Future of guns and mass killings in the US

Great Debates
1

The way I see it, there is no way for strong gun control to pass in the US any time in the foreseeable future.

And there is not much we are doing as a society to keep the mentally ill from access to guns.

Given the above, it seems to me that for the foreseeable future, i.e. next 50-60 years, we will continue to see mass killings happening on US soil, in schools, theaters, malls, etc, every few months.

People will hold candlelight vigils for the victims, articles will be written about the victims and the perpetrators, and soon we will forget about the latest massacre, until the next one comes along and the cycle starts again.

Some questions
[ul]
[li]Do you think this exact cycle will continue as is for the next several decades?[/li][li]What event, if anything, could disrupt/change this cycle? [/li][li]For people who are pro-gun, are you OK with the existing cycle of mass killings, in the sense that it is an acceptable price to pay for free access to guns?[/li][li]For people who are pro gun-control, do you think there is any chance of making any substantial changes to gun laws in the US in the next several decades?[/li][/ul]

2

That ship has sailed. The debate is over. The majority has, apparently, tacitly agreed that the odd newsworthy massacre and the daily tragedy(ies) are just a cost of doing business.

3

That’s my take too.
Usually, around 10 people die each time and nothing changes. However, would anything change the status quo? e.g. if someone managed to kill 1,000 students in a school, would something be done?

4

Well, Australia did get a sea change on that stuff following one shocking mass shooting but… America has had like a dozen increasingly shocking mass shootings and that dog just ain’t gon’ hunt soooo… I suppose the next probable cause would be an influx of veterans coming home from WW3 with their weapons and political opinions adverse to the status quo (which is what motivated gun control in much of Europe following WW1) - but then again modern militaries are a whole lot more versed in indoctrination and manipulation and their all-volunteer nature guarantees that the more radical elements of society won’t go through basic sooooo…

At this point, your last and best hope is conquest by Canada. Sorry.

5

I see a continuing advancement of the concealed carry movement and people providing for their own defense.

These tragedies make it increasingly obvious to the average citizen that:

  1. Mentally ill people can get guns.
  2. Background checks are ineffective.
  3. Gun-free zones aren’t aren’t really gun-free.
  4. Security officers offer little protection.
  5. Police aren’t everywhere.
  6. Unarmed people who attack armed murderers, no matter how heroic, tend to get shot.
  7. Once good guys with guns show up, the murder spree ends.
6

More than the odd massacre: America is on the brink of making history by having one mass shooting every day this year; if this continues to 1st Jan, that will be a year full of mass shootings each day ! Everyone is very excited and the world waiting with baited breath is humbly conscious of history being made: keep your fingers crossed !
Aug. 26 is the 238th day of the year. And with the fatal shooting in Virginia today — in which a gunman shot himself after killing two reporters and wounding one more person — plus the shooting of four during a Minneapolis home invasion, the number of mass shooting incidents has risen to 247 for the year.

**
Washington Post: We’re now averaging more than one mass shooting per day in 2015**
These are counted as incidents when 4 or more people are shot at a time, but not necessarily all fatal at that time.

OK, we can’t all be responsible for 20 people at once, but it’s not quantity that matters, but effort. Every attempt to rid America of her population counts.

7

Every few months would be a significant if not miraculous improvement.

8

Pretty much. Similarly, we’ve decided to allow alcohol consumption, tobacco products (well, so far :p) and myriad other things that kill larger numbers of folks in less newsworthy ways…day after day, year after year. We also allow idiot anti-vaxers to spew their horseshit, which, while not having as high a body count here in the US (where apparently is the only place it matters) kills plenty in the 3rd world taken in by the BS.

But yeah…societies decide what tolerance they will have for things that their citizens want and that will cause some non-zero number of theoretically preventable deaths all the time. While I know it’s odd to most non-Americans (and, hell, many Americans as well seemingly), the people in this country continue to decide that the death toll from guns IS worth the price in order to protect a personal right to keep and bear arms. Just like the US has a protected right to free speech and freedom or religion and assembly, which is also odd in many countries that don’t have this.

9

*O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears !
America ! America
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea !
*

Indeed, we Europeans and the rest of the world are in total daily awe of Americans and their glorious freedoms denied us by cruel governments and our own sloth and weakness.

10

The ship has, indeed, sailed. It left port around 1934 and it ain’t coming back. Unlike in Australia, the lobbying powers and cultural drivers are all stacked on the pro-gun side. In looking at firearms legislation around the world, it appears that the need for meaningful gun control was generally recognized in the early part of the 20th century. Britain passed a Firearms Act in 1920, Canada in 1934, and the US had its chance with the National Firearms Act of 1934, and they blew it in a really big way. Not only was the act exceptionally weak, but it prompted the NRA for the first time to organize a lobbying arm to make sure that any such “threats” of gun control in the future would be firmly stamped out. And the rest is pretty much history.

One notable exception was Australia, which had little in the way of meaningful gun control through most of the 20th century. And then, in 1996, the Port Arthur massacre happened. The Australian government, it its credit, acted decisively. It passed national gun control legislation and launched a buyback program that destroyed a million dangerous guns. The results, despite frantic efforts by the US gun lobby to manipulate the facts, were dramatic:
After the buyback program in 1996, which purchased and destroyed nearly 1 million firearms, in the years after the Port Arthur massacre, the risk of dying by gunshot in Australia fell by more than 50% – and stayed there. A 2012 study by Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University also found the buyback led to a drop in firearm suicide rates of almost 80% in the following decade.

There’s a good article on this very subject I was just reading. The relevant extract:
[Following this latest mass shooting in Oregon, Obama] actually invited reporters to add up the numbers of Americans killed by terrorists in the past decade and compare that number to all the people killed by gun violence in the U.S. Citing the Global Terrorism Database and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, NBC put the numbers at just over 3,000 versus just over 150,000, going back to 9/11.

Common-sense solutions — like the crackdown Australia imposed after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 — are not just politically impossible in America, they’re impossible, period. There are as many guns as people in the U.S. Plus, guns don’t have expiry dates. That means that for generations to come, nutcases and violent racists and other criminals will have all the firepower their hearts’ desire …

It’s happened. The ceremony of innocence that was once the American ideal is drowned. Common sense is moot. It no longer even applies.

11

In a strange twist of history, Donald Trump may turn out to be right about one thing. After Canada builds a giant wall along the US border, Mexico might opt to do the same – and pay for it, too, just like Donald said!

12

Unless Canada outlaws every conceivable tool capable of murder it won’t change anything.

People who intend to kill other people are messed up. That seems like such an innocuous statement yet somehow the blame is assigned to an object and thus the solution involves removing the object.

I’m old enough to have witnessed radical changes in social structure yet this is virtually ignored. When I was young a nuclear family unit consisted of 2 parents of which one of them generated the needed funds and the other raised children. Somewhere along the line the idea of raising children was considered a non-skill or at best something easily accomplished as an aside to the daily grind. The financial responsibility also seems to have taken a back seat.

The best that can be hoped for now is a 2 income family assuming that means 2 parents are involved. That creates a vacuum in child care. The skill of child rearing took a serious hit and that’s never been addressed. The changes in social structure have been dramatic.

13

It’s much more difficult to kill with a knife, hammer, or axe than a gun, which is what you see in most other countries. You don’t generally see hunters going out to kill deer with ice picks. The deer would just run away, or even worse, stay and fight. Then the hunter might get kicked in the head. It’s really hard to stab 10 people to death.

Besides the cultural issues, America is awash in guns. Number 1 by a mile, baby. So referencing Australia, as libs like to do ever since Jon Stewart did a bit on it earlier this year, is kinda silly. They barely had any compared to us.

There’s also some incredibly awkward racial/class politics. Hardcore gun supporters are the evil white Southerners, but they don’t really do most of the killing. Spree killers tend to be white, true. But most gun violence takes place in urban centers run by Democrats.

14

The states with the highest gun death rates are, in 1-2-3 order, Alaska, Louisiana, and Mississippi:

The above is for 2013, the most recent year for which the statistics are available.

The District of Columbia gun death rate, shown in the above link, is about half that of those top 3 states.

I can’t find New York City for 2013, but its firearms death rate was less than a quarter of that of the gun paradise states in 2011:

Admittedly, the NYC major back then was officially, an Independent. But before running for officer, Bloomberg was a Democrat, and I think you’d agree he is at least as much of a gun controller as the average Democrat.

There’s no way the next 50-60 years are foreseeable. One promising sign is that younger adults are less likely to own guns.

There are no permanent victories, or defeats, on this issue (although there are, of course, people permanently shot to death).

15

“Gun death rates” are only used in lieu of homicide rates by people with an anti-gun agenda. Dead is dead.

(Archie Bunker voice) Would you rather we pushed them outta windas?

Alaska, Louisiana, and Mississippi had 2013 homicide rates of 4.6, 10.8, and 6.5 per 100,000, respectively. The District of Columbia’s was 15.9 per 100,000.

(My own state of Wyoming, with some of the most lax gun laws and the highest gun ownership rate in the nation, had a 2013 murder rate 0f 2.9 per 100,000
.)

16

[QUOTE=marshmallow]
It’s much more difficult to kill with a knife, hammer, or axe than a gun, which is what you see in most other countries. You don’t generally see hunters going out to kill deer with ice picks. The deer would just run away, or even worse, stay and fight. Then the hunter might get kicked in the head. It’s really hard to stab 10 people to death.
[/QUOTE]

But it’s not impossible. In the PRC you can’t have a gun if you are a regular citizen, but they still find ways to do shit like this…there have been several such attacks over the years, though, thankfully, none recently that I know of.

17

That’s nice, but almost no one lives there. I jest, of course, but there are (literally) more people in my immediate suburban neighborhood than there are in all of Wyoming, and Wyoming has the lowest urban population in the US. In short, you’re unlikely to get shot by a cow. :smiley:

And yet despite that, the murder rate in all of Canada, which includes large population centers like the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area with a high-density population of almost 7 million – and strong gun control – has a murder rate half that of Wyoming. It’s 1.5 or 1.6 (depending on source) compared to 2.9 for Wyoming and 4.7 for the US as a whole.

The gun-fatality stats are even more stark. Despite being very similar nations in socioeconomic terms, the US has seven times the gun fatality rate in Canada – 3.5 per 100K compared to 0.5. And a great deal of that is inflated by American guns coming over the border – the gun fatality rates in most of Europe are a tiny fraction of Canada’s. IOW, the US is pretty much off the chart in gun deaths.

And as I mentioned in post #10, gun fatalities dropped by 50% in Australia after the measures taken in the aftermath of the Port Arthur shootings, and gun suicides – which are almost always fatal compared to suicides attempted by other means – dropped by 80%.

At this point it’s just interesting to peruse threads like these and observe the difference between those folks who can identify the problem, and those folks who are the problem.

18

Dead is only statistically significant if there was a gun involved. All others are accidents or acts of nature or something. Nothing to see there. Look at the bad gun numbers.

19

PhillyGuy is including suicides in his calculus.

20

You referring to the police, right? When they show up the murder spree usually ends because the shooter kills himself.

There are instancesof armed citizens saving the day, but it usually doesn’t happen.