And why are 1 in 5 Americans taking these drugs? That has to be a sign of something rotten in this country.
The rest of the western world has guns. It has mental illness. But it doesn’t have mass shooters, mass killings or school shootings, outside of Islamic terror, in numbers that approach the US. People say that of you take away guns that those killers like the ones in FL,Sandy Hook or Vegas will find a way to kill. Again, the rest of the western world has stricter gun laws (they don’t ban them contrary to myth) and you don’t see Europeans finding other ways to commit mass murder unless we are talking about Islamic terror. In fact, the Nice truck murderer was not French but Tunisian.
In terms of deaths per incident, both fire and bombs are far more deadly than guns. If someone wants to kill a large number of people you can, with or without guns. I haven’t seen the stats but I’m guessing the new truck into a crowd thing is probably as effect as guns.
Or better yet, how would you even know a private sale was conducted without a background check?
Aside from selling to an undercover cop there is only one way to monitor all private firearm transactions and I got news for you, it won’t happen.
“total number of deaths up to 816 from 98 mass shootings between 1982 and early 2018 – or just 23 deaths per year. That makes this sort of random mass shooting one of the rarest mortality risks imaginable.”
Which means that we average more mass shootings in a year than Europe does in six.
If we went back to 1776 I’m sure we would get an even lower number for deaths per year.
This is from one of your links: “Recent research comparing public mass shooting rates across 171 countries indicates that 31% of the global public mass shootings between 1966 and 2012 occurred in the United States.”
I’m not going back to find the particular post that mentioned the 95% voluntary compliance with any kind of firearm ban… And I can’t remember where I read the statistic, but in areas where registration of firearms has been enacted (local municipalities), the compliance estimate is somewhere close to 4%. They’re not even trying to take the firearms away, just find out who has what. Four. Per. Cent.
So how do you get from a 4% compliance of registration to 95% compliance of turn-in?
Not gonna happen. I remember the discussions many years ago when gun registration first came up (with, though conservative, certainly not gun-nut people) that it was a short drive from registration to confiscation.
Some large parts of the Constitution would have to be discarded to make any kind of ban effective.
There are at least in some places suicide prevention lines and other mental health initiatives to that end. I realize everyones’ life doesn’t just get magically fixed, but government can have some role.
Are those hotlines staffed by the government, or volunteers at non-profits? That’s not a rhetorical question for the sake of argument, I really don’t know, but always assumed it was volunteers.
It’s always same dumb arguments…people will find a way…sure fires, cars, bombs, maybe even harness weather, magic spells or build killer robots.
Or maybe we could all just go through a bit more hassle & paperwork or training when we buy our legal guns so innocent people stop dying…maybe😔 Im willing to wait 2-4 weeks for a gun if it helps decent folk not die…If you can wait 2 weeks for amazon to send you undies you can wait 2 weeks for a gun.
I’m up here in Canada. I have heard of one community mental health agency that had a ‘warm line’, staffed by people with actual mental health issues just so if someone wants to call in there is a real sympathetic person. The agency was health ministry funded.
I am a little murkier on the actual suicide prevention side of it, I think it would require more professional qualification, so maybe that is the same.
If you want to compare a 30 year plus stretch in the US (82-2018) to a 6 year period in Europe (09-15) then you are deliberately diluting what is happening in the US…I wonder why…Oh yeah, Cato Institute,
Well, this is from your own link: That FBI report “identified 160 active shooter incidents that occurred in the United States between 2000 and 2013,” with 486 people killed.
In the early years of the country, states passed a hodge podge of laws restricting absolute freedom of firearms in the name of public safety. (See early restrictions on concealed carry.) A stronger background check and waiting period are perfectly consistent with our historical approach to striking a balance between the right to keep/bear and the need to protect citizens.
That’s an inconvenient fact for the libertopians - doesn’t make it untrue.