BeepOptical illusion
VictorHold up. The US has over 100 guns per 100 people? đł So on average, everyone owns at least one gun?
Itâs that the people who own guns tend to own gunnnsssss. Like an entire arsenal. Most people donât own any.
Around 40% in the USA own at least one firearm. Itâs 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 itâs police (on average 1k a year) then itâs the rest. Meaning that around 4k deaths a year are from literally everything else (domestic/robberies/random acts). We donât 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, youâd still have the same proportion of homicide with knives instead.
And I donât 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?
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 donât point to Australiaâs 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? YeaâŚyou do realize that around 4k people a year are murdered with knives/blunt objects right? Itâs right up there with the number of murders with guns that donât include gangs or police. End of the day, violence happens because our society is broken, not because of a tool thatâs accessible.
Gangs are targeted violence towards other gangs. It doesnât 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 donât usually think of when it comes to gun deaths.
Statistically you account for what the public perception is, but most anti-gun groups donât. They lump everything together, which isnât how you solve problems, itâs 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.
Itâs the same with the abortion debate, anti-abortion groups donât 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 isnât true.
Nuance to problems is how you solve them, not ignoring the details.
The more I think about it the less sense it makes to me to exclude gang violence. Iâm not able to grasp why it should be excluded. Gang members perpetrating violence are also people, are also members of society, and are also a product of poverty and their environment, just like non-gang members involved in gun violence. They might be driven by different factors but itâs still gun violence. I donât get it.
The more I think about it the less sense it makes to me to exclude gang violence. Iâm not able to grasp why it should be excluded. Gang members perpetrating violence are also people, are also members of society, and are also a product of poverty and their environment, just like non-gang members involved in gun violence. They might be driven by different factors but itâs still gun violence. I donât get it.
Because like I said, gang violence is not a random act of violence. It doesnât effect 99.999999999999999% of the public. They donât and probably will never be effected by it. Itâs its own category to be viewed and solved. Ending the war on drugs, ending for profit prison systems, increase in funding of education, creating safety nets, and helping those with drug addiction. These are things the general public really donât run into (education and single payer healthcare are the only two that they do). Youâre average person is not going to go in jail multiple times, theyâre not going to sling drugs and be in a gang. Yes members of gangs are the public, but they are a different side of the gun violence and need a different approach.
It might not make sense for nuanceâs sake to âlump it all togetherâ, but it doesnât make sense to me to completely exclude it either.
Iâm not excluding it though, Iâm calling out the nuances of our gun violence problem, and how anti2a groups lump it all together to scare the public into seeing a picture that truly doesnât exist.
Suicide is a good example of this, they claim that youâre more likely to get killed in your own home if you own a firearm than if you donât. Thatâs true, only if you include suicides, which make up 66%+ of our gun deaths. Which doesnât paint the picture theyâre trying to convey when you point out that their âfactâ includes people killing themselves 99.9999999% of that fact. People donât hear that, they hear âif you have a gun in your home, youâre more likely to be killed by someone breaking in and taking the gun and turning it on youâ. Because thatâs what they want people to think.