Ok, but I think the US is a different case- because we have just so damn many guns. And IMO destroying all the guns is as realistic as destroying all the drugs.
This is a akin to a “no comment,” correct? 'cause there’s none to be said in response.
Shoot away.
In case anyone is interested, here’s a link to all the police scanners in Milwaukee County. This will pick up everything in Cudahy, Greenfield, Oak Creek, Milwaukee. Pretty much everything you’ve been hearing on the news.
Anything referring to Swift, Packard, Holmes, Kirkwood are all streets around the house were the shooter lived and are were the police are right now.
Is it easier to get a gun than it is to get high in the US nowadays? If so, I think your so-called priorities are totally fucked-up.
Both are pretty damn easy.
Yes because making something illegal makes it go away. Well done sir, you’ve solved all our problems.
Let’s ban alcohol next. That will work too I’m sure.
It’s really not actually. Can be quite tricky to legally get a gun. Both should be a lot easier though. Prohibition on drugs has not work and prohibition on guns will not work. Let’s act accordingly.
Depends on the state (and the type of gun). In VA, it’s really easy to legally buy a gun from a private citizen who is selling one.
Yes, but it usually costs more money.
The trend - thankfully - has been a bit downward since 2007.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr60/nvsr60_04.pdf Page 45
Accidental death by firearms 600 (10) 554 (2009)
Suicide by firearms 19,308 (10) 18,735 (2009)
Murder by firearms 11,015 (10) 11,493 (2009) (Out of a total of 16,065 fatal assaults in 2010)
Legal intervention 405 (10) 395 (2009) - it’s not clear to me that these are all firearms deaths. Let’s assume they are.
Undetermined intent firearms 246 (10) 232 (2009)
So let’s add these up for 2010.
Firearm murders 11,015
Accidental gunshot deaths 600
Sub total 11,615
Suicides 19,308
Undertermined 246
Total 31,169 deaths by guns, except by legal action.
Compare now to legal intervention of 405
11,615/405 = 28.68 or approximately 29:1. So in 2009 “bad” gunshot deaths outnumbered “good” gunshot deaths 30:1 (actually a tad higher) and that number improved to 28.68:1 in 2010. Still, almost 30 bad over good, ignoring suicides.
The total number ratio would be 76.97:1, or 77:1. Basically there were more legal action killings and fewer murders in '10 than '09, but more suicides, which is understandable given the economy.
Suicides are relevant since they are often spur of the moment decisions. Gun shots have a far higher degree of lethality than pesticide poisoning or hanging, for example.
The method of suicide matters:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/case-fatality/index.html
Just putting forth facts and figures. I don’t expect any gun control - ever. But at least we should know the costs of blind adherence to the 2nd amendment.
The thing is, we care do care about those who were hurt. We care so much about the ease and unfairness of senseless murder that we want to prevent it from happening again. There’s no way to bring back today’s dead, but there is a way to prevent tomorrow’s. (Yes, I know that without guns we’d see crazy mass poisoners, but that’s a separate issue yet again.)
Right now I’m more interested in what happened in this specific case, what made this shooter (these shooters?) target this place and these people.
The larger issue is relevant, though. Maybe you do think the benefits of access to guns outweighs 11,000 deaths per year. Not as unreasonable as it might be at first glance: it looks like auto deaths surpassed that in 1920, and everyone seems to find that an acceptable risk. Regarding guns, I don’t think so, and I would be happy if they were banned altogether. I don’t think it’s disrespectful to those who died in as a result of mass murder if I say so: in fact, I think it’s the opposite. YM, obviously, MV.
I don’t understand what it is about today’s society that is so toxic that this happens. Guns have always been a part of our country, but I don’t remember mass shootings like we’ve seen in the past 25 years occurring in the past. Sure, the Chicago/Gangster era and their tommy guns might qualify, but as to this totally senseless shit, is it a recent thing? Did this shit happen 100 years or more ago?
I think mass shootings have become a part of American culture in a way- and when someone starts to lose it, “kill lots of people” becomes an attractive option to them (along with the other traditional losing-it options of suicide and a more undirected meltdown). I have no idea how to stop that, except have a more robust system and procedures to identify and monitor people who are close to “losing it”.
And do what? People are close to losing it every second of every day. Go take a drive on the highway during rush hour or watch the parents at some youth sporting event somewhere. Somehow we’re going to monitor them all and detain them before they hurt someone?
It would be fascinating if the preferred solution were greater restrictions on people.
This is the butcher’s bill for gun ownership. The job of the rest of us is to mourn these people, gnash our teeth, rend our garments and cry to the heavens about this incomprehensible and unpredictable tragedy. We should make this a sticky.
I must be tired; my google-fu is failing me on these points.
Could y’all please post the statistics showing how many people each year are murdered by swimming pools, fancy sports cars, ladders and alcohol? I mean, I searched quite a bit but I didn’t see even one news story about anyone being murdered by a person using a ladder.
The obsessive anti-gunners who see a story about the mass death of innocent people and get a boner because it means they can feast on the corpses with more squawking about their idiotic cause are morons.
You are morons because there is not a shred of evidence backing the idea that gun possession is not an individual right, because there is not a shred of evidence correlating gun ownership rates with crime (lower in the US than in non-gun countries), violent crime (also lower), or murder (higher, at exactly the same rate as before the UK and Australia banned most guns…which supports the fucking null hypothesis). You are morons because this is a closed legal question as of the Heller and McDonald rulings, and you are morons because this is a closed political question as of Obama’s 2008 election showing that a brashly liberal-on-all-other-issues Democrat can win Virginia, North Carolina, and enough of the country to get elected so long as he doesn’t articulate the stupid fantasy of gun confiscation.
Gun bans in American politics are dead for all of the above reasons. Wanting to bring the issue back is about as likely to succeed as wanting the Confederacy to rise again, about as divisive, and about as morally sensible. Do something about the ridiculous attitudes towards racial and religious minorities, not to mention our shit mental health system, if you want to bring down crimes like this or crime in general. Do something about the cycle of poverty. Fixing the public schools and getting birth control to teenagers will continue to be 10,000 times as effective at keeping violence down than gun laws. Do you want to solve this problem or keep turning into monomaniacal single-issue obsessives long past the point of your own discrediting?
The ladder has to be very pointy.
When I finally lose it, I’m using the ladder cause I can’t figure out how to transport the pool.
“And in breaking news, the first recorded drive-by drowning. Police are baffled…”
I’m in favor of all that, the problem is that.. Guess what is the party that puts more efforts into preventing the federal government from doing anything at all regarding those issues?
A special attention should be given to the health care issue, the much maligned ACA plan does help a lot on increasing the coverage and treatment for mental health patients. Guess again who is mostly opposed to the health care plan? It is unfortunate but most on the right also support the weakening efforts of the NRA regarding the enforcement of things like the national registry to prevent people with mental issues from getting guns.
BTW I do support gun rights, and most of the ones that you are trying to put down here are also not willing to ban all guns so put that wide brush away.