Do remember that we have no registry, which means that number is self reported and it’s just a educated guess. Myself and many others buy private sales. I’ve never purchased from a FFL or online. Everything I own is purchased from private owners in my state. I don’t fall into that 40%. With trump in power, many new owners are buying locally as well and many on the left are now armed.
Some of us put ownership around 50% at this point.
Think of it this way. The majority of our gun deaths are from suicides, then the next largest amount is from gang/drug violence, after that it’s police (on average 1k a year) then it’s the rest. Meaning that around 4k deaths a year are from literally everything else (domestic/robberies/random acts). We don’t really have a gun problem, we have an issue with our society. 99.99999999% of all firearms in civ hands have never been used to harm another person.
Poverty creates the violence, lack of education, lack of social support, lack of opportunities, lack of healthcare. If we fixed those things, our guns violence would plummet overnight. But the owners of this country would rather have us fighting each other than them.
With this logic, saying poverty is what creates the violence, and that the existence of the guns have nothing to do with it, should mean that if you removed all the guns, you’d still have the same proportion of homicide with knives instead, or some other weapon.
And I don’t think that would be the case.
Poverty necessitates the violence, I agree. But the availability of guns makes the violence accessible.
Brazil and Mexico both have some of the strictest gun laws in the world. Basically civs are banned from owning firearms, but their homicide rates are 10 fold ours. A lot of countries in Africa are the same way.
The guns are just the tool used. You solve the why and overall violence will plummet.
Gun laws are probably not going to matter if the guns are still available. You gotta get rid of the guns as well. And also the poverty of course.
Which will never happen, there are like 500 million guns in civ hands now. That box is open and will never be closed. And please don’t point to Australia’s buyback because only 60% turned in their firearms which at the time were only around 1mil in civ hands, which are now around 3mil in civilian hands. So they have more guns owned by more people since the ban/buyback.
But would you oppose my knife argument? Say there are no guns. Ever. Anywhere. What would happen in the streets? Would there be as much killing?
Same conditions we have now? Yea…you do realize that around 4k people a year are murdered with knives/blunt objects right? It’s right up there with the number of murders with guns that don’t include gangs or police. End of the day, violence happens because our society is broken, not because of a tool that’s accessible.
Gangs are targeted violence towards other gangs. It doesn’t really effect the public, most people think of gun violence as random acts done by people. Gang violence is something that is spawned again from our lack of safety nets and lack of education.
Police killing people is also something that people don’t usually think of when it comes to gun deaths.
Statistically you account for what the public perception is, but most anti-gun groups don’t. They lump everything together, which isn’t how you solve problems, it’s how you create a narrative that the US is the wild west with people getting murdered in the streets while crossing the road every minute of the day.
It’s the same with the abortion debate, anti-abortion groups don’t like to see the nuance, they just want to paint a picture that an abortion at 2 weeks is the same as a 3rd trimester abortion. Which isn’t true.
Nuance to problems is how you solve them, not ignoring the details.
you can’t know what would happen in a world where there were never guns. I’m not asking for anything. I’m pointing out we can’t possibly know what such a world would look like
That is higher than I thought, but still not most.
Do remember that we have no registry, which means that number is self reported and it’s just a educated guess. Myself and many others buy private sales. I’ve never purchased from a FFL or online. Everything I own is purchased from private owners in my state. I don’t fall into that 40%. With trump in power, many new owners are buying locally as well and many on the left are now armed.
Some of us put ownership around 50% at this point.
Still an insane amount 😐
Think of it this way. The majority of our gun deaths are from suicides, then the next largest amount is from gang/drug violence, after that it’s police (on average 1k a year) then it’s the rest. Meaning that around 4k deaths a year are from literally everything else (domestic/robberies/random acts). We don’t really have a gun problem, we have an issue with our society. 99.99999999% of all firearms in civ hands have never been used to harm another person.
Poverty creates the violence, lack of education, lack of social support, lack of opportunities, lack of healthcare. If we fixed those things, our guns violence would plummet overnight. But the owners of this country would rather have us fighting each other than them.
With this logic, saying poverty is what creates the violence, and that the existence of the guns have nothing to do with it, should mean that if you removed all the guns, you’d still have the same proportion of homicide with knives instead, or some other weapon.
And I don’t think that would be the case.
Poverty necessitates the violence, I agree. But the availability of guns makes the violence accessible.
Both are problems.
Brazil and Mexico both have some of the strictest gun laws in the world. Basically civs are banned from owning firearms, but their homicide rates are 10 fold ours. A lot of countries in Africa are the same way.
The guns are just the tool used. You solve the why and overall violence will plummet.
Gun laws are probably not going to matter if the guns are still available. You gotta get rid of the guns as well. And also the poverty of course.
But would you oppose my knife argument? Say there are no guns. Ever. Anywhere. What would happen in the streets? Would there be as much killing?
Which will never happen, there are like 500 million guns in civ hands now. That box is open and will never be closed. And please don’t point to Australia’s buyback because only 60% turned in their firearms which at the time were only around 1mil in civ hands, which are now around 3mil in civilian hands. So they have more guns owned by more people since the ban/buyback.
Same conditions we have now? Yea…you do realize that around 4k people a year are murdered with knives/blunt objects right? It’s right up there with the number of murders with guns that don’t include gangs or police. End of the day, violence happens because our society is broken, not because of a tool that’s accessible.
Why are you excluding murders by gangs and police? I don’t see how that’s fair or logical.
Gangs are targeted violence towards other gangs. It doesn’t really effect the public, most people think of gun violence as random acts done by people. Gang violence is something that is spawned again from our lack of safety nets and lack of education.
Police killing people is also something that people don’t usually think of when it comes to gun deaths.
Statistically you account for what the public perception is, but most anti-gun groups don’t. They lump everything together, which isn’t how you solve problems, it’s how you create a narrative that the US is the wild west with people getting murdered in the streets while crossing the road every minute of the day.
It’s the same with the abortion debate, anti-abortion groups don’t like to see the nuance, they just want to paint a picture that an abortion at 2 weeks is the same as a 3rd trimester abortion. Which isn’t true.
Nuance to problems is how you solve them, not ignoring the details.
since you can’t prove a counterfactual, we will never know
I’m not sure what you mean by that. What do you want me to provide, exactly?
you can’t know what would happen in a world where there were never guns. I’m not asking for anything. I’m pointing out we can’t possibly know what such a world would look like