Mass shooting in Buffalo NY. (1 Viewer)

[DaveXA]

So I was basing this off of a comparison between UK's homicide rate and the US's. The US has a homicide rate of 10 per million while the UK has a homicide rate of 1 per million.... so 10x lower. Now the UK is not a perfect substitute for the US, they have stronger social safety nets, and a more homogeneous society (although there is a fair amount of diversity, it's less than the US), and some of that no doubt contributes to the difference, so I said like 70% instead of 90%.

Makes sense, but I think as St. Widge alluded to, we're unfortunately a culture of violence for whatever reasons and that can account for the large difference. That said, it's all purely hypothetical because clearly banning guns isn't going to happen. The best way to attack the problem is two-fold imo. One is addressing our violent tendencies, and two, increasing vetting and registering to include guns in the secondary market.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

Makes sense, but I think as St. Widge alluded to, we're unfortunately a culture of violence for whatever reasons and that can account for the large difference. That said, it's all purely hypothetical because clearly banning guns isn't going to happen. The best way to attack the problem is two-fold imo. One is addressing our violent tendencies, and two, increasing vetting and registering to include guns in the secondary market.

Yeah, there's isn't going to be a single solution. There absolutely has been a breakdown in community in this country which increases all sorts of bad behaviors, that needs to be repaired.

 

[DaveXA]

Yeah, there's isn't going to be a single solution. There absolutely has been a breakdown in community in this country which increases all sorts of bad behaviors, that needs to be repaired.

Agreed.

 

[kizzy821]

The thing I can never wrap my head around is the relatively "minor" damage they inflict compared to the grandiosity of their complaint.

If he was upset that white people are being replaced, how is killing a handful of Black people going to rectify that.

Were they all of reproductive age? Did they have plans to reproduce? Were they going to reproduce at a faster rate than 10 comparable white people???

What's really going on. Because surely his concerns aren't suddenly assuaged by his actions.

 

[DaveXA]

The thing I can never wrap my head around is the relatively "minor" damage they inflict compared to the grandiosity of their complaint.

If he was upset that white people are being replaced, how is killing a handful of Black people going to rectify that.

Were they all of reproductive age? Did they have plans to reproduce? Were they going to reproduce at a faster rate than 10 comparable white people???

What's really going on. Because surely his concerns aren't suddenly assuaged by his actions.

I wouldn't spend too much time thinking about that. It's not like they think that far ahead anyway.

 

[saintmdterps]

I'm 57 yrs old. Been around and owned guns my entire life. I've never once pointed a gun at another person. Taking away guns doesn't take away the violent hatred embedded in some portions of society. If there were zero guns owned legally in the US, then there would be millions of guns owned illegally in the US. You will never, never, be able to rid the US of gun ownership. The problem is the people. The solution is beyond our grasp. We know what the solution is, but how do you get to that point? If we survive for another 100 years maybe, just maybe, we will mature as a society. Until then, murderers will figure out a way to murder on a large scale.

Yup, the gun djinn is out of the bottle and he is not going back in.

 

[St. Widge]

Obviously there's no magic make guns disappear button, but there is a super strong correlation between the number of guns available and homicides. I think it would make sense to enact policies that over time would make guns more expensive and hard to find.

I guess I always kind of thought that it would be true that there was a causal link between the number of guns available and homicide rates. Certainly there appears to be correlation given that places like the U.K., Denmark, and now Australia don't really have readily available guns and have much lower murder rates than we do. But, then you look at murder rates world wide and places with far fewer guns than the U.S. have higher murder rates. I mean, the United States isn't even in the top 25 countries for murder rates. So, maybe it's not even correlation? It appears that the higher homicide rates are in places that have large numbers of people in poverty, regardless of the per capita gun ownership. So, maybe poverty is the real cause for high homicide rates?

Of course, that doesn't mean that all the guns we have don't lead to the mass killings that we seem to have at a higher rate than the rest of the world. But, again, I wonder if that's more our impression of the United States than the reality? Maybe there are just as many mass killings, if not more in places like El Salvador, Honduras, Venezuela, Virgin Islands, and Jamaica? (I picked those because they apparently have top 5 highest murder rates in the world.)

Does anyone know if there are any good sets of statistics on the numbers of "mass murders" in countries around the world?

And, I'm not sure what the conclusion to this is, but it seems to suggest to me that the violence and mass shootings result from culture and poverty more than access to guns. Now, I'm certainly willing to try to find ways to cut down on the number of guns and/or have licensing and training, in the hope that it would help. But, it seems that the issue really might be more about poverty creating desperate people with nothing to lose and culture creating people who hate people who are different from them, that is at the real root of the issue in the United States.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

I guess I always kind of thought that it would be true that there was a causal link between the number of guns available and homicide rates. Certainly there appears to be correlation given that places like the U.K., Denmark, and now Australia don't really have readily available guns and have much lower murder rates than we do. But, then you look at murder rates world wide and places with far fewer guns than the U.S. have higher murder rates. I mean, the United States isn't even in the top 25 countries for murder rates. So, maybe it's not even correlation? It appears that the higher homicide rates are in places that have large numbers of people in poverty, regardless of the per capita gun ownership. So, maybe poverty is the real cause for high homicide rates?

Of course, that doesn't mean that all the guns we have don't lead to the mass killings that we seem to have at a higher rate than the rest of the world. But, again, I wonder if that's more our impression of the United States than the reality? Maybe there are just as many mass killings, if not more in places like El Salvador, Honduras, Venezuela, Virgin Islands, and Jamaica? (I picked those because they apparently have top 5 highest murder rates in the world.)

Does anyone know if there are any good sets of statistics on the numbers of "mass murders" in countries around the world?

And, I'm not sure what the conclusion to this is, but it seems to suggest to me that the violence and mass shootings result from culture and poverty more than access to guns. Now, I'm certainly willing to try to find ways to cut down on the number of guns and/or have licensing and training, in the hope that it would help. But, it seems that the issue really might be more about poverty creating desperate people with nothing to lose and culture creating people who hate people who are different from them, that is at the real root of the issue in the United States.

Gun ownership, or the availability of guns is not the only correlation to homicide rates, but there is still a strong correlation(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3828709/ https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/12/8/9870240/gun-ownership-deaths-homicides) . However, other factors also have a strong correlation - poverty, drug usage, and so on.

Basically, everything else being equal - a region with fewer guns will have fewer homicides than a region with more guns.

But yeah, tackling things like poverty would have a huge impact on homicide rates.

 

[nolaswede]

Douse the place with gas, trap them and light it on fire. It’s not inconceivable and pretty low effort with gas cans, bottles and a lighter….. cheaper than a gun and ammo.

So why aren’t they doing it now? Not sure I remember the last time that 2+ people got murdered that way in the U.S.

 

[Dago]

This seems to be saying if a solution isn't 100% effective we might as well not bother. Which seems silly to me.

I feel pretty confident in saying if guns all suddenly disappeared by magic, homicides would drop by like 70%. Sure, some people would stab people to death, others would build a pressure cooker bomb, and so on. But I don't think something needs to be perfect to be good.

Obviously there's no magic make guns disappear button, but there is a super strong correlation between the number of guns available and homicides. I think it would make sense to enact policies that over time would make guns more expensive and hard to find.

HOWEVER, it would have to pass constitutional muster, which I don't think will happen. I would wish that there was a requirement that in order to own a gun you had to be a part of a well regulated militia, and train with your weapon at least once a month. But that does not seem to be the interpretation of the Constitution, so at this point there would need to be another amendment, which has 0% chance of passing.

Really? Because when you look at the international homicide rates your argument about homicides and numbers of guns don't bear that out.

There are several countries who allow gun ownership whose murder rate is the same or lower than other countries that don't allow guns at all. By your logic that you present as fact, every country that has guns should have a significantly higher homicide rate than a country that bans guns and the facts don't show that. We are the anomaly here.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

Really? Because when you look at the international homicide rates your argument about homicides and numbers of guns don't bear that out.

There are several countries who allow gun ownership whose murder rate is the same or lower than other countries that don't allow guns at all. By your logic that you present as fact, every country that has guns should have a significantly higher homicide rate than a country that bans guns and the facts don't show that. We are the anomaly here.

That isn't how statistics work. There are tons of variables at play. But there have been statistical analysis that control for many of those variables, and when everything else is equal (poverty, drug use, etc), the regions with fewer guns have fewer homicides.

So when you say we are an anomaly you are correct, we are the richest country in the world, but we have a homicide rate far, far higher than any other rich country. Every country with a worse homicide rate than us is far, far poorer. Gun ownership isn't the only difference between us and other rich countries, but it is a very obvious one.

 

[brandon8283]

Just a thought but maybe it’s the fact of control? With a gun they can control every human life they suck the breath out of, watching the torture of the very thing they hate, rather than a mass one stop shop action. We are dealing with crazies here and control is a huge factor.

That's ridiculous. It's easier to kill people with guns. Think of the steps required to use a gun vs. build and plant an effective bomb.

Bomb:
1) Research bomb-making. Find a plan that works. Make sure you do it on a VPN so the FBI doesn't catch you.
2) Buy bomb parts. Determine means of detonation (remotely, locally triggered, etc). Make sure you don't buy all the bomb parts from the same area so the FBI doesn't catch you.
3) Build bomb.
4) Test bomb. Realize your bomb-making sucks because this is your first time to build a bomb.
5) Build another bomb. Maybe it works on the second try?
6) Plant the bomb. Hope you don't get caught planting the bomb. Hope someone doesn't find it before you detonate. Hope it doesn't detonate on its own when no one is around. Hope it goes off the way you think it will.
7) It doesn't. Start over.

Guns:
1) Buy gun.
2) Buy ammo.
3) Point.
4) Shoot.

This is obviously an exaggeration, but not freaking really.

The banning guns thing will never happen in this country. If Sandy Hook didn't change ANYTHING, what event will????

I dunno, but I'm not one to give up while people die.

I don't want to put words in @Dago 's mouth, but I think that what he's saying is that, even if guns are easier to use than pipe/pressure cooker bombs, in the absence of guns, if someone wanted to perpetrate a mass killing, pipe/pressure cooker bombs are not so hard to make that it'd deter someone from using them.

Yeah, it's definitely easier with guns. But clearly, if guns aren't accessible, you'll see a marked increase in other means.

There honestly probably would be an uptick in other means. It's happened elsewhere. The salient point is that other means simply aren't as effective as using a gun. So while there may be an uptick in other means, net fewer people will die.

Guns are the problem.

 

[St. Widge]

Gun ownership, or the availability of guns is not the only correlation to homicide rates, but there is still a strong correlation(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3828709/ https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/12/8/9870240/gun-ownership-deaths-homicides) . However, other factors also have a strong correlation - poverty, drug usage, and so on.

Basically, everything else being equal - a region with fewer guns will have fewer homicides than a region with more guns.

But yeah, tackling things like poverty would have a huge impact on homicide rates.

I think there is some correlation, but to be fair that study and that article are about the United States only. They don't take into account the numbers world wide. I wonder if there are numbers for that?

Like I said above, I always assumed there would be a causal effect, but looking at the top 25 countries in terms of murder rate, they all have far lower rates of gun ownership that the U.S. Maybe I'm missing something, but that seems to suggest that the correlation because homicides and gun ownership may be limited to the United States because of some specific cultural factor in the United States. But, it's hard to know because the U.S. has by far the highest per capita gun ownership rate in the world. Nobody else is even close.

I do think it's a combination of rates of gun ownership, culture, and poverty. But, I guess I wonder if there are numbers to back up the causal link between rates of gun ownership and rates of murder world wide? My own totally inadequate quick google search seems to suggest it isn't there on a global level and may just be in the U.S. which suggests to me that it is more of social/poverty/cultural issue particular to the United States?

 

[DaveXA]

So why aren’t they doing it now? Not sure I remember the last time that 2+ people got murdered that way in the U.S.

They're not doing it now because using a gun is easier than trying to light a bunch of people on fire. I think we'd see a lot more bomb usage if there were no guns.

 

[brandon8283]

Every time one of these events happens, we get the same tired arguments from gun-rights advocates fighting for status quo.

And every time one of these events happen, those advocates look more and more selfish and stupid.