Guns and Mass Shoot...
 
Notifications
Clear all

Guns and Mass Shootings in the U.S.

7 Posts
3 Users
18 Likes
1,102 Views
(@jeanne-mayell)
Illustrious Member Admin
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 7907
Topic starter  

Luminata asked in another thread why are there so many mass shootings now.  I did a little research, but thought it deserved it's own thread. 

FACTS:  Scanning the mass shootings literature, you quickly learn that because the NRA got the feds to ban Federal funding of gun research, the research is poor and confusing.  The best unbiased information I could find is this study by Vox. We need to understand this issue better, but that's going to be slow as long as the NRA-financed GOP is running the federal government.  What we know already is so simple that they don't want people to see it - that more guns means more gun-related deaths.  (So if you arm teachers, you will have even more gun deaths). 

When you are having this conversation, you have to distinguish between shootings that involve a gunman attacking a public place with people in it he doesn't know (i.e., mass public shootings like Newtown, Orlando, Las Vegas, and Parkland) versus violence against family members or the usual criminal versus criminal gun violence. 

1. If you are talking about public mass shootings,  according to this Politico article, mass shootings have not gone up since the late 1970's but the number of victims has risen. 

2. So why are more people getting killed per shooting now?

Answer: There are more consumer-grade easy-to-use semi-automatic weapons in use now. And they kill a lot of people at once, even if the shooter has no skill.  

Also while the number of gun owners has not increased, the number of guns per owner has. The machine guns of gangster prohibition days are banned, but semi automatic weapons, like the very popular AR-15 are just as lethal. 

3. Does having more guns in the country cause more gun-deaths?

Answer: Big yes. It is the only very strong statistically-backed explanation of fact we know about why the U.S. has such a terrific gun-death problem.  

  • Compared to other countries - the more gun ownership in a country, the more gun deaths.
  • The correlation is almost perfect:  for every 1% rise in gun ownership there's a .9% rise in gun-related deaths.  
  • The US. has 4% of the world's population, but we own 45% of the world's guns.  We stick out like a sore thumb compared to other countries.  

3. Here's a shocker: The U.S. does not have more violent crime than comparable countries!   I was surprised that the answer to this one is that the amount of violent crime here compared to other wealthy countries is the same. Sweden has more violent crime per capita than the U.S.!  Also France, the Netherlands, the UK, Canada, Australia are the same or a little higher than the U.S. [I don't know how they defined "violent" crime, though.]

4. The U.S. has six times as many gun deaths as comparable countries; and we have six times as many guns as these countries.

5. Since 1950, gun ownership in this country has soared, as have gun-related deaths. 

There are still unanswered questions here, and the research is poor, thanks to the NRA-backed GOP that banned federal research.  

INTUITIVE TAKE ON THIS QUESTIONS: I see a vision of a knight in armor on his horse. The need for men to be warriors has been around for hundreds of years. I'm not even sure that people are more violent now than they ever were. I don't sense that the U.S. has more violent tendencies in our collective psyche than Canada, Sweden, France, U.K., Australia and other cousin countries. I'm also not feeling that we have more mental illness than these countries although there are probably statistics on that. Denmark, supposedly the happiest of comparable countries, with better pay and benefits, has as much violent crime incidents as the U.S.  There may be some copy cat syndrome at work, i.e., mass shooting sprees are contagious, just like owning an AR-15 is in fashion right now. In short, people have always had the need to prove themselves with violence,  but now we have a fad and an availability with these super expedient killing machines. 


   
BlueBelle, Paul W, BlueBelle and 1 people reacted
ReplyQuote
(@zoron)
Illustrious Member Registered
Joined: 2 months ago
Posts: 857
 

I also wonder about our cultural mythos about the wild West (Native Americans, buffalo, and earth) being conquered ("civilized") by white guys with guns on horses; the fact that our fears are so easily provoked and manipulated by politicians, advertisers, preachers, and whatnot; and we chose to trust a nasty phallic symbol rather than find peace in unconditional love.  Kind of all boils down to a distorted sense of machismo.  


   
Jeanne Mayell, BlueBelle, Jeanne Mayell and 1 people reacted
ReplyQuote
(@jeanne-mayell)
Illustrious Member Admin
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 7907
Topic starter  

I agree, Gracesinger, about the American Wild West syndrome.  Is it natural or is it mostly nurtured by the gun industry who have brainwashed consumers from red states that they have to have guns for machismo and protection?  

But the U.S. is  not more violent than other countries. It is just more greedy.  Are we naturally more gun-loving, especially in the red states?  Perhaps.  Or perhaps the gun companies have found a way to convince a certain kind of person  that he or she needs to have guns to protect themselves. 

If you watch FOX news, it is all about how unsafe we are.  It's a non stop news feed of shootings, robberies, terrorists.  It feeds the gun industry and the military industrial complex and the racists and xenophobes. 


   
Paul W and Paul W reacted
ReplyQuote
(@paul-w)
Noble Member Registered
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 237
 

I live in a very small rural community (~2,600) in the mid-west and refuse to own a gun. I have had more than one friend who insists that we need guns in our community for self protection. I've lived here over 20 years and there have  been exactly two shootings. One was a woman who shot her ex in the backside (you can't make this stuff up) and the other was a drug deal gone bad. Like many people, we don't lock our doors even when we are gone for the day. Many people also leave their keys in their cars so they don't lose them. I'm 64-years old and, except for my time in the Army, haven't needed a gun yet. Funny how our perspectives can be so different even in one small town.


   
Dianne, Jeanne Mayell, Dianne and 1 people reacted
ReplyQuote
(@jeanne-mayell)
Illustrious Member Admin
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 7907
Topic starter  

Speaking of how arming teachers will cause more gun deaths -- already today there's a story of a gun toting teacher giving a self protection class who accidentally fired his gun and it hit a student.  The injury was not serious...this time.


   
Dianne and Dianne reacted
ReplyQuote
(@zoron)
Illustrious Member Registered
Joined: 2 months ago
Posts: 857
 

Well, maybe its time for body armour for the students!. 

 


   
ReplyQuote
(@zoron)
Illustrious Member Registered
Joined: 2 months ago
Posts: 857
 

Absolutely!  I had a colleague who was on a team hired by a lawyer representing children in a court-ordered desegregation case to evaluate the teaching and learning environment of a charter school.  In one classroom a teacher picked up a pencil, sharped it, and took aim at a child right in front of my colleague!  Imagine what kind of hell kids would be vulnerable to, if the teacher had a gun and no adults were watching.


   
ReplyQuote
Share: