responding to posts I didn’t make again? Show me where I said “per capita” (or a cite that Luxembourg’s GDP is higher than 20 trillion)?
How about you address my point instead of desperately inventing nitpicks out of thin air?
Indeed. I’ve made this point over and over again, but DrDeth insists that any comparisons of gun violence in the US must not be made with economically similar developed countries, but absolutely must include places like Somalia and Yemen, and anyone who doesn’t see it that way must be a bigot.
The plain indisputable reality is that the rate of gun violence in the US is absolutely appalling. CNN had yet another article on the subject complete with interactive graphs (link below). The second graph, if you scroll down – the scatterplot one – is particularly revealing if you hover over the various data points representing different countries. It’s easy to miss the fact that the US is even there, because it’s way, way over on the far right (guns per capita) and way up at the top (gun homicides per capita). There is no other country within miles of that solitary dot representing the USA.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/26/world/us-gun-culture-world-comparison-intl-cmd/index.html
This is why these arguments are pointless. The gun fanatics either deny the reality, deny the relevance, or simply declare that all this death and mayhem is “worth it” because … something something “freedom”, or something. It’s beyond ridiculous. Only two other countries in the world have enshrined a constitutional right to guns, and both of them have enacted strong restrictions on guns that they believe to be consistent with their constitution and a necessary accommodation of the imperative of public safety.
The US stands totally alone in its gun-related craziness. I worry about it and I don’t even live there, because we share a 3000-mile border that is relatively unprotected. Guess where the vast majority of criminals in Canada get their guns? From the conveniently located gun center of the universe that has far more guns than people. I worry about it because of bullshit like this:
Just take the NRA literally. If and when politically practical, I favor guns being turned into the police after death of the owner. Prior registration would make this more effective.
When you decide to pick economically similar developed countries you generally get lists of White Western European nations, and Japan. Those lists are carefully cherrypicked to get the results wanted. I choose to compare to ALL nations, not just a carefully selected cherrypicked list. “My” (actually the United Nations list) list indeed, includes Somalia, Yemen, but also Japan and all those white Western European nations. It includes every nation.
Also “gun deaths” ignores all the other causes of homicides, and also includes suicides, so we are comparing Apples to a carefully selected group of Citrus fruits.
In any case, so far, I see to be the only one here interested in reducing the amount of violent crime in the USA by keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.
Other people seem intent on penalizing gun owners simple for owning a gun.
So, you live in Canada? Canada has a LOT of guns:
But a rather lower violent crime rate. Canada is 118th highest in Homicides. The USA rates 74. So it isn’t just number of guns per capita.
And that case you mention is a perfect example of straw man purchases and sales, which I have suggested be stopped.
Picking countries whose economy is similar to the US isn’t cherry picking. It’s controlling for confounding variables, since poverty and ineffective rule of law are correlated with murder and crime rates. The majority race of these countries has fuck-all to do with anything (unless you think that Somalia had a higher murder rate because Somalis are not white).
If someone I love dies, I have no preference between homicide and suicide.
And both are often impulsive acts that wouldn’t occur if more time-consuming and difficult.
I see no benefit in getting into yet another endless, pointless gun debate with you. But I will make the following factual observations:
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Canada has 34.7 guns per 100 population. If you consider that “a LOT of guns”, what do you consider the 120.5 guns per 100 in the USA?
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Yes, it’s more than just the number of guns. Canada – like every other civilized country on earth – also has strong gun control, the absence of a gun-worship culture, and very strict laws governing carrying and transportation of guns. The US has yahoos like Zimmerman and Rittenhouse walking around with pistols and assault rifles like they were kids playing cops’n’robbers.
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The vast majority of guns in Canada are long guns, kept for hunting and sometimes for predators in farm and ranch situations. Handguns – the preferred murder weapon of criminals and apparent objects of worship by psychopaths – are very strictly regulated in Canada. Except, of course, for the illegal ones generously provided by American sources and smuggled into the country, as per my previous link. Anyone carrying any kind of gun in public, if they were not a police officer or otherwise authorized under very strict rules, would be arrested on the spot.
Yes, exactly. Guns being around make it more likely that suicide will be attempted. Further, suicide by firearm is MUCH more likely to succeed than other methods, and since people often regret attempted suicides and do not try again, a failed suicide often means a saved life.
Suicide attempts aren’t all that rare. I have some first-hand experience. I thank what God there may be that the ones in my experience failed, either because the tranquilizers in question were not potent enough or some other reason. If a gun had been readily available, some that I love would no longer be here, instead of now living productive, joyful lives.
I agree with you that victims of gun theft should not be punished — regardless of whether the gun was locked up. From what I can see, gun owners, like the rest of us, often make mistakes, and gun owner mistakes often have to do with storage. I don’t think laws against an honest mistake, that has deadly consequences, will deter.
This is true. And only a tiny percent of manufactured bombs ever kill another human. In World War II, even of the bombs dropped in an attempt to kill, only a tiny percent killed someone. But if I had a choice, and in a context of democratic decision-making, I’d rather that my neighbor not have explosive devices, designed to kill people, in their house. Even hunting rifles I’d rather see stored at a gun club.
It ranks 7th worldwide of over 100 nations, so yea, that is a lot of guns.
Plus it’s possible that the U.S. ratio is skewed because of people like me who own multiple firearms while many people don’t own any.
So, your plan is to basically force everyone to be trained on gun safety. I have to admit, I didn’t get that from your OP or the discussion. I won’t say that’s a bad thing, necessarily…I do think training is always good. Mandatory training for guns might, if you squint I suppose, fall into the same category as training for driving a car, though generally, it’s not mandatory even for that…unless of course, you plan to get a license and drive.
Myself, if it were me feeling this out wrt OP I’d say mandatory training for anyone who plans to own and/or ‘operate’ a firearm, including a mandatory license for said weapon. Similar to a driver’s license (issued by the state IOW, since a federal license would go against the hodgepodge of laws we have from state to state), you could get one for a certain time period and then be licensed to carry a firearm if you chose too. My WAG is that both sides you mentioned in your next paragraph would blow their top over this, and you’d have all sorts of ways the states would game the system, but it might work and I wouldn’t be knee jerk opposed to such a system…provided it wasn’t being done with ulterior motives either anti or pro-gun ones.
So what is your list of economically similar developed countries?
Look, dude- you seem to think I am some sort of gun nut. I am trying here to propose real world gun controls that will keep guns out of the hands of criminals. I want less guns in the hands of bad guys. I want to hurt criminals. I support several real world gun control ideas that would keep guns out of the hands of violent criminals. In some cases these might annoy the hard core “gun nut”- so be it.
You seem to be proposing a fantasy law about insurance and victim blaming, which won’t keep guns out of the hands of criminals, but would- in the infinitesimal chance it could be passed by a insane Congress that has also repealed the 2nd AD and throw out 200 years of tort and common law- do nothing but punish law abiding citizens who happen to own a gun. I can only read your ideas as wanting to hurt gun owners, but not criminals.
Nothing your propose- gun insurance, making the victims responsible for what criminals do with stolen guns- would impede criminals in the slightest.
I would actually be in favor of regulating cars and gun similarly. We’ve had other threads on that and it generally seems like a good idea to me.
I think you could make a similar case wrt if you plan to keep the gun exclusively in your house or on your property verse taking the gun off of your property could be similar to if you drive a vehicle on your property and never plan to use public roads you don’t need the vehicle or yourself to be licensed. It would preserve the right, but basically, say if you are going to take the weapon off your own property you must have a license, and that this license would be issued by the state.
The devil will be in the details, however, with both sides howling that it either infringes on their right or is going to massively endanger the public and expand gun-carrying to extreme levels. Like I said, I wouldn’t be opposed to this, just like I’m not opposed to some gun regulation, but it would come down to how this was actually put in place and implemented…and what changes were tacked on by both sides to limit or expand it. I doubt many would be happy with the results, or that it would bring the country together on this issue, but for myself, I’d be for something like this and I actually think it would help. Not everyone with a gun actually knows the safety and handling rules that they SHOULD know before getting one. Of course, the counter to that is that not everyone with a driver’s license actually follows or seemingly knows the rules. 
I agree. The devil would be in the details and no matter how it shook out no one would be happy. Overall I think it would be an improvement but there is no chance of it actually happening. Nation wide red flag laws are much more likely and at least in principle can take guns away from people before they do something stupid with them.
For a fair comparison, you’d probably want to look at democratic nations with an HDI comparable to the US’s. In a pinch I guess you could drop the Democracy part (though I do think that whether a society is free is relevant to crime rates) and use an HDI of 0.8 and up.
Criminals don’t spontaneously get guns out of thin air. Guns are made by manufacturers, legally sold to vendors, and legally sold to consumers. Then our lax attitude towards guns as well as the massive numbers of them circulating throughout society mean that those guns end up in the hands of criminals.
If we limit the number of guns, limit who can have them, and make it so that once you purchase a gun you are legally responsible for it until that gun is destroyed or sold to someone else (in which case we want proof of destruction or transfer), criminals would find it much harder to get guns. Like they do in every other comparable country.
Really? In the OP, I wrote:
“ I’d like to see gun safety classes taught in public schools.”
And my idea was based on the idea that there is this huge disconnect in this country between our gun adherents and our gun opponents, so we would be helped by bridging that gap. Make sure everybody has a working general knowledge of gun types and how to safely disable them (I don’t really care about shooting, but that is a natural progression to the basics I would require. I would allow for a conscientious objection to shooting if a person did not want to learn that part).
The thinking is that it might reduce pleas to restrict guns that arise out of ignorance (e.g. thinking an AR-15 is an automatic weapon), reduce accidents and mishaps, and maybe elevate the discussion to something based on a mutual respect amongst those debating the issue.
It’s sort of akin to, “if kids are going to have sex, and they are, we should teach safe sex and make sure contraception is available.”
If Americans are going to encounter guns, and they are, let’s see if education would make it safer.
ETA: and since proposals to restrict guns go nowhere, I further suggested giving up that effort. We’re America, guns are here. The law won’t unwind that.
You could have at one time said the same about slavery. Or segregation. Or lynchings.