BeepOptical illusion
VictorHold up. The US has over 100 guns per 100 people? š³ So on average, everyone owns at least one gun?
Itās that the people who own guns tend to own gunnnsssss. Like an entire arsenal. Most people donāt own any.
Around 40% in the USA own at least one firearm. Itās probably higher now since trump is back in power.
That is higher than I thought, but still not most.
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 itās police (on average 1k a year) then itās the rest. Meaning that around 4k deaths a year are from literally everything else (domestic/robberies/random acts). We donāt 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 of you removed all the guns, youād still have the same proportion of homicide with knives instead.
And I donāt 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?
insurrectionsince you can't prove a counterfactual, we will never know
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
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 donāt point to Australiaās 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? Yeaā¦you do realize that around 4k people a year are murdered with knives/blunt objects right? Itās right up there with the number of murders with guns that donāt include gangs or police. End of the day, violence happens because our society is broken, not because of a tool thatās accessible.
Itās right up there with the number of murders with guns that donāt include gangs or police.
Why are you excluding murders by gangs and police? I donāt see how thatās fair or logical.
Gangs are targeted violence towards other gangs. It doesnāt 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 donāt usually think of when it comes to gun deaths.
Statistically you account for what the public perception is, but most anti-gun groups donāt. They lump everything together, which isnāt how you solve problems, itās 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.
Itās the same with the abortion debate, anti-abortion groups donāt 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 isnāt true.
Nuance to problems is how you solve them, not ignoring the details.