agreed. REmember, the army, more or less, was the armed citizenry, called out to defend the country from threats, often using their own weapons, balls and powder. Having, even requiring, citizens to have weapons was very reasonable. Guns also were far more necessary for acquiring food and protecting against wild animals than today. The Founders could not have anticipated the development of weaponry and the nature of our modern ‘civilized’ way of living. We don’t need weapons in our homes if no one has weapons. By 2045, another million Americans will have been killed by guns. We don’t seem to realize how many more Americans die by domestic violence than by ‘war’.
I’d say that, realistically, the problem is the Nirvana Fallacy.
It’s like people complaining about us losing 4 soldiers in battle, today, when in the 1940s we were losing reasonable chunks of the population.
Murder is down. Mental illness is down. The world is becoming a better place.
Guns are a right because they’re a counter to genocide and tyranny, and those are both worse things than the occasional mass shooting by a lone nutball. Despite the media press, you’re more likely to be killed by a cow.
If people really wanted to save lives from guns, they’d be looking at adding childproof guards to the things, not trying to ban them. They’re reacting to the fact that the world isn’t perfect and the media is telling them to be angry and indignant. None of this has anything to do with reason, numbers, or reality.
There is no perfect solution. Every choice you make will have negative consequences that mean death, disease, tragedy, and horror. Pretending like that’s not the case is just being dishonest, because it’s funner to pretend like banning guns will save lives and feel like you’re accomplishing something.
Tell people to drive five miles per hour slower if you want to save thousands of lives every year.
I fuckin’ KNEW it!
It is not nearly that simple unfortunately.
First a few points.
- Suicide in the US is primarily an epidemic among Caucasians, American Indian, or Alaskan Native men; white men are about 7 out of 10 suicides. In the US the rates of mortality in white men haven’t even come close to matching other developed nations, and in fact mortality rates are rising. This is not just due to deaths from rising rates of drug overdoses, suicides and chronic alcoholism.
- Coal gas ovens killed by CO poisoning, and was fairly “low trauma” from the perspective of someone idealizing suicide. With high CO sources, a person who may have pointed a gun at their head but not pulled the trigger would have resulted in a fatality with coal gas. Basically if you put your head in the oven for 5 minutes and decided to halt the attempt it was already too late. Even though you wouldn’t see the initial symptoms for 10-20min later you were still going to be dead in another 2.
Obviously the chosen method of attempted death matters. Hangings and firearms are clearly more effective tools of suicide, but the damages are much more difficult to reverse in the case of coal gas.
- The above article oversimplifies the importance of intent while ignoring the impact of that intent on finding alternative methods. If you look at “Beck’s suicidal intention scale” and consider that an attempt with coal gas requires a lower score than firearms it will demonstrate this.
- Alleged purpose of attempt
[INDENT]1. To manipulate environment, get attention, get revenge - Components of above and below
- To escape, surcease, solve problems
- Expectations of fatality
- Thought that death was unlikely
- Thought that death was possible but not probable
- Thought that death was probable or certain
- Conception of method’s lethality
- Did less to self than s/he thought would be lethal
- Wasn’t sure if what s/he did would be lethal
- Equaled or exceeded what s/he thought would be lethal
- Seriousness of attempt
- Did no seriously attempt to end life
- Uncertain about seriousness to end life
- Seriously attempted to end life
- Attitude toward living/dying
- Did not want to die
- Components of above and below
- Wanted to die [/INDENT]
While outcome are not the best measure of intent, intention does have a tendency to drive method selection. Note that women in the US tend to have more attempts but less completions, and while not fully understood the evidence points to this being related to cultural gender norms.
[
](APA PsycNet)
Male Gender Role Stressor Inventory
While reducing access to firearms will most likely reduce the number of successful suicides, it is not as clear cut as some articles make it out to be.
Untreated mental illness
Alchohol abuse
Opioid epidemic and overdose
Men’s reluctance to reach out for help.
Many of these issue will require cultural changes like reframing help-seeking as masculine, and modifying other behaviors which reduce connectedness or perceived values.
I am not sure how move forward with this, but the increases in male mass shootings, suicides, mortality etc… are probably also connected to the rise of the alt-right and other groups.
Unfortunately, as the concept of the cost of the patriarchy on men is most likely lost for several decades the most realistic tool for change as probably been lost.
Social isolation is a strong predictor of the rates of violence, and while firearms may be one of many proximal risk factors. Usually, people who attempt suicide have a combination of the many possible distal and proximal suicide risk factors.
I do need to call out the difference between proximal and distal risks compared to proximate causes as the meaning seems to be tripping up a lot of people making cites or reporting on them in articles.
While the proximal risk factors may be the final straw, the event is built off of years of development, including distal risk factors.
Rarely would a firearm be considered a proximate cause, which will typically carry a causal definition. (the source of the “guns don’t kill people” retort)
Unfortunately, outside of our own personal efforts to help improve this I fear that the isolationist policies and increasing political divides will not provide an opportunity to change the course of these trends anytime soon. Especially as mental health is once again being leveraged as a pejorative term on both sides.
That said the core problems are cultural.
Well, somewhere between bees and cows:
Well. When you say you’re more likely to be killed by a cow than in a mass shooting, how are you calculating the probability?
I mean if you want to go back hundreds of years to when guns were invented and include the whole world, then cows I’m sure are ahead.
Since I live in the US I don’t care about pissed off cows elsewhere, I’d say the gun nuts have the edge over cows at least recently. The 3 biggest ones alone in the last 18 months total 133, which is about 6 years’ worth of US cow. Seems to be becoming more common too. Cows are gonna have to step up their game or else they’re gonna end up like MySpace.
With regards to mass murders, I think the issue is the availability of guns. If you put many restrictions on guns, then in order to commit a mass murder with guns you not only have to be willing to do so but be connected enough to buy on the underground market or to jump through the bureaucratic hoops, and from looking at other country’s lone-nut-style mass murders, the number of people who can satisfy both criteria is small.
Others may argue that this reduction in mass gun violence is not worth whatever might have to be given up for it but that’s a separate issue. It seems pretty clear to me that gun control = less lone nut mass murder casualties.
Based on these numbers, the average number of people murdered by gun by a homocidal maniac, per year, is about 37. (9,915 victims over a 115 year period, with 43% dying by gun.)
And I would suggest that if that number is going up, it’s either due to ISIS actively scouring the internet for crazy people and talking them into it or increased media coverage, helping to make it a bigger, cooler way for a crazy egotist to make a big splash.
I would also note that the population was a lot smaller 115 years ago, so to hit 37 a year is actually fairly impressive when you consider the curve of population growth. It makes me think that the number, possibly, isn’t going up as a per capita calculation.
The link above is regarding a study done on 115 years of serial killers. It has almost nothing to add to the discussion of being killed by random acts of gun violence performed by spree killers. While I will readily admit that the statistical likelihood of a single person being killed in one of these acts is vanishingly small, it is disingenuous to argue they pose less of a risk than “cows”. Sure, while overall more people were killed by cows than spree killers in the entirety of the 20th century, here in the real world over the last decade we have seen the threat posed to the average citizen by cows fall to an all time low while the frequency and severity of spree shootings are increasing every year.
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So, my data is wrong, but probably not wrong to any large amount nor in any significant way - to paraphrase?
I missed that the definition of killer for the purpose of the article excluded people who killed all their victims in a single go. But the definition is far more inclusive than the popular definition of “serial killer”, as evinced by the high rate of gun usage.
But here’s an article on “rampage killers” that goes back to 1863:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers_(Americas)
I don’t currently have the time to add up the row, but it looks to me like the yearly average would be less than 10.
Are the numbers going up? Well in 1964, a man killed 43 people. A few years before that, there’s a 10, and a 13 a few before that. But until that point, it was all just single digits. Clearly, everything was on the upswing! …Except then it’s all single digits again for 20 years.
Simply put: The numbers are too small and random to make any sort of inference. More than that, they’re too small for us to even really bother debating.
Can it really be a Nirvana fallacy when other countries actual show that the end state is possible?
No, it’s the completely wrong data in a very significant way for the theory that you posed. Serial killers are nothing like the threat posed by spree killers, (“A lone nut with a gun” is the phrase I think you used). This is a little dated (2013) but you are welcome to present any evidence that things have gotten any better since then if you can find it.
2013 FBI Active Shooter Study:
This is an article that has a broader overview of mass shooter incidents and references for much more data showing these incidents are increasing in frequency.
If you have some evidence that these studies lack statistical rigor to support these claims, please produce it. Also please show us the trends for bovine-cide over the last couple decades so we can see how they compare.
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Which country has no crazy people killing people?
Your cites would seem to support the supposition (based on the “spike” it mentions) that the cause would be ISIS, as I had proposed.
But let’s say that you quadruple the average number of spree shooter deaths per year, compared to the historical average. Well so, you’ve gone from ~10 deaths per year to ~40 deaths per year.
OH
MY
GOD
!!!
Is this really the biggest issue on the table? Are you really certain that there aren’t bigger fish to fry?
I’ve always found this picture relevant: gun ownership by country.
How do those who think their Constitution so defective that it could produce such a government square that with the notion that the Second Amendment to it cannot possibly be defective? If the one is necessary because of the potential defects of the other, isn’t that an argument for dealing with those defects first?
I literally cannot find the word “spike” in either link. Can you please show what you are talking about? Both speak about a significant and ongoing rise over the last 14 years. These arent ISIS deep cover agents. If you look up each event most of the guns are bought legally. It’s almost entirely men, mostly young, angry and isolated. Often there were signs beforehand that maybe giving them weapons was a bad idea.
The last three killers on the FBI report; Alan Frazier, 41 / Karl Pierson, 18 / Paul Ciancia, 23. People mad at their bosses, wives or families who had a quick and easy way to kill 2, 5 or 9 people.
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Beats me! Of course that’s an argument for dealing with the defects first!
But I’m the wrong person to ask; I think the Second Amendment has been a disaster for at least half a century.
I’ve always found the “guns per 100 people” metric to be a dumb one. Far more relevant and useful would be the % of households with guns.
Gun control is not a problem. Never has been, never will be. It’s a strawman issue raised by liberals to increase the reach of Big Government.
If “weapon” control were truly an issue, then anything that could be used as a club or that has a sharp side or pointy end would be in the control list. Far more people have been killed with clubs and knives than by firearms.