The Dread Pirate Roberts"We can't do anything about guns, it's too deeply ingrained in American culture." — Someone currently in a building where they're not allowed to smoke.
4somecurious
@westly well, for smoking they had to prove the impact on health, and that was hard due to lobbying. Given the money behind the military-industrial complex, it could take decades before they prove that guns can actually kill
CarlRJ@4somecurious @westly NRA-backed congress members have long kept government-funded agencies from studying the impact of guns on health, to make sure they can’t come up with any damning evidence. Can’t have anything getting in the way of gun manufacturers’ profits.
@carlrj @westly I mean, it's clear that guns have many positive uses besides killing and threatening to kill, and also we should not underestimate the cultural depth and richness associated with them, and how they are used to further promote culture. But still, I think that IF there is a serious possibility that killing people may harm their health, at least some research is needed. Maybe I am overreacting (I also am not an expert of fire weapons, so it's probably my ignorance speaking).
@4somecurious @westly it’s not so much “do guns kill people?”, it’s more like, “what are the scenarios in which people are dying by gunshot, and what patterns are there that we might change in order to save lives”.
Same thing happened with cigarettes - it wasn’t just “is smoking bad for you”, it was “what can we do to reduce the harm caused by cigarettes - what actual changes would have the most benefit?”
Funding to do the same kind of research for guns is always completely blocked by the GOP.
@carlrj @westly ok, I 'll be less subtle: I think that it's insane that common people that are not trained law enforcement officials can carry a gun outside their private home (I have strong doubts it makes sense also for the home, but it is a more complex debate). Do you really need research and funding to say that guns are either useless or used to kill? My take is you (and us, for other reason) are hostages of a dysfunctional system of government deeply rooted in capitalism, to the point that people is blind to even obvious solutions.
@4somecurious @westly at the risk of repeating myself, I thought I made it very clear, several times that, no, we don’t need research to show that guns kill people. The research would be to show from a public health standpoint, how guns compare to the other risks in modern society and come up with solutions.
I get that you’d like to round them all up tomorrow. Would you like a detailed explanation of the ways in which that’s unrealistic? It doesn’t matter if it’s a great idea, it won’t happen.