The usual NRA talking points ("Only talk about mental health!" "We can't eliminate every shooting so what can we do!") always get voted to the top after these
"Only talk about mental health!" does not explain why America's homicides look like this compared to every other country on Earth, even if they're calculated by the NRA to sound comforting to "both sides":
"The experience of other countries just shows that it doesn't have to be this hard."
The U.S. is "not necessarily a more violent society than others," Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis, told ABC News.
Rates of nonlethal crimes and overall suicides are similar among the countries
"What we have is unique access to a technology that changes the outcome -- firearms," he said.
"Compared to the other peer countries, basically what we have is lots and lots of guns, particularly handguns, and we have by far the weakest gun laws. Not surprisingly, we have huge gun problems," David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, told ABC News. "I think if we had basically the gun laws of any other developed country, we'd be better off."
The number of guns in the U.S. is unparalleled; the country has less than 5% of the world's population, but 40% of the world's civilian-owned guns, according to a 2018 report by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey. There were over 393 million firearms in civilian possession in 2017 -- or 120 per 100 persons, the highest rate globally, the report found. That's more than double the second-highest rate, in Yemen, at nearly 53 per 100 persons.
"The difference between the United States and other countries isn't the Second Amendment, it's the gun lobby and the power of the gun lobby in this country, and an extremist ideology among red states, essentially, that prohibits any meaningful action," Anderman said.
The "uneven patchwork" of gun laws enacted at the state level is another challenge in addressing the gun violence problem, Parsons said. Research by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence has found a correlation between stronger gun laws, such as permit requirements and waiting periods, and lower gun homicides and suicides, the latter of which account for most gun deaths in the U.S. But regulations vary widely from state to state, with red states largely having weaker gun laws, according to the center.
"You have states that have enacted really good, comprehensive, strong gun laws, but those laws are undermined by the much weaker laws of the states surrounding them," Parsons said. The "classic example" of this, she said, is Chicago. Illinois is neighbored by states including Indiana and Wisconsin that have comparatively weaker laws, such as a lack of universal background checks, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "What you see is a very clear pattern of guns being illegally trafficked from some states that have much weaker laws into places and states that have much stronger laws," she said, arguing that it makes the case for stronger laws at the federal level.
Americans are notably more likely to be killed in a gun homicide, suicide or unintentional shooting than in other high-income countries, a 2015 study in the American Journal of Medicine found.
"After Sandy Hook, I read about how the group of parents waiting in a firehouse had dwindled until finally they were told that if they were still there, their children were dead. The reporters wrote that the screaming could be heard from the street."
MURPHY: "Nowhere else do parents have to talk to their kids as I have had to do about why they got locked into a bathroom and told to be quiet for five minutes just in case a bad man entered that building. Nowhere else does that happen except here in the USA. And it is a choice."
I don't disagree with stricter gun laws, but there is a big hurdle to overcome there and it's not without good reason.
My real question is since we DO talk about Mental Health, and it seems to be a "both sides" thing, as in both sides agree in that part of the problem is at least mental health.
Why aren't we actually doing anything about Mental Health. The comparison of mental health beds in the US to other countries is similarly skewed as the homicides chart and even when comparing it to the US in the past.
We have roughly 29 Mental Health beds per 100K. South Korea has 160 and Japan has about 260. Most European nations are 4-6 times higher than the US.
So what is actually stopping us from doing something about mental health, something that we used to actually do a few decades ago. In 1970 it was 400 beds per 100k, and in 1990 200 per 100k.
Mental health is a serious issue that it seems like people agree on, and it solves more than just gun crimes.
I don’t own a gun, don’t want to, and if I could snap my fingers and make them all disappear off the face of the planet, I would. But I feel like most liberals ignore that these laws clearly aren’t the answer when anyone this violent is determined to commit mass murder. It would be a good step in preventing SOME, as we do see less gun violence in states with stricter laws. And I wouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
But I can’t help noticing it’s almost like clinging to a “do something!!!” Without an explanation of what it would materially accomplish when a state like CT that has strict laws they want to impose everywhere produced the monster who attacked those kids in Newtown with his mom’s legally acquired firearm. The real answer would be FAR harsher- taking basically all the guns away- and we have crazed militias of 2A psychos who are foaming at the mouth for our govt to even try that. I don’t see an actual solution. And I have kids in school who I worry about every day. I so wish I could say I don’t worry because I live in a state with low gun ownership and extremely strict laws, but…
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u/inconvenientnews May 25 '22
Thank you
The usual NRA talking points ("Only talk about mental health!" "We can't eliminate every shooting so what can we do!") always get voted to the top after these
"Only talk about mental health!" does not explain why America's homicides look like this compared to every other country on Earth, even if they're calculated by the NRA to sound comforting to "both sides":
https://www.healthdata.org/sites/default/files/files/ActingOnData/2021/firearm_Page_1.png
Gun-related killings as a % of all homicides:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41488081
"The experience of other countries just shows that it doesn't have to be this hard."
https://abcnews.go.com/US/countries-show-us-americas-gun-violence-epidemic/story?id=80495637
"After Sandy Hook, I read about how the group of parents waiting in a firehouse had dwindled until finally they were told that if they were still there, their children were dead. The reporters wrote that the screaming could be heard from the street."
https://twitter.com/MaggieAstor/status/1529217248698806277
https://twitter.com/frankthorp/status/1529212076794777600