Depending on where you are, and if you have flags in the ATF it is difficult to purchase a firearm, here it's a 10 minute sheet to fill out, and the wait from the background check depends on volume at the ATF, minutes, hours, longest was 2 weeks. Not many people carry guns on a regular. That would be open or concealed carry, less people are licensed to concealed carry than do, as ironically being licensed to carry puts more burdens on you if you have to use a weapon in self defense. I took the course and asked my lawyer about that before getting the license. Turns out the license isn't such a hot idea.
More people buy guns, toss them under their bed and leave them there, or have them stolen. Ironically, if access to weapons was harder to get, the group of people that would suffer the most would be women. Men can still attack other men, and women without a gun, though the odds of success aren't as great. Your chances if you are attacked without a gun (on you), not so great unless you're an outlier that boxes on a regular or something. You can build up a resistance to pepper spray (which many EU countries made illegal) not to bullets though.
It's why mass shootings overwhelmingly happen in gun free zones. Why there's a designation between hard and soft targets. Mass shootings get a lot of attention, but crime in general is just terrible here. Not just gun violence, I believe the knock-out game is still going around, we've hit a record low in the price of fentanyl, but a record high in the amount we import. Every major city in the US has hit it's murder rate for last year already at this point. Finding statistics for aggravated burglary, battery, assault, etc. are getting harder, because they have skyrocketed so high.
People are fleeing major cities across America if they can because of those issues. You're only still in one if you're wealthy enough not to be bothered, or too poor to be able to leave. I guess some people are in LA and NYC because they just love it there, but how many of them would stay if they could move to the suburbs or lower crime area?
Your graphic is wrong, there have been UK guns deaths since 2009, we had an Incel murder a family and 3 yr old girl in 2021.
The Americans view it as a right to own a weapon, it’s a bit crazy some of the reasoning when applied to modern society and numbers of people voting for each party.
For example, on overthrowing an elected government, this means one side will support the elected government and the other side will not.
@jamesgoldman Not much higher; Cumbria is the only mass shooting that would have made it on to the US mass shootings list on Wikipedia (10 deaths or more, not including the shooter, 20 since 2000); a more moderate definition (which probably still wouldn't have included Moat) shows the US has seen 212 mass shootings in the last 145 days.
True but terrorism would be interesting to measure because we'd have the Manchester arena bombing, 7/7 and varied London attacks Norway had Brevik and France had charlie hebdo, the bataclan and umpteen smaller incidents
@jamesgoldman The Buffalo attack was terrorism, based on racist beliefs about the mythical Great Replacement.
7/7 resulted in 56 deaths and 784 injuries, The Las Vegas shooting alone was 61 deaths and 867 injured (411 by gunfire). The former at least had some kind of justification, no matter how misguided.
As an outsiders I've made a few observations on Americans and how they compare with other nations. They're obsessed with the American revolution and think they have to be ready. The fact this happen hundreds of years ago. Britain has been involved in umpteen other wars closer to home. We don't feel the need to be armed incase the French invade or there's another Spanish Amarda. Americans have delusions of a tyrannical bogeyman coming to get them.
They are overly influenced by Hollywood. There's countless movies based on the hero saving the day using a gun. Hollywood has taught Americans guns are good and let you be a hero. Look at the plot of every Western, someone's causing you a problem? Just shoot them. The American mind has been conditioned to think there's going to be a shoot our at any second. Terrorists delaying your flight at the airport, bet you wishes you hadn't left that gun at home now.
Everyone else has a gun therefore I need one. In the UK if you get in a minor argument usually people throw insults then storm off in a huff. But in America there's a real chance that little old lady is going to blow your brains out over the last roll of toilet paper in the shop because that's what John Wayne would have done. Guns give you power, the weak can dominate the strong simply by pointing a gun and no one wants to be humiliated.
I'm a gun owner and I do not carry a weapon on me when I go out anywhere even though, in my state, as a woman I can easily obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon, I choose not to. My firearm is kept in a safe with a combination code lock and this is for protection of my home (I live alone) and in my area there's a major increase in follow home robberies and home invasions. You can judge me all you like, but I have to have a means of protection in case some nut breaks into my house and tries to either brutally rape or kill me, or Rob me. I highly doubt that most Americans are obsessed with carrying guns because there's not many where I live that are walking around wearing gun holsters and packing steel, maybe you have been watching too many American action films because most Americans who commit acts of violence on each do it in other ways like physically attacking each other, using cars to run each other down during high speed chases from the police or stabbings. You mostly hear about these kinds of attacks on the news and the shootings that are reported are usually told that the firearms used are obtained illegally by the perpetrators or gang related drive by shootings.
At the most basic level, the American emphasis on gun rights is rooted in the nation's history. This then being given further impetus by recent events and a general suspicion of government that is endemic to the culture.
Unlike the nations of Europe, the United States began at the edge of a frontier where the writ of the government was tenuous at best and where enforcement of the law was episodic. As the nation spread west, the government and the law were often not able to protect its citizens and so an ethic of self-reliance was born that included an ethic of self-defense.
The law could not be there and so the citizen had to protect himself and his community and so the need for guns was, in effect, tapped into the broader culture. This given further reinforcement and a legal context by the addition of the Second Amendment to the Constitution affirming the right to bear arms.
To this was added an ethos of distrust of government. Americans had rebelled against British authority and government, in that rebellion, was seen not as a protector of the rights of the citizen, but as a threat to him. So the armed citizen came to be seen as an insurance policy against an overweening state.
To be sure, in many ways, this ethic has become antiquated. The claim in that the government has become too dangerous and a threat to freedom. This ignores the fact that the American government is so weak that it cannot even ask citizens for the tax revenue to balance its budget.
However, in its own way, even this weakness has become a basis on which to assert a right to bear arms. When the riots broke out in Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington and several other American cities in 2021, the governments of those cities shrugged. They claimed the riots were "largely peaceful protests" and they left the citizen to fend for him or herself.
Suffice to say, no people will leave themselves dependent on so unreliable a guardian. Thus the case was made for a right to bear arms not on the basis of the dangers to freedom posed by a government that is too strong, but rather one that is too weak to keep the peace.
It has been said that Americans prefer the tyranny of the streets to the tyranny of the government. Thus while episodes like the recent mass shootings cause controversy and a debate over where the lines ought be drawn, most of American society begins on the premise that come what may, the right to bear arms is necessary and not to be easily dispensed with.
It's really interesting to see how the Americans have built themselves in relation to their states, in relation to Europe and in relation to the state that I know best, France.
In France we see the state as the only guarantor of our security, while for historical reasons the US has built itself in the opposite way.
In any case, thank you for these clear explanations.
There is some truth in what you say, though I would argue that Europe has not been without its' moments where the state was seen as the enemy. See also the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, etc.
Indeed, even now, in some respects the European Union is seen as a protection against the state. Although by the method of placing something above the state and transcendent to it.
Overall, though, your observation is correct. The difference being that America arose on the edge of a continent where the threats were largely natural or at least posed by small groups and the writ of the state was limited and therefore self-reliance a necessity. By contrast, the states of Europe arose on a densely populated continent were the threats were from other groups of armed populations. Thus the state became the source of one's security.
That, in very general terms, is the genesis of the difference.
Indeed you are right, your observation is correct. But see the irony of the French revolution, it gave a state even more centralized and with more power than the Monarchy had.
Yes, but in the context of the wider European situation - again, densely populated with threats posed by rival peoples who are themselves well organized - the outcome of the French revolution is not surprising. Broadly speaking, the revolution conduced to an outcome the parameters of which were defined in the larger cultural setting.
Put the French revolution on the American frontier, and you would be apt to get a very different outcome. Not assured, of course, but a reasonable surmise.
The problem is our school's lack of response to bullying and our system of mental health care.
At the moment, the leftist wackos want to defund the police and have social workers come talk to a criminal if they break into your house. Self-defense is becoming more important in our society, not less important.
Yes, most of us deplore the violence in our schools but those who advocate for taking guns from law abiding citizens fail to account for how such restrictions would not impede people who are hell-bent on breaking the law in the most egregious ways.
I think it's a form of trolling. They know people want some semblance of gun control, so they make some overt peacocking gesture and call it the "American thing" because they are more interested in annoying those they hate than in the rights themselves.
My grandparents and their siblings all owned guns. Grandpa kept his in the basement by the back door. Lifelong Republican, too. He basically said he wouldn't open-carry his shotgun because "why would I need to do that? Do I plan on shooting something on the way to the grocery? If it ain't that, it ain't worth going out there lookin like some jackass trying to rob the place. Gun stays in the truck."
I think about that when I see the family pictures with parents and kids all holding assault rifles with a waving American flag in the background. My grandpa kept an American flag out front he got after fighting in Korea. Treated it according to code. No walls plastered with it, or stars'n'stripes underwear.
So he was my model for conservatism. When I started seeing these other people I had no idea wtf I was looking at.
1
0 Reply
Anonymous
(45 Plus)
1 y
Here is the bill of rights just in case some have never actually read it.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government … Quoted from I suggest a good reading of this link
IT might be because the founding fathers saw just how important it is to keep government in check. History, especially the founding of this country proves their concern was based in experience. Also it was based on the 1689 England bill The right to bare arms, provide for the common defense, protect general welfare and ensure domestic tranquility. Second amendment as generally stated: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
So this right to bare arms is a vital check to corruption in the Government.
I don't own a gun. But I am in no way going to say they should not be owned. My opinion on the matter is mute beyond my person. I also feel gun safety should be taught in high school along with Driver's safety. Cars kill more people than guns by far so I see why thats important. But its not a constitutional right beyond freedom to move about in one's own country.
So the rest of you don't have to. The US is not a European country, in either geography or politics, but we come from the same roots (well, mostly), and we're still the frontier you stopped being some time ago.
The root of our mass shooting problem isn't guns; as the Boston marathon bombers showed, we're more than clever enough to turn to other weapons if the need arises. Remember that Afghanistan and Switzerland are both FAR better armed than we are; how often do THEY have these problems?
They make weak and insecure white men feel like they can be physically intimidating if they have to be. Unfortunately, the world we live in today has little use for physical intimidation and so when those insecure men get intellectually intimidated, they still try to pull guns. And because they live much of their formative years believing they will always have that fallback they dont bother going through all the immense work of becoming intellectually or physically intimidating without guns, which makes them rely on guns all the more once their formative years are over.
There are so many false flag operations by the USA. Most countries have false flags but the USA is extreme. Such event used to happen twice in a century. Now they are happening every month; more than 100 times as often. No intelligent and logical person believes people are that different from the past. Therefore, the only explanation is they are false flag operations by powerful people in favor of gun control. That is most likely, people high in the government that wish to disarm to disarm the public. Also, the government controls the investigations to make certain that the truth about the false flag is never revealed.
I copied this verbatim from another person's post. It makes sense to me. However, please don't ask me to explain. Instead, ask the person I copied it from but he probably knows a lot more about it then I do.
Very simple. Addiction to power. Guns give power to otherwise weak or average people. I can imagine that after getting a taste of that, they’d feel naked without it. The other big problem is that people wrongly believe they’re entitled to survival, and we simply aren’t. But that’s a scary concept to wrap one’s head around, so people will do whatever mental gymnastics are necessary to convince themselves and others that they ARE entitled to survival, and then subsequently argue guns to be a necessary tool for this false-entitlement.
Has anyone ever died as a result of injuries sustained from a motor vehicle in your country? Naturally you’ll be surrendering your vehicle or transit pass to the nearest authority, right? Has anyone ever been stabbed in your country? You’ll be surrendering your kitchen tools along with your access to freedom of movement, right? Ditto for your home maintenance and garden tools because one of them was used in violence at some point by someone far away from you. What amount of government confiscation of private property is enough confiscation for you? You mentioned in your question less you’re aware that this is a tiny number of people issue. In what way does punishing the innocent harm the guilty? That’s like quarantining the healthy in its unreflective nonsensical departure from the reality of the situation.
People are so angry they don’t think clearly when figuring out long term solutions for a serious problem, they just go off of feelings.
1st of all, banning guns will not solve the issue. Just because you turn off the faucet doesn’t mean the town is now flood proof. In order to solve the problem you must have better security, not some mall cop, a real cop. Dedicated security team that watch security cameras, suspicious activity, and other services the school needs concerning security. all schools should have a number of licensed therapist with open door policy for ages of elementary and higher. Figure some kind of system to get kids who have issues talking to someone. Being a teen now-n-days is way tougher then it use to be.
Law abiding Americans have firearms for two reasons. *Self defense from attack and home invasion. *Concern that a rogue government (we definitely have one now) will arbitrarily deny law abiding Americans our Constitutional rights. *Madison (I think) made clear in the Federalist Papers that the purpose of the Second Amendment was that second concern.
A problem I think exists is that gun owners are careless in hiding or securing their weapons and burglars and children are very creative in finding them. It appears that the 18 year old shooter had a hunting rifle and a handgun. I doubt he bought them, but we will soon know. I think the crazies out there are inspired by the lawlessness and political unrest in this country. I think they also are by violent video games.
1. In the USA when a school is closed, no kids are there, or it is a weekend and someone in front of the school shoots somebody, they count it as a "school shooting." So the reported numbers are very misleading.
2. It is a constitutional right to protect us from OUR OWN government.
3. Criminals don't care about gun control laws. They just make it easier for criminals and increase the chance of violent crime. The areas of the USA with the strictest gun control laws also have the highest violent crime rates.
The US Bill of Rights was written as a limiting document for government powers. It was literally about powers that they could not legislate. So at its inception the US government limited its ability to legilate weapons.
This was intentionally created because the founders had just came out of a protracted war with their own government and intended to use an armed population as a Sword of Damocles to prevent government excess.
So it creates a very delicate situation, if the government attempts to overreach it very well may trigger the revolution that was implied in the limiting document.
To understand US governmental structure is to understand that it was designed as a series of checks and balances to prevent tyranny. That armed population is the final check built into the system. A fail-safe if you will.
"School shootings" is an arbitrary crime metric. Much more useful to just use "murder rate per capita."
Anyway, it's too late to save America. Everything about our society is incoherent, not just the gun issue. We're going to have to fight a series of civil wars to finally put the "rights" nonsense to bed. Hopefully the rest of the Western world can learn from our example and abandon this "individual rights" insanity before it destroys their own countries.
Murder rate per capita is pretty much the same story, only without small children having to be identified using DNA. I suspect you're confusing rights to be treated decently to rights to kill people.
America is devolving into a 3rd world country. We actually have pretty came crime rates given our demographics, and the murder rates in firmly white states & counties is actually better than Europe on average.
I suspect you are now injecting the ukropium directly into your arms lol
There are only two states with murder rates lower than Canada's, Maine and New Hampshire, and only New Hampshire beats France and the UK in this list, and they're both multi-racial countries. You're just making shit up.
So what? If you make illegal top have a gun, the criminals are still gonna get them!! They can actually make their own on a 3D printer, now!! The only thing making them illegal is going to do is allow government walk ALL OVER YOU!! You have NO way to protect yourself from them, anymore so, we become a dictatorship over night!! Why do you think they keep trying to trick you into giving them up by having fake shootings. Us having guns to stop their tyranny is the ONLY reason they haven't done more to us!! What part of the 2nd Amendment don't you get? And, if you're GONNA post statistics, DON'T waste your time gathering them from CNN!! Use a REPUTABLE source!! Someone that's NOT in the pockets of the tyrannical government!!
well because once you have a strong weapons lobby, it's pretty much to get rid of it. it's very much comparable to prohibition. there are lots of muslim countries where alcohol was always illegal and that was never a big deal.
but try taking a right that a society had for the longest time, and that society will stand up and fight. maybe not even because of that particular right. but if you easily allow one right to be taken away from you by a government, that's a very slippery slope to more rights being taken.
I'm happy that you recognize the millions of US citizens who own guns for self-protection, competition or hunting. The problem is with the creeping socialism trying to take over the United States, making it harder and harder for law-abiding citizens to purchase a shotgun, pistol or rifle.
As you correctly noted, " . . . because a madman can get a firearm and shoot. . ." , the government can make dozens, hundreds, even thousands of laws restricting guns (and they have), yet, the "madman/madwoman" will ALWAYS find a way to get a gun.
The killing-minded people will always be able to get their hands on a gun, and in what situation does that leave the law-abiding gun-users?
Because we know that without guns, you're a sitting duck for Government Tyranny.
History proves this shiit over and over again. I'm surprised that other countries BLINDLY trust their government so much, when we now have all history at our fingertips, that exposes thousands upon thousands of years of Governments, Tyrants, Dictators, Mad Scientists, Religious Leaders, etc.. who fuucked the people every which way to Sunday. Psychopaths are naturally drawn to positions of power. Anyone who trusts Government in the 21st Century, cannot be helped!
0
0 Reply
Anonymous
(25-29)
1 y
America is the only country in the world with a constitutional right to weapons. You can move to any other country you want that bans them. It won’t stop people from shooting you. Robbing you. Running you over with a car. Getting your head cut off by Muslim extremists or exploded. There is still mass murder and rape. People still have guns illegally. Just look online you will see a stabbing or assassination everyday. What about drunk driving? Kills way more people in the world than weapons currently.
I notice you put in "in the world", there. That would be because in 2020 there were 19,384 firearm murders (plus nearly 25,000 suicides), compared to 11,654 people who died in alcohol-impaired driving traffic deaths (many of which will have been the drunk).
@goaded those firearm murders are mainly domestic violence or gang related crimes in poor neighborhoods. Not school shootings. by the way, those suicide rates are insane. I wonder if covid lockdowns had anything to do with it.
So what if they're "domestic violence or gang related crimes"? There are still twice as many as drunk driving deaths. And, yes, the suicide rates are terrible, but spending money to alleviate them won't get a single Republican vote. When was the last time a Republican voted to help normal people? Fuel price gouging? Nope. Baby formula? Nope.
I don’t have a problem with the gun culture we Americans have even though I myself am not much into guns. I think it is a little to easy for people to buy guns. There should probably be some kind of psychological test with a lie detector.
I went with a friend once to a gunshow where gun owners and buyers can trade, all I needed to get in was my driver ID, anyone with an ID and enough money could buy a semi automatic machine gun.
