Do you think that strict gun laws and heavy enforcement of them will be cheap, or more likely to be supported by anti-gun-control politicians? Why do you take them more seriously then?
Possibly horribly out of date. 59 were killed in Las Vegas and 49 in Orlando, so that’s 108 out of 146 right there.
I’d say that it’s more that they aren’t terrified to leave the house without one.
[I want to add something that – were it in me to do, I’d edit and rewrite. Alas, I can’t, so I’m posting it pretty raw.]
One thing that really puzzles me (not even a little bit):
Abortion.
Conservatives:
- Want it banned. Overturn Roe at the Federal level, close it down in every possible state, make it criminal, and then use Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TARP) to close down as many of the rest as possible. They want to throw the patient in jail and put anybody that they can possibly connect to the patient into bankruptcy via third-party civil lawsuits.
No screwing around (read: support for) with distractions like:
- Education
- Opportunity
- Access to affordable, high-quality health care
- Nutrition
- Access to affordable, high-quality day care
- Substance abuse treatment (non-criminal)
- Well paying jobs
- Contraception
- Comprehensive sex education
or any other societal determinants that may play even a small role in abortion.
Nossiree, they go right to what they think is the only thing that matters: the prescription drug or the medical procedure and the people connected to these things.
Contrast that with gun violence.
Conservatives are laser focused on:
- The weakening of the ‘family unit’
- Taking Jebus out of our classroom and country
- Violent video games
- Hollywood action movies
- LGBTQ+ people … just existing
- Allowing people of color to breed, enter the country, or exist
- Mental illness (not that they want to support care; just deflect blame)
and anything else they can think of.
With abortion … the problem is … abortions.
With gun violence … the problem is … anything but guns. It’s also not the dealers, the manufacturers, the industry advocacy groups, the lobbyists, etc.
Nuh-uh. It’s not them and it’s not any of that.
It’s just that way for abortion.
Liberals are generally in favor of funding and improving social determinants that are likely to have a salutary effect on both abortion and gun violence. We’re interested in fixing the symptom and the underlying problems.
It’s so much more cost-effective, because
- it has a better chance of working than the ‘last mile’ approaches that necessarily must create profit, and
- it has a significant likelihood of knock-on effects – improvements in other areas not even thought of. Call it collateral improvement.
But nope. Not today’s conservatives. They want to deflect by pointing to their pet social determinants, but they will never put their money where their mouths are (or, more correctly, bite the hands that finance them).
I wish that “confused” is what I was.
But that’s not the feeling at all.
I’m not looking forward to the day that school shootings are no longer newsworthy events.
I guess I’d say that people who want to make abortion illegal abortion want to make abortion illegal, and I’d then have to contrast that with gun violence by noting that they — want to make that illegal, too?
Nah.
I’ll TL;DR it for simplicity:
The general conservative position on the two issues:
Abortion: we go after abortion, abortion recipients, and abortion providers. We do this through legislation, litigation, and criminalization. We don’t even pretend to look at social determinants that may contribute. If we do, it’s to block Democratic support of these issues.
Gun violence: we go after (see: hand-waving) anything but the guns, the gun industry, the gun lobby, the gun dealers. We want you to look at social determinants that may contribute, but don’t ask us to care about them.
Abortion: make it a crime.
Gun violence: make it a crime.
::shrugs::
The people who wrote it run The Violence Project and I looked through a report on their database here and it looks like Vegas is included, but Orlando was not. I looked it up and was reminded the Orlando shooter had sworn allegiance to ISIS and it was deemed an Islamist terrorist attack. So I guess that’s the “other underlying criminal activity” mentioned. A more detailed definition is at that page I linked to. And apparently you can request their full database.
Between 1966 - February 2020 there were 168 mass shootings in the United States, defined by the Congressional Research Service as “a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms — not including the offender(s) — within one event, and at least some of the murders occurred in a public location or locations in close geographical proximity (e.g., a workplace, school, restaurant, or other public settings), and the murders are not attributable to any other underlying criminal activity or commonplace circumstance (armed robbery, criminal competition, insurance fraud, argument, or romantic triangle).”
Put in perspective, mass shootings are statistically rare, accounting for fewer than 1% of all firearm homicides in the United States. But they are occurring regularly in a growing number of venues, leaving a trail of mass destruction that emotionally outweighs their numbers.
According to The Violence Project, nearly all mass shooters have four things in common:
Early childhood trauma and exposure to violence at a young age An identifiable grievance or crisis point Have studied the actions of past shooters and seek validation for their methods and motives The means to carry out an attack
I’m also not a huge fan of the cops, but I happen to personally know a few. Ongoing firearms training, which includes marksmanship drills at the local gun range, is part of the job.
I know quite a few gun owners, but all but a handful of them are experienced only with long guns. Not exactly suitable for protecting the average citizen.
I think you mistake Kimstu’s point. It’s not about the cost of these programs, or how much we can trust a generic “politician” to follow their campaign promises. It’s about the fact that pro gun politicians who insist the solution to gun violence is better mental health programs, are also ideologically opposed to any government spending on health or basic social services.
Because I think that the people who advocate them are generally more sincere, more concerned for the well-being of Americans overall, and more willing to back their advocacy up with actual implementation, than the people who claim to support vague and non-specific social remedies as a substitute for better gun regulation which they utterly reject.
No, I don’t assume that proposals for better gun regulation will necessarily be more successful in overcoming conservative resistance and indifference, and actually accomplishing improved gun safety in our society, than the anti-gun-control lip service to unspecified social-welfare spending will be. I think conservative resistance and indifference to any gun safety measures at all may well prove to be an insurmountable obstacle.
But the former measures at least have more of a chance than the latter, because more of the people who are proposing them actually mean and want to do what they say.
Not sure if this belongs here, but I’ll put it here anyway:
That’s not what I’ve read, I’ve read he was fatally shot.:
You mean they actually engaged the guy? Madness, I say! Don’t they realize that he could have shot them?
As this video illustrates, it’s not about shaping society but about punishing the “right” people.
I hate how secretive Canadian Police/Media are with basic facts involving shootings. Surely they could’ve mentioned to reporters if the recovered rifle was loaded. This answer really would make the difference (for me) between a potential shooter to an unaware idiot breaking Canadian firearm transportation laws. Sigh.
My next question. How did this go down? I hope this was a real threat and not the case of Police brutality.
I’m appreciative of them not commenting on details until an investigation is done.
The one thing they have said is that he “confronted” the responding officers.
I came here to say that my Canadian relatives (who 1000% support the police in almost any other situation) are ranting about police overreacting in this case, without any sense of irony.
Considering that people could see and report to 911 that a man is carrying a firearm, he was clearly breaking our restricted firearm transportation laws here in Canada (Police had every right to react to this). They only allow for carrying inside a:
“locked container that is made of an opaque material and is of such strength, construction and nature that it cannot readily be broken open or into or accidentally opened during transportation”
But I would love a reassurance that the person wasn’t just a stupid kid with no ill intent. I guess I need to trust that the facts will be released when they are released.
ETA: I’m assuming this was a restricted firearm… This could also be a non-restricted hunting rifle.