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The debate here has focused on guns as the problem. Guns are not the problem, they are an expression of the problem. To quote the article: "The Economist stated

The debate here has focused on guns as the problem. Guns are not the problem, they are an expression of the problem. To quote the article: "The Economist stated that rapid urbanisation and inequalities in wealth distribution were some of the largest factors in violent crime, and as one of the most unequal countries on the planet, Brazil backs up this claim." I think this statement applies to Mexico and other Latin American countries, to varying extents. Removing guns from the streets may reduce gun deaths, but the violence will probably remain as long as the underlying social injustices are not addressed.

baroffoos 8y ago
Guns are like a megaphone for violence. Violent people will still exist but their reach is far less with a knife
- flattone 8y ago
  lets have a serious discussion... knife is like number 5000 on a crazy persons shopping list. gun is probably 300 but also easier than 1-299
  - hyperbovine 8y ago
    GP is making a serious point.
  - jostmey 8y ago
    I'm not saying that guns should be legal (I'm also not saying they should be illegal). What is important is to focus on the root issues, and I don't believe that the root issues are "guns".
    - hellllllllooo 8y ago
      This is a false dichotomy. Why do you have to focus on the "root issue"? What's wrong with dealing with a part of the problem? No complex problems get dealt with as a whole. They get broken in to pieces and dealt with using the tools available. Guns are clearly a part of the problem so let's do something about them while also doing something about other social issues.
      - flattone 8y ago
        is this true? I feel like by dealing with a part of the problem you first have an understanding of the system as a whole so that you can isolate the root cause aka the part of the problem it's not route in terms of the base or foundation of a problem it's root in terms of dealing with the actual causal issue
        hellllllllooo 8y ago
        Policing and laws often treat symptoms and not the "root" cause. Financial laws addressing fraud don't try and solve the underlying human greed yet they are valuable in trying to the protect victims of fraud. Saying we can only solve fraud by addressing the underlying socitial reasons driving people to commit fraud would be crazy. The symptoms can be dealt with it can and make a difference while also working on other causal factors. It doesn't have to deal directly with the "causal issue". It just has to reduce the negative effect.
  - leereeves 8y ago
    People don't see a gun and decide to use it. They decide to hurt someone, then look for a weapon. If it's not a gun, it will be a knife, or acid, or poison, or fists, or a vehicle...
    - hexane360 8y ago
      This actually isn't well backed up by psychology. The large majority of violent crimes aren't premeditated--they're impulses.
      - leereeves 8y ago
        I'm willing to learn here, but I can't find a source for that claim.
      - setr 8y ago
        Wouldn’t that mean the same thing? They decide to hurt (the impulse), and they grab whatever happens to be nearby. That is, they don’t see a gun and decide to use it; they decide to use something and see a gun
        hellllllllooo 8y ago
        Violence still happens but the magnitude would be reduced. It's a lot harder to kill people with things that aren't guns. If it was as easy then soldiers would primarily equipped with "knife, or acid, or poison, or fists". The army chooses guns as the primary weapon are they are clearly much more effective at killing.
        leereeves 8y ago
        The army doesn't use poisons (chemical weapons) because they are so effective, and so horrible, that their use is unthinkable. Remember the outrage when Syria did use poison?
        hellllllllooo 8y ago
- giancarlostoro 8y ago
  You are a bit quieter with a knife though. A gun gives you away immedietly to all around you unless you have a silencer but those arent so easy to get in the USA (class 3 if I remember correctly). In England people get knifed and who can know? And if its not a knife it will be a car, power tools, planes, boats, pushing someone off of a building. I rather retain my right to protect myself from crazies and die trying than be disadvantaged compared to criminals who wont follow the law... Having gone to the range here in the US I gotta say its not as easy as most think. You have rules amongst people who handle fire arms you must follow or get banned from a range. I am convinced after my experience that a bad actor is already mentally unstable and will kill someone they intend to regardless of guns or not. How many US serial murderers didnt we have that didnt use guns anyway? A gun is a tool. Anybody can use a tool correctly and anybody can use a tool incorrectly. Any tool can be bought legally and illegally. People who do not follow laws will have an advantage against those who do in terms of available tools. As others in the thread have said people dont think of getting a gun to murder they think of murder and then consider their options. Worse yet: Oppresive governments usually take away the rights of citizens to defend themselves before they begin total oppression of the people. Just ask Venezuelans who has guns there...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jorvi 8y ago
    > You are a bit quieter with a knife though. A gun gives you away immedietly to all around you unless you have a silencer but those arent so easy to get in the USA (class 3 if I remember correctly). There's a ring adapter you can screw on most weapons (Econo-can) that allows you to suppress any weapon with a regular oil filter. It would be easy to 3D print and is surprisingly effective, even on a full auto rifle[1] > And if its not a knife it will be a car, power tools, planes, boats, pushing someone off of a building. I rather retain my right to protect myself from crazies and die trying than be disadvantaged compared to criminals who wont follow the law... And yet in most European countries a tiny percentage of the population has (access to) guns, yet we're magnitudes safer than America. Australia banned a huge swathe of rifles and shotguns in 1996, yet there hasn't been a huge rise in victims of crime. > A gun is a tool. Anybody can use a tool correctly and anybody can use a tool incorrectly. Any tool can be bought legally and illegally. People who do not follow laws will have an advantage against those who do in terms of available tools. This is an extremely tired old chestnut. I mean, come on dude. Do you see someone with a knife killing 58 people and wounding 400+[2] within 10 minutes? [1] https://youtu.be/haiqFcIXTqs?t=51 https://youtu.be/haiqFcIXTqs?t=51 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting
- ardy42 8y ago
  > Guns are like a megaphone for violence. Violent people will still exist but their reach is far less with a knife You'd think so, but I don't think that's the case. There have been many multiple-death stabbings in Asia, for instance: https://newrepublic.com/article/151994/china-many-school-stabbings https://newrepublic.com/article/151994/china-many-school-sta... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/world/asia/china-knife-attack.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/world/asia/china-knife-at...
  - leereeves 8y ago
    And many multi-death vehicular attacks around the world, like the one in Nice, France that killed 86 and wounded 458. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack The people who want to ban guns are aware that doing so won't end violence, but they have a plan: they'll ban knives and vehicles as well. It's already being called for in the UK and in this very discussion. They'll never stop because being "against violence" is an easy way to score cheap political points, no matter how useless such measures are.
updateYourMind 8y ago
Guns are part of the problem. It is as dishonest as saying that cigarets are not bad for health.
crooked-v 8y ago
That's true, but it's still a lot harder to reliably murder people with a knife.
foobarian 8y ago
How much of it is cultural? Were the indigenous peoples of the Americas particularly murderous (I seem to remember depictions of human sacrifice where large cages were filled with people to be burned)? How much of it came from the Spanish inquisition/conquistador culture? These are the questions I ponder whenever related subjects come up, but unfortunately I have no answers.
- empath75 8y ago
  From my experience visiting the Mayan highlands in Guatemala, I’d say the indigenous people are generally wonderful human beings dealing the best they can with a hard situation. They’re so far away from the days of human sacrifice, it’s like asking if white people are naturally violent because of the 30 years war.
- jcranmer 8y ago
  The Aztecs--and I specifically mean Aztecs here and not the Mexica in general--were probably some of the most profligate sacrificers in human history. But outside of them, the pre-Columbian Americans don't seem to be unusually inclined to human sacrifice, especially in comparison to the rest of the world. The difference is that they were first contacted by European society at a time when they still practiced religious beliefs that included human sacrifice while the Europeans had forgotten just how much they had sacrificed humans a millennium earlier.
wvenable 8y ago
It makes sense except for the US, which is sort of a strange outlier for gun violence.
VoodooJuJu 8y ago
Then how do you explain India? There exists massive wealth inequality in India as well, yet the murder rate is infinitesimal compared to Latin America. I believe the issue is more cultural than economical.
- dahfizz 8y ago
  Does india have a drug problem or such a corrupt, unhelpful government? I don't know which way the causality goes, but all of the above (drugs, culture, crime, poor government) seem to be correlated.
  - beatgammit 8y ago
    > illegal drugs Drugs don't seem to be the problem (e.g. look at Portugal or The Netherlands), but illegal drug trade. The violence doesn't seem to come from drug users, but drug traffickers. If we make it legal, the drug traffickers go out of business. My guess is that Latin America is worse than India because the US is close to Latin America, and the US buys a lot of drugs. If we legalize the more common drugs, I anticipate that the weaker demand will drastically reduce gang violence because there just isn't as much money as stake. India doesn't border a wealthy country, so it isn't likely as lucrative to murder. That's my guess, and I'd like to see some research to explain it better than my gut reaction.
  - briandear 8y ago
    > Does Indian have such a corrupt, unhelpful government? Yes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ronakdesai/2018/03/07/india-continues-to-be-one-of-the-most-corrupt-countries-in-the-world/#45acca4a79c6 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ronakdesai/2018/03/07/india-con...
- Pinckney 8y ago
  Doesn't India actually have a fairly low Gini index? Lower than any country in South or Latin America, save Uruguay.
pryce 8y ago
In Latin America there have been repeated movements for many decades to identify and address these underlying social injustices, including the wealth distribution. These movements often do not fare well, and the US Government is invested (financially, militarily, politically) in ensuring that these movements do not fare well.
- leereeves 8y ago
  Yeah, Venezuela's going through one of those movements right now, and thanks to it, has the third highest homicide rate in the world.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
hellllllllooo 8y ago
> Removing guns from the streets may reduce gun deaths, but the violence will probably remain as long as the underlying social injustices are not addressed. The old no solution unless it's the perfect solution response. No-one is saying social issues and inequality shouldn't be addressed too but easy access to guns sure makes shooting people a lot easier.
goshx 8y ago
> Removing guns from the streets may reduce gun deaths It didn't in Brazil. Since 2004, civilians can't carry their guns and the police makes it very hard for them to be able to have one in the first place, or to register them again when it's time to renew. Here is a graph with the homicides in Brazil from 1996 to 2016: http://www.ipea.gov.br/atlasviolencia/dados-series/31 http://www.ipea.gov.br/atlasviolencia/dados-series/31 (click on "País", then scroll down to see the graph)
- leereeves 8y ago
  Leading to the election of Bolsonaro, who promised to repeal gun control. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-guns-idUSKCN1P91Q6 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-guns-idUSKCN1P91Q6

baroffoos 8y ago

Guns are like a megaphone for violence. Violent people will still exist but their reach is far less with a knife

flattone 8y ago
lets have a serious discussion... knife is like number 5000 on a crazy persons shopping list. gun is probably 300 but also easier than 1-299
- hyperbovine 8y ago
  GP is making a serious point.
- jostmey 8y ago
  I'm not saying that guns should be legal (I'm also not saying they should be illegal). What is important is to focus on the root issues, and I don't believe that the root issues are "guns".
  - hellllllllooo 8y ago
    This is a false dichotomy. Why do you have to focus on the "root issue"? What's wrong with dealing with a part of the problem? No complex problems get dealt with as a whole. They get broken in to pieces and dealt with using the tools available. Guns are clearly a part of the problem so let's do something about them while also doing something about other social issues.
    - flattone 8y ago
      is this true? I feel like by dealing with a part of the problem you first have an understanding of the system as a whole so that you can isolate the root cause aka the part of the problem it's not route in terms of the base or foundation of a problem it's root in terms of dealing with the actual causal issue
      - hellllllllooo 8y ago
        Policing and laws often treat symptoms and not the "root" cause. Financial laws addressing fraud don't try and solve the underlying human greed yet they are valuable in trying to the protect victims of fraud. Saying we can only solve fraud by addressing the underlying socitial reasons driving people to commit fraud would be crazy. The symptoms can be dealt with it can and make a difference while also working on other causal factors. It doesn't have to deal directly with the "causal issue". It just has to reduce the negative effect.
- leereeves 8y ago
  People don't see a gun and decide to use it. They decide to hurt someone, then look for a weapon. If it's not a gun, it will be a knife, or acid, or poison, or fists, or a vehicle...
  - hexane360 8y ago
    This actually isn't well backed up by psychology. The large majority of violent crimes aren't premeditated--they're impulses.
    - leereeves 8y ago
      I'm willing to learn here, but I can't find a source for that claim.
    - setr 8y ago
      Wouldn’t that mean the same thing? They decide to hurt (the impulse), and they grab whatever happens to be nearby. That is, they don’t see a gun and decide to use it; they decide to use something and see a gun
      - hellllllllooo 8y ago
        Violence still happens but the magnitude would be reduced. It's a lot harder to kill people with things that aren't guns. If it was as easy then soldiers would primarily equipped with "knife, or acid, or poison, or fists". The army chooses guns as the primary weapon are they are clearly much more effective at killing.
        leereeves 8y ago
        The army doesn't use poisons (chemical weapons) because they are so effective, and so horrible, that their use is unthinkable. Remember the outrage when Syria did use poison?
        hellllllllooo 8y ago
giancarlostoro 8y ago
You are a bit quieter with a knife though. A gun gives you away immedietly to all around you unless you have a silencer but those arent so easy to get in the USA (class 3 if I remember correctly). In England people get knifed and who can know? And if its not a knife it will be a car, power tools, planes, boats, pushing someone off of a building. I rather retain my right to protect myself from crazies and die trying than be disadvantaged compared to criminals who wont follow the law... Having gone to the range here in the US I gotta say its not as easy as most think. You have rules amongst people who handle fire arms you must follow or get banned from a range. I am convinced after my experience that a bad actor is already mentally unstable and will kill someone they intend to regardless of guns or not. How many US serial murderers didnt we have that didnt use guns anyway? A gun is a tool. Anybody can use a tool correctly and anybody can use a tool incorrectly. Any tool can be bought legally and illegally. People who do not follow laws will have an advantage against those who do in terms of available tools. As others in the thread have said people dont think of getting a gun to murder they think of murder and then consider their options. Worse yet: Oppresive governments usually take away the rights of citizens to defend themselves before they begin total oppression of the people. Just ask Venezuelans who has guns there...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jorvi 8y ago
  > You are a bit quieter with a knife though. A gun gives you away immedietly to all around you unless you have a silencer but those arent so easy to get in the USA (class 3 if I remember correctly). There's a ring adapter you can screw on most weapons (Econo-can) that allows you to suppress any weapon with a regular oil filter. It would be easy to 3D print and is surprisingly effective, even on a full auto rifle[1] > And if its not a knife it will be a car, power tools, planes, boats, pushing someone off of a building. I rather retain my right to protect myself from crazies and die trying than be disadvantaged compared to criminals who wont follow the law... And yet in most European countries a tiny percentage of the population has (access to) guns, yet we're magnitudes safer than America. Australia banned a huge swathe of rifles and shotguns in 1996, yet there hasn't been a huge rise in victims of crime. > A gun is a tool. Anybody can use a tool correctly and anybody can use a tool incorrectly. Any tool can be bought legally and illegally. People who do not follow laws will have an advantage against those who do in terms of available tools. This is an extremely tired old chestnut. I mean, come on dude. Do you see someone with a knife killing 58 people and wounding 400+[2] within 10 minutes? [1] https://youtu.be/haiqFcIXTqs?t=51 https://youtu.be/haiqFcIXTqs?t=51 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting
ardy42 8y ago
> Guns are like a megaphone for violence. Violent people will still exist but their reach is far less with a knife You'd think so, but I don't think that's the case. There have been many multiple-death stabbings in Asia, for instance: https://newrepublic.com/article/151994/china-many-school-stabbings https://newrepublic.com/article/151994/china-many-school-sta... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/world/asia/china-knife-attack.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/world/asia/china-knife-at...
- leereeves 8y ago
  And many multi-death vehicular attacks around the world, like the one in Nice, France that killed 86 and wounded 458. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack The people who want to ban guns are aware that doing so won't end violence, but they have a plan: they'll ban knives and vehicles as well. It's already being called for in the UK and in this very discussion. They'll never stop because being "against violence" is an easy way to score cheap political points, no matter how useless such measures are.

updateYourMind 8y ago

Guns are part of the problem. It is as dishonest as saying that cigarets are not bad for health.

crooked-v 8y ago

That's true, but it's still a lot harder to reliably murder people with a knife.

foobarian 8y ago

How much of it is cultural? Were the indigenous peoples of the Americas particularly murderous (I seem to remember depictions of human sacrifice where large cages were filled with people to be burned)? How much of it came from the Spanish inquisition/conquistador culture? These are the questions I ponder whenever related subjects come up, but unfortunately I have no answers.

empath75 8y ago
From my experience visiting the Mayan highlands in Guatemala, I’d say the indigenous people are generally wonderful human beings dealing the best they can with a hard situation. They’re so far away from the days of human sacrifice, it’s like asking if white people are naturally violent because of the 30 years war.
jcranmer 8y ago
The Aztecs--and I specifically mean Aztecs here and not the Mexica in general--were probably some of the most profligate sacrificers in human history. But outside of them, the pre-Columbian Americans don't seem to be unusually inclined to human sacrifice, especially in comparison to the rest of the world. The difference is that they were first contacted by European society at a time when they still practiced religious beliefs that included human sacrifice while the Europeans had forgotten just how much they had sacrificed humans a millennium earlier.

wvenable 8y ago

It makes sense except for the US, which is sort of a strange outlier for gun violence.

VoodooJuJu 8y ago

Then how do you explain India? There exists massive wealth inequality in India as well, yet the murder rate is infinitesimal compared to Latin America. I believe the issue is more cultural than economical.

dahfizz 8y ago
Does india have a drug problem or such a corrupt, unhelpful government? I don't know which way the causality goes, but all of the above (drugs, culture, crime, poor government) seem to be correlated.
- beatgammit 8y ago
  > illegal drugs Drugs don't seem to be the problem (e.g. look at Portugal or The Netherlands), but illegal drug trade. The violence doesn't seem to come from drug users, but drug traffickers. If we make it legal, the drug traffickers go out of business. My guess is that Latin America is worse than India because the US is close to Latin America, and the US buys a lot of drugs. If we legalize the more common drugs, I anticipate that the weaker demand will drastically reduce gang violence because there just isn't as much money as stake. India doesn't border a wealthy country, so it isn't likely as lucrative to murder. That's my guess, and I'd like to see some research to explain it better than my gut reaction.
- briandear 8y ago
  > Does Indian have such a corrupt, unhelpful government? Yes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ronakdesai/2018/03/07/india-continues-to-be-one-of-the-most-corrupt-countries-in-the-world/#45acca4a79c6 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ronakdesai/2018/03/07/india-con...
Pinckney 8y ago
Doesn't India actually have a fairly low Gini index? Lower than any country in South or Latin America, save Uruguay.

pryce 8y ago

In Latin America there have been repeated movements for many decades to identify and address these underlying social injustices, including the wealth distribution. These movements often do not fare well, and the US Government is invested (financially, militarily, politically) in ensuring that these movements do not fare well.

leereeves 8y ago
Yeah, Venezuela's going through one of those movements right now, and thanks to it, has the third highest homicide rate in the world.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

hellllllllooo 8y ago

> Removing guns from the streets may reduce gun deaths, but the violence will probably remain as long as the underlying social injustices are not addressed. The old no solution unless it's the perfect solution response. No-one is saying social issues and inequality shouldn't be addressed too but easy access to guns sure makes shooting people a lot easier.

goshx 8y ago

> Removing guns from the streets may reduce gun deaths It didn't in Brazil. Since 2004, civilians can't carry their guns and the police makes it very hard for them to be able to have one in the first place, or to register them again when it's time to renew. Here is a graph with the homicides in Brazil from 1996 to 2016: http://www.ipea.gov.br/atlasviolencia/dados-series/31 http://www.ipea.gov.br/atlasviolencia/dados-series/31 (click on "País", then scroll down to see the graph)

leereeves 8y ago
Leading to the election of Bolsonaro, who promised to repeal gun control. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-guns-idUSKCN1P91Q6 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-guns-idUSKCN1P91Q6