Yes, one of them came out and admitted in this thread that it isn’t worth wasting a second of thought on. Quite refreshing to see that much honesty, in a way.
And that’s a valid viewpoint. But one that isn’t shared by the majority of US citizens. Populations often make these sorts of decisions that will definitely cost lives. Change the speed limit upward and people will die…for sure. The US walking back prohibition definitely cost lives…lots of them…every year. Yet we did that anyway.
Personally, I don’t think the scale of gun deaths is ‘staggering’ or even outside the norm of other things we do or allow. More people die in the US from alcohol…or prescription drug use for that matter…as well as myriad other things. Societies make choices, and ours has chosen to continue to allow this despite the fact that the decision costs lives. At some point, maybe we will choose differently, but so far that hasn’t happened.
Right, that’s why as I’ve said this is a cultural issue and needs to be treated as such.
Did it? Or did more people die when the sale and production of alcohol were unregulated and organized crime had a steady stream of income to fight over? I’d want a cite that repealing prohibition actually cost lives.
Alcohol certainly kills, but with the exception of drunk driving it kills YOU, not other innocent people. And as for drunk driving - it used to be super commonplace and viewed as no big deal, but thanks to MADD “screeching” about it over and over again, we had a huge cultural shift in the way we look at drunk drivers, and deaths went way down.
Prescription drug abuse is a huge issue that we definitely need to tackle, no argument there. Of course, prescription drugs serve a practical purpose, unlike the vast majority of privately owned firearms.
Right - as I said, our society values shiny metal penis prosthetics more highly than human lives, and that’s pretty fucking sad.
Yeah, that’s not a valid comparison either…or meaningful.
Perhaps. In the US this hasn’t always been the case, i.e. that we can see a direct correlation between gun regulation and a decrease in gun deaths, especially over long periods of time (in the US we get some fairly large swings that you can see trends with only after many years or even a decade). This is sometimes due to gun regulations being passed that don’t make a lot of sense but sound really good and are politically motivated more than motivated by any serious effort to curb gun violence (not to say those who are doing this don’t think it will or would help, just that they often are creating regulations more from emotion than actual study…IMHO of course).
I think it’s more realistic. Societies DO choose things that often lead to deaths, and guns are just one of the things in the US that do so. In the end, it’s really up to the American people to decide whether we want to keep having this right and allow private citizens to keep and bear arms or not. We certainly have the mechanism to get rid of the things (well, in theory, and as far as a protected right goes) if we really want to going forward.
No, for sure more people died due to allowing the purchase and sale of alcohol than when it was prohibited. The estimated number of people who die from alcohol per year (average) as of 2019 was 95,000. If you are really interested, you can go to this site to play with the data. If you go to Total Alcohol Consumption over the long run and you go to add country and just add the US, you can look at the number of liters, on average, an American has drunk (all the way back to 1890 if you like). You can see a general upward trend. Unfortunately, the premature deaths due to alcohol data only go back to 1995, but the trend (upward) is pretty clear. If you go to this site you can see the deaths due to liver cirrhosis from prohibition until 1969 (again, I can’t find a chart that shows everything, unfortunately), and again, the chart is very clear…during prohibition we were at the absolute lowest point in our history (well, going back to 1900 anyway), and since then deaths due to alcohol-related liver cirrhosis have gone up to historic highs (in 1969 anyway).
Even factoring in deaths due to gang violence in the 20’s (and factoring in the 10,000 posited deaths due to the US government putting denatured alcohol in the mix) the deaths due to alcohol in the US are absolutely higher today than they were (per 100,000) during Prohibition…and this has added up, year on year. It’s a staggering number of people who have died because we allowed alcohol back on the streets (I haven’t even bothered with the motor vehicle deaths or deaths related to alcohol in violent crime…just looking at deaths due to alcohol consumption directly).
At any rate, hopefully, this stream of conscious post using my phone makes sense. No way for me to edit this monster or even recall what I was doing. 
The short answer is that societies around the world make choices (or their governments make them in a lot of cases) that will cause deaths. Guns are only one of the ones Americans make, and not even the most costly in terms of actual deaths. Just the most visible, as generally, you don’t see the news dwelling on the 10’s of thousands who die due to alcohol or other things.
ETA: That first link (here is the one I use for that one) is great for tracking Covid data. It’s what I mainly use to track numbers of deaths and track countries for numbers of daily infections. Just wanted to add that in.
Gun regulation models exist, it’s a wanted policy initiative in the US and yet, somehow, it’s some far distance goal that maybe, someday, will happen. I can only imagine that the frustration in the failure to implement some sort of measure does nothing to foster a belief in popular governance.
As for impact the numbers are the numbers. If I were to step outside those I would be considering the potentially massive knock on effects like:
- The initial death
- The victim’s parents/spouse/children emotionally wounds due to the loss of the victim
- The killer’s imprisonment
- The emotional impact on the killer’s family
- The economic impact on both families by a caregiver/provider being removed
- The knock on impact socio economic placement has on social mobility, social stability, and crime rates
- The uncertainty of personal safety all of the above breeds.
Simpler to stay with the clear-cut (sort of) numbers but it’s a worrisome shadow.
Though your post did make me look up homicide rates in the US due to firearms far before any of these debates
Homicide rates 1964 per 100,000 for firearms/explosives - 2.9 (table G)
I’ve no idea what gun regulation was back then - would be interesting to know.
I believe the high point in the US (for gun murders per 100k) was in the 70’s through the mid 90’s, though recently we’ve had an uptick again (I think starting in 2012 or so, but with a large uptick since 2019). Still not back to those levels though. I would guess (WAG IOW) that in 1964 there weren’t a lot of gun regulations in most states, but probably a bunch in a few high-density cities. It would be interesting to track gun deaths verse regulation, and I think I’ve seen some people post that on this board in these discussions before.
It was a nation Babale insisted was relevant. And they have a homicide rate of 12. Not .9.
Or, perhaps murders from knives, bombs and such aren’t worth considering?
If every one here cherrypicks a different list to prove their point, discussion becomes irrelevant. I suggested a UN list of ALL nations, Babale countered with countries with an HDI over 0.8. He stated that was a comparable list. With a HDI of .8 and higher those nations have to be considered to have a high Human development, hardly some 3rd world ghettos,
Note that all of the nations on you list could be fairly called White nations, handwaving off three whole continents is pretty bad. No countries in Asia, Africa or South America meet you standards?
Well, I wanted to compare with all nations, Every single one. No cherrypicking. But I accepted Babales HDI cut off. Ethiopia wasn’t on that list.
we both know that’s not true, and we know exactly what you’re trying to do here - the same thing you do in every thread about gun control. You try to equate comparing the US with other developed nations with racism.
The sample size of the Seychelles is just too small to be useful here, but I’m probably only saying that because I think people from there are subhuman or something
Controlling for confounding variables is not “cherrypicking”. Pretending that it is is just dishonest. And you are right, it’s very unfortunate that due to the history of colonialism white European nations have fucked over most of the rest of the world, meaning that there are few wealthy and free nations in Africa, Asia, or South America. But poverty correlates with crime. So unless you think the majority race of these countries is what causes their higher crime rate (which I’d say is a pretty fucking racist thing to claim), you can’t say that it’s racist to compare the US to other wealthy developed and free nations instead of nations without proper rule of law and a tiny fraction of the US’s GDP.
Seychelles has such a HDI. You picked the cut off, not me. Now, it is nations with a large population and HDI 0.8? 
Then you will think of some reason to disqualify, Uruguay, Bahamas, Barbados, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Russia, & Chile, right?
Look, YOU picked the cut off, not me. I wanted every single fucking nation, but you insisted on cherrypicking, so I accepted your cut off as a position from which to argue.
But you are not arguing in good faith.
That’s hilarious, coming from Mr “You’re A Racist For Using The Term Developed Nation”
Arguing in bad faith and now making up quotes. I am done with you. Bye.
This you?
LOL. Your posting history is there for all to see.
Here’s an 8 minute interview with Ryan Busse, author of Gunfight, that some may find interesting.
(TL; DW: Former gun industry guy thinks the NRA & gun manufacturers have been and continue to lead the country down a dangerous pathway.)
Cite? He denies saying that, so this a mod note if you cannot provide it.
I have no idea how else to read this post (among others in this thread, and in my old “No, you don’t need a semiautomatic rifle” thread)
I suppose I could have added yet an other economic/democratic/human rights adhering country like Japan but I don’t think it would help your case. Or I suppose I could have added in the Vatican instead to make the Canadians, British, Australians, and Israelis look bad.
The disingenuous protesting is tiresome and simply side steps the question. If you feel the rate of gun deaths/homicides in America are acceptable then fine. I find them appalling and socially corrosive.
Understandable. Many Americans (many on this board) feel as you do. But the majority of Americans feel that the lives lost are worth maintaining the right. And this is unlikely to change, really because the number of deaths is not out of the line with other things the US society allows. Same as the Canadian public allows things that will, for sure, cause deaths…and same as every other country/society on earth makes tradeoffs in this way.
Japan would be a good one to add in that they have a very high suicide rate yet are one of the most heavily regulated for guns in the world. As suicides are often lumped into gun deaths, it is an interesting comparison from that perspective. But all such comparisons are silly, IMHO, as different countries and different societies have different priorities and make different tradeoffs wrt what they allow that will kill citizens and what they are completely opposed to. I’ve never found such comparisons compelling, and I doubt most Americans do either, though on this board they certainly are.
I’m in the boat of if the majority of my citizens are willing to accept the losses from cheeseburgers, alcohol, tobacco, and firearms then I go along with the majority…and if I have enough heartburn over it I’ll join a protest group and try and change it through the law.