulings that don't make any sense.
No they don't. They have safety nets and support for their population, along with a much less diverse population than the USA.
The distinction between gang violence and non-gang violence in mass shootings is idiotic and shows a complete lack of humanity.
It most definitely is.
Your racism is showing. If more than a couple of people are shot, that is a mass shooting. Their class, skin color, level of wealth or whatever else you can come up with doesn't change that simple fact.
You are misinformed and/or ignorant. The USA is not unique, I know that American exceptionalism is ingrained in your education and culture but it's utterly and completely false. Please read more from non-American sources and open your mind.
The thing is if your house is flooding from a pipe leak, temporarily cutting off the water supply until the problem is found and resolved doesn’t make you anti-water, and it doesn’t make it a waste of time and effort.
I don’t see why we can’t implement good-sense gun regulation and reform while still implementing all the other things you mentioned?
Because there aren't any "good-sense" gun laws that actually do anything to reduce actual gun violence, they don't even enforce the 20k laws on the books now. Why would more feel good laws that won't actually do anything, but drive people to vote for one side or the other.
The distinction is that gangs and solo shooters have different causes and require different public policy solutions. Speaking (very) generally: one is looking for emotional and financial support, camaraderie, and a family and the other has reached the lonely desperation of wanting to commit suicide-by-police, and to gain some recognition on the way out.
In both cases, the amount of damage would obviously be reduced if they only had access to, say, knives but it wouldn't address the core problems (and a smaller subset would still have access to guns, even if they were outlawed). Those outliers are a signal that the population as a whole is under stress and our time and effort would be better spent tracking down and fixing what is turning people to such desperation.
Nothing about that makes gang violence NOT a mass shooting. A mass shooting is about the number of victims involved.
The easy availability of guns IS one of the core problems. There being a different cause for the shooting has no bearing on whether it's a mass shooting or not. A mass shooting is about the numbers. 10 people shot? That's a mass shooting full stop.