Obviously nothing can be done to change this. There is zero things the government can do to stop gun violence. It must just be an inherent part of life
According to the Gun Violence Archive, 21,782 Americans have been killed in shootings halfway through 2023.
I know that's not 100% mass shootings, but that's still a stunningly bleak number. Rounding up from the .97 that's five human lives every hour of 2023 up to July.
Those numbers are intentionally misleading, they are using people that killed themselves to prop up the numbers. It's disgusting.
Explain why they don’t count as gun deaths please.
Suicide is not what first comes to mind when someone talks about gun violence or shootings. Nobody said they don't count - just that it's misleading.
It isn’t misleading at all. A gun death is a gun death to anyone who doesn’t have a bias.
It's just many of those deaths probably would have occurred anyways wether there is a gun ban or not.
There are lots of ways to commit suicide, guns are just convenient. Now some of those deaths probably wouldn't have happened because they may be spur of the moment decisions in a dark period, but many still would have.
Not like the deaths of children who find their parents gun in the closet or the deaths of 5+ people in a grocery store with an automatic weapon.
While it's true that some of the people that kill themselves with a gun would find other ways, the majority wouldn't. MOST suicides are spur of the moment, and having quick access to a deadly weapon makes those attempts far more successful. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/06/handgun-ownership-associated-with-much-higher-suicide-risk.html
Bias? The point is that you're not as likely to just be randomly shot at the street as those statistics might make it to seem.
For me, it’s not about fear it’s about empathy. Seeing that number I didn’t think “oh no I’m going to get shot.” I thought, “that’s a lot of lives lost and families and friends impacted for the rest of their lives. A lot of permanent loss for the country. How can we have a meaningful impact that number?”
Yeah no I 100% agree that those numbers are insane and if it was my country I'd definitely want something done about it.
It's just that these statistics are often pulled out when talking about mass shootings for example and in that context including suicides and gang violence is a bit misleading in my opinion especially when the "true" numbers are just as horrific on their own.
I think in the US a lot of murders probably get classified as suicides, accidents, and self defense to avoid launching an expensive, dangerous investigation, so I would also say that suicides are overreported.
Is there any evidence to support this, or is it just what you think?
Proof? no, if there were proof our data would simply have to be better than it is. Are there a lot of statistical and geographical tendencies working against this data that are easily pointed out, yes.
The biggest ones: suicides usually occur in places where the body will be discovered and people who commit suicide tend to want to be found.
Homocides tend to be covered up more often or occur in more remote locations; lots of unsolved homocides end up as missing persons, especially in less dense areas. A few are staged as suicides or accidents.
So there's absolutely a tendency for the data to skew in certain directions. This isn't even addressing more chaotic problems liks a lack a lack of qualified coroners, incentives to not charge police who just riddle people with bullets, etc.
To be clear I can't stand the carnage and think it's one of the country's biggest faults. That being said, I'm not sure how what you've presented shows suicides as over reported. Suicide in a place likely to be found results in more accurate counting of suicide not extra deaths counted as suicide. Homicides being counted as missing persons doesn't over count suicide, it under counts homicide. Police shootings actually likely under count suicide since no police shooting is going to be labeled "suicide by cop". The qualified coroner thing is actually pretty crazy and a lot of places require little or no actual pathology knowledge, so who knows.
All this to say when we boil these tragedies down to numbers, when the discussion is assault weapons bans, suicides probably don't belong in the discussion. Disproportionally few suicides are committed with guns targeted by assault weapons bans. That doesn't remove suicide from the gun deaths discussion at all. If I might offer an unsubstantiated opinion of my own, I believe suicidal people are probably more likely to benefit from mental health intervention than the serial killers who are mass shooters. (Which is the only acceptable solution to the right, not that they're willing to pay for it.) Those a-hole attention whores ARE increasingly using guns that would likely be targeted in an AWB, and they're doing it because it helps grab the headline and gets the president to talk about how terrible what you did was. In the meanwhile this is going to remain political fodder for politicians and cannon fodder for the rest of us.
Gun deaths aren’t the number that’s important. Homicides are
If one of my family or friends shot themself or was shot due to the negligence of a "responsible gun owner", I would consider that important.
Accidents are different than intentional suicide.
Does it matter that Kurt contain shot himself in the head any more than layne Staley OD’d on heroin? No, it doesn’t.
Take the shotgun away and contain would just find another way to kill himself
And those shouldn't count? Do you have any idea how much easy access to guns increases suicides? Many, many suicidal people would still be alive without the easy access to guns in the US. It's one of the easiest and painless ways to kill yourself.
Things like suicide are far more related to a lack mental healthcare and the stigma around getting help than weather or not people are allowed to own firearms. Not everyone has those kinds of problems. An assault weapons ban is certainly unrelated to those seeking self-harm and most crime.
a gun makes it incredibly easy to end someone, including yourself. It takes the killing out of killing and I can promise you that makes a massive difference to the number of both killings and suicides.
So we ban pain killers too? Cleaning chemicals? Rat poison?
The gun didn't make you kill yourself. Not getting help killed you. Stop chasing the guns, they aren't the the problem. The problem is that so many people see them as a solution and they need help.
try to travel a bit, see the world.
I am so tired of seeing this braindead take being used as any sort of "gotcha".
How much of that is suicide?
Is there an acceptable figure?
Try the other way around: how much gun control would impact in the total suicide number?
This article is about assault weapon bans, which are not exactly the go-to for suicide.
This is the sad reality. Gun violence is generally committed by sick people. Similarly, I saw this chart a few years back on Australian gun/knife violence. The plots are mirrored. Violence is sort of static.
It's much more likely to survive a stabbing than to survive a shooting.
That's the price we pay for freedom.
/s
It's bad, but after watching over a million Americans die of COVID while (seemingly) half or more of the country refused to take - or often even acknowledge - the most basic of preventative measures... Well, I just don't know any longer.
Shootings are far less deadly, and that's a much more murky subject as there are plenty of justifiable reasons to own a gun. You also have to wonder how many deaths are Darwin Awards, or justified self defense... It's just an incredibly complicated subject compared to "hey guys, let's wear masks."
Here's an idea: all new guns must only be operable by the person who purchased them after going through rigorous background checks. This will be done using fingerprint technology. The gun simply will not fire unless it is in the right hands.
It's not really that easy unfortunately. You can essentially 3D print gun parts now, and you can buy parts separately to make kits pretty easily to get around any kind of restrictions like that.
If it is so easy to 3D print guns or put together the parts, how is it that gun control measures in other countries are still effective?
SHALL. NOT.
Should currently incarcerated criminals should be allowed to own guns?
Yes.
Wow. I didn't know that the bar for "responsible gun owner" was so low.
Well it's not like they'll be allowed to take it into prison with them.
So you support gun-free zones? That seems a lot like an infringement on the right to bear arms.
keep talking and not doing anything i love it and ive loved every other time a shooting occurs and this same shit happens
Americans keep voting for Republicans. They want the death.
Thanks to gerrymandering, Republicans don't even need people to vote for them in order to win elections. Hurray for democracy!
~~Americans~~ pro-gun voters keep voting for Republicans. They want the death.
The problem is pro-gun people just happen to be overwhelmingly Republican.
I used to be "sensibly" pro gun. As in, "it's important to give people that right, but with proper controls in place."
Increasingly, I want our country to have nothing to do with guns. The actual sensible position is very strict gun control. There's very little reason a person should own any firearm outside of a hunting rifle in extremely controlled circumstances with extensive checks and records.
The US has 120 guns per 100 people, the highest in the world. The next highest? Yemen at ~53.
The onion said it best (every time there's a new mass shooting), "No way to prevent this, says only nation where this regularly happens." We can't lie to ourselves that it's not the lack of gun control that allows all of these shootings.
When the government disarms first then we'll talk.
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