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I feel that shift would be a mistake and be conflating things that are not related. Teen suicide rates have to do with teens feeling terrible about life and kil

I feel that shift would be a mistake and be conflating things that are not related. Teen suicide rates have to do with teens feeling terrible about life and killing themselves. The gun is just the messenger in this case. A belt and a tall closet works too. I have lived in parts of the country where there are extremely high rates of gun ownership and 0 problems with gun shootings. Then there are areas with much less gun ownership and very high shooting rates. Those areas, to be blunt, are generally low-income PoC neighborhoods. The leadership at the country/state/city level won't admit they don't give a shit about poor brown people. They want to blame the troubles of the neighborhoods on firearms and take those away. I have a theory that mass shootings are a similar situation, that there is a shift in the mental health of people that is causing them to want to go kill a bunch of people just to kill a bunch of people. It's currently fashionable in certain (typically) young white disillusioned male communities to go buy a gun and go kill a bunch of people. If there were no guns, would that problem disappear? Or would they just use the kinetic energy of 4000 lbs traveling at 25-60 mph to accomplish the same thing, like in Paris? I don't know.

Afton 7y ago
With respect to your first and third paragraphs (I have no comment on the second) https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/case-fatality/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/case-... Inherent deadliness, ease-of-use, availability, ability to abort mid-attempt. Guns score high(/low?) for all of these if you keep guns in your house.
- claytoneast 7y ago
  I hadn't seen that before. Thanks for sharing. I'm not sure if those statistics matters for the gun control that is discussed in the US. A single-shot hunting rifle/old revolver can be used for suicide just as easily as an AR-15. The latter would be banned with many forms of proposed gun control, the former I do not see ever being banned/legislated-away in the US.
jodrellblank 7y ago
Or would they just use the kinetic energy of 4000 lbs traveling at 25-60 mph to accomplish the same thing, like in Paris? I don't know. After you saying "conflating things that are not related" you hand-wavingly compare "young white disillusioned males" shooting up a school with .. a 37 year old French-Tunisian on a watch list of authorities, pledging allegiance to ISIS and driving a van filled with explosives into a crowd. That is not "accomplishing the same thing" or in the same way or by the same people. Find a "school shooting" equivalent - after all if that was equivalent it ought to be happening already in USA even with guns available, oughtn't it? More high schoolers have access to vehicles than guns right now. How can you say "I don't know" if it would happen when it .. is not happening?
- claytoneast 7y ago
  Sorry, "are a similar situation" makes no sense at all and I have no idea why I said that. I think I meant to say something more like "I have a theory that our mass shooting epidemic originates from a shift in the general mental health of our population which causes some members of that pop. to want to go kill a bunch of people just to kill a bunch of people" To respond to your comment, I'm talking about methods to go kill a bunch of people. One of those is using guns, and it seems to be the favored method in the US at the moment. However, it is not the only way, the Paris attack (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack), was more deadly than any mass shooting I'm aware of in the US and used a lorry. Nearly everyone over 16 in the US has access to a tremendously deadly weapon in the form of their car. I'd argue it's easier to go run over a ton of people with your car than go buy a gun to shoot them up. My theory is that it is fashionable with the psychos of the moment to use a gun. If you take the guns away, what happens? Do they go to cars/trucks, do we have a return to fertilizer pickup bombings? I'm not sure, and that's what worries me about gun control measures -- no attempt to address root cause. Humans have been coming up with ways to kill each other forever. We legislate away one -- cool. What about the other ways? Haven't addressed the problem of people wanting to go kill a bunch of other humans for seemingly no reason at all beyond fame/notoriety (what seems to be many of the shooters' motives).

Afton 7y ago

With respect to your first and third paragraphs (I have no comment on the second) https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/case-fatality/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/case-... Inherent deadliness, ease-of-use, availability, ability to abort mid-attempt. Guns score high(/low?) for all of these if you keep guns in your house.

claytoneast 7y ago
I hadn't seen that before. Thanks for sharing. I'm not sure if those statistics matters for the gun control that is discussed in the US. A single-shot hunting rifle/old revolver can be used for suicide just as easily as an AR-15. The latter would be banned with many forms of proposed gun control, the former I do not see ever being banned/legislated-away in the US.

jodrellblank 7y ago

Or would they just use the kinetic energy of 4000 lbs traveling at 25-60 mph to accomplish the same thing, like in Paris? I don't know. After you saying "conflating things that are not related" you hand-wavingly compare "young white disillusioned males" shooting up a school with .. a 37 year old French-Tunisian on a watch list of authorities, pledging allegiance to ISIS and driving a van filled with explosives into a crowd. That is not "accomplishing the same thing" or in the same way or by the same people. Find a "school shooting" equivalent - after all if that was equivalent it ought to be happening already in USA even with guns available, oughtn't it? More high schoolers have access to vehicles than guns right now. How can you say "I don't know" if it would happen when it .. is not happening?

claytoneast 7y ago
Sorry, "are a similar situation" makes no sense at all and I have no idea why I said that. I think I meant to say something more like "I have a theory that our mass shooting epidemic originates from a shift in the general mental health of our population which causes some members of that pop. to want to go kill a bunch of people just to kill a bunch of people" To respond to your comment, I'm talking about methods to go kill a bunch of people. One of those is using guns, and it seems to be the favored method in the US at the moment. However, it is not the only way, the Paris attack (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack), was more deadly than any mass shooting I'm aware of in the US and used a lorry. Nearly everyone over 16 in the US has access to a tremendously deadly weapon in the form of their car. I'd argue it's easier to go run over a ton of people with your car than go buy a gun to shoot them up. My theory is that it is fashionable with the psychos of the moment to use a gun. If you take the guns away, what happens? Do they go to cars/trucks, do we have a return to fertilizer pickup bombings? I'm not sure, and that's what worries me about gun control measures -- no attempt to address root cause. Humans have been coming up with ways to kill each other forever. We legislate away one -- cool. What about the other ways? Haven't addressed the problem of people wanting to go kill a bunch of other humans for seemingly no reason at all beyond fame/notoriety (what seems to be many of the shooters' motives).