But you’re about twice as likely to die from alcohol-related issues in the US too, so if you take “alcohol-related deaths” and other societal things like traffic accidents as a very broad baseline shared by other countries, there are still gun-related deaths in the US shining out as a macabre ‘novelty’.
My take on it is that as well as a bit of begrudgery from non-American countries, on the infrequent occasions that they’re mentioned in the media, the US has a propensity to judge other countries quite vocally. I’m not saying that judgement is more or less than in other countries, but it is broadcast quite a bit further because we all lap up your media. The same media simultaneously broadcasts your problems. Thus it is often seen as a form of hypocrisy*: “remove the mote in thine eye” etc.
*Even on these boards I’ve observed people trying to insist that Europe, for example, would be better off with US gun laws and US-style health legislation.
My point was simply that people are often afraid of what they don’t understand or aren’t used to while not being afraid of what they THINK they understand or are used to. In the US you are more likely to die from an American diet than be murdered by a gun (as well as numerous other things), yet guns are what grab the headlines.
Well no one was ever fearful traveling to/through the UK due to random Stout/Bitter violence; same goes with southern US style drive-by/school ‘ribbings’.
If they are worried about random gun violence in the US then they are worried about the wrong thing, since just driving in the US is more dangerous, statistically. And those pork ribs will kill you, man…it’s a group 1 carcinogen!! :eek:
The point is that deaths from alcohol and on the roads are at least in the same order of magnitude for the two countries.
Whereas the number of firearms homicides in the USA is averaging up around 10,000 yes? In the UK it is less than 50. (the equivalent of 300 in a country the size of the USA)
So for the alcohol related deaths in the UK to be as much an aberration as gun deaths in the USA, they’d have to be 30 times greater than the USA rate.
This line of argument only makes sense if the people of the UK do indeed ignore the threat of drunk driving and alcohol abuse. Is that what you’re saying?
Alcohol is a huge killer. Ever heard of cirrhosis of the liver? I’m astounded gun murders are in the same ballpark as alcohol deaths in a civilized country, and even more astounded anyone would find the stat you quote surprising.
Well firstly there is simple humanity and then there’s reciprocity.
The US gun lobby seem to be very concerned about Australian gun laws. Indeed the NRA and US corporations such as Winchester and Olin contribute funds to pro-gun political parties here on the “thin edge of the wedge principle”.
They ignore it in the same way that Americans ignore gun violence, which is to say that some completely ignore it or make excuses for it, some are really fired up about it and wish to change, and most foll somewhere between those extremes and simply accept them as the status quo.
Actually, I think that US deaths on the road are an order of magnitude more, though I haven’t looked it up lately. I’m not sure what our death by alcohol is…probably less than the 14 per 100k of the UK, but most likely not that much less. Yes, US deaths due to firearms are orders of magnitude higher than the UK…but then, the US actually has guns while the UK have very few, so in order to make your comparison work (which wasn’t MY point, btw) you’d have to look at the UK deaths by alcohol verse a country with either very strict or no alcohol at all and do a comparison there, since the US and UK have very similar alcohol laws while vastly different gun laws (which is why on the one had we have similar death rates for alcohol while on the other very different ones for guns). A more interesting comparison would be why does the US have such a high gun murder rate compared to Canada, since we both have more widely available guns, even though the Canadians have stricter gun control than the US…but not stricter to account for the huge difference in murder rate for guns.
No, they have increase awareness programs, make penalties for over serving and make losing your driver’s license easier. I understand America’s hands are tied because gun ownership is in your Constitution, but your’s is a faulty observation. The real thing is that its human instinct to notice difference more than sameness. Similar alcohol deaths is not so interesting, vastly different gun deaths is.
I’m not sure how my observation is faulty, since essentially I’m saying the same thing wrt people perceptions, even though I couched it differently. Our hands aren’t tied because of the Constitution so much as the fact that, strange as it is for non-Americans to fathom, the majority of our citizens are ok with the gun violence and deaths as the price for keeping a right we’ve enjoyed for a century and a half.
You are right though…people are more afraid by differences than what they perceive as sameness, and people in other countries are fascinated and baffled by this US obsession with guns, and the price we pay for that.
And those pork ribs will kill you, man…it’s a group 1 carcinogen!! :eek: