I’m confused. Does this belong in MPSIMS or somewhere else?
Gun deaths in the United States reached an all-time high in 2021 for the second year in a row, with firearms violence the single leading cause of death for children and young adults, according to a new study released by Johns Hopkins University.
The annual study, which relies on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported a total of 48,830 Americans lost their lives to gun violence in 2021. The latest data works out to one gun death every 11 minutes, according U.S. Gun Violence in 2021: An Accounting of a Public Health Crisis.
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Further, the gun homicide rate rose 45% from 2019 to 2021, while the rate for homicides not involving a gun rose just 7% in the same period. Likewise, while the rate of suicides by firearm increased 10% over the same period, it was down 8% when looking at suicides by other means.
“Guns are driving this increase,” says Ari Davis, a lead author on the study.
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Gun problem? I don’t see a gun problem. Do you see a gun problem?
Cool, is someone going to get me that tracked power chair so I can knife hunt deer like Teddy Roosevelt?
You personally may not like the idea of guns, but many many many people hunt animals not humans, and some of us even eat those dead animals, and like going out and hunting them. [and some of us had jobs using guns, and some of us had stalkers and had a gun as self defense and as I no longer have any reasonable expectation of escape or evasion, I will keep my handgun, thanks.]
I’m actually totally good with real hunting. Not my bag, but it’s totally OK in the rural areas where it’s practical. I’m even good with real self-defense in real threat environments. Used to carry for just that reason. Used it too, albeit overseas in a real threat environment. Hint: suburbia is not a real threat environment. Neither is the local interstate.
I’m just not good with ammosexuals. Which nowadays seems to be most of the people doing the shooting and/or hording the arsenals.
But most of those are suicides.
If they didn’t use a gun, they’d find some other way.
Clearly, we do have a gun problem in the USA. But fear-mongering articles aren’t of any help.
Here in Minnesota, we passed a gun control measure this Legislative sessions (red flag law). But it won’t do much – most of the rural County Sheriffs don’t agree with the law and so don’t bother to enforce it.
A far more effective measure to reduce firearms death was buried in the budget bill – allocating a few million $ to mental health counseling for teenagers.
The cultural problem is that we have let the fears and insecurities of a broken minority in America set national policies. Think about what a sad, broken person one would have to be if you couldn’t go to the store without carrying a gun. Yet it’s the irrational fears of these broken little men (and it’s almost always men) that set our gun laws.
I’m in a rural area but I’d rather feed the wildlife. I’ve had two instances in the past two decades where killing was required; a rabid fox in the yard and a severely injured deer.
I have a firearm in the house because it’s a sensible tool, just like the basin wrench I very rarely use, but just try working on a sink without one.
I used to suspect that as well but I’m now fairly well convinced that such logic doesn’t hold.
Here is a one study (there are others) that suggests suicide rates are much higher for handgun owners than for those who do not own handguns.
It takes a view that is broad, deep and long, the headline takeaway?
Men who own handguns are eight times more likely to die of gun suicides than men who don’t own handguns, and women who own handguns are 35 times more likely than women who don’t.
And a potted rationale for that
“Suicide attempts are often impulsive acts, driven by transient life crises,” the authors write. “Most attempts are not fatal, and most people who attempt suicide do not go on to die in a future suicide. Whether a suicide attempt is fatal depends heavily on the lethality of the method used — and firearms are extremely lethal
Seems a reasonable hypothesis to me but I’d be happy to evaluate evidence to the contrary.
Mass shootings get the headlines, but that’s not what’s killing someone every 11 minutes.
I don’t think our culture is that different from, for example, Canada’s, or even the UK or Australia. I guess the important thing is not to pin the blame of gun violence on guns. “The US has a gun violence problem” – it could be any word in that sentence! “Gun”, “violence”, “has”, “US”, “a”, who can tell what’s making the US a total outlier??
Our murder rate in general is significantly higher than any of those countries. We have significantly more stabbings than those countries, and significantly more murders by what the FBI calls “personal weapons” (hands, feet, etc). It’s not just guns.
While mass shootings get the headlines, that’s not where all of the deaths are. Handguns kill the most people. Then knives, personal weapons (hands, feet, etc), blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc), shotguns, rifles (all types), asphyxiation, strangulation, narcotics, fire, poison, and explosives.
About twice as many people are killed by hands and feet than by all rifles, which includes not only the misnamed “assault style” weapons and your “ammosexuals” but also includes hunting rifles and any other type of rifle.
(Statistics are from the FBI)
I believe that actual assault weapons have been used in a total of either 3 or 4 murders since the NFA went into effect in 1934. None of those were mass shootings.
Also, most people have the impression that gun violence now is a much bigger problem than it has ever been in history. This is false. Gun violence peaked in the 1970s and generally decreased in all years since, until the pandemic started. Since then, gun violence has steadily increased, but it is still nowhere near what it was during the peak years in the 1970s.