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Stray bullet kills English astrophysicist visiting United States

125 points by baybal2 5y ago

rasengan 5y ago
> The shooting appeared to be a random act involving individuals participating in the reckless discharge of firearms. While the second amendment arms US citizens and for reason, simultaneously, the punishment should be 100x greater than it is today for any gun violence of any kind that isn't pure self defense. Whether it's this or school shooters, a serious public example needs to be made that is strong enough to send a chilling effect to stop this horrendous behavior. I feel so sorry for him and his loved ones.
- grey-area 5y ago
  Your militia is not well regulated.
- Hokusai 5y ago
  > the punishment should be 100x greater than it is today for any gun violence of any kind that isn't pure self defense Even capital punishment for the shooter will not give that man his live back. If the USA was not so obsessed with owning weapons he would be alive, thou. > to send a chilling effect The USA puts more people in prison that any other developed country, by much. Vengeance does not stop bullets, removing weapons from the streets do.
  - rasengan 5y ago
    That means that capital punishment is not enough of a deterrent - same with prison.
    - netizen-936824 5y ago
      Sounds to me like its not possible for such a deterrent to exist, I wonder what solutions other countries have come up with
      - hkt 5y ago
        Gun control and restorative justice approaches seem to be the trick. From the outside it appears a militarised police apparatus isn't working for the US and would be a great target for substantial budget cuts.
        InsomniacL 5y ago
        Why would you talk about reducing the budget of your current solution before replacing it with something else? Do you think the situation would not get substantially worse? You could ban guns tomorrow but the type of people who are firing 30 shots in to random houses aren't going lay down their arms.
        hkt 5y ago
        Because you can then reallocate the funding from the solution that doesn't work (militarised police, mass incarceration) to solutions that do. The police don't prevent people from firing thirty random shots into a house, but decent alternatives to crime - even for those with little or no educational achievements - might. It requires a holistic approach though, with multiple agencies and policies working together, which is a hard transition from targeted intervention, whether that be policing or sticking plasters. There's a leap of faith involved in making that connection, but it is a small leap once you look at other countries and see how their systems work. The fundamental step is to not make life so awful that desperate people decide a high-stakes life of crime is worth it.
      - guerrilla 5y ago
        What you do is find the root causes and work on eliminating them. A lot of this stuff is just caused by poverty or mental illness. You can just eliminate those and be done with a large part of the problem.
        netizen-936824 5y ago
        How would we eliminate poverty?
    - Hokusai 5y ago
      Because better than deterrents, based in punishment, is to create a non violent society. That can be accomplished by regulating weapons, reducing poverty and exclusion, better education, etc. Punishment is very limited as an education tool. It has some uses, but positive incentives complement it and, in the end, are more powerful.
      - BurningFrog 5y ago
        "Why don't we just create a utopian society instead" is never a good argument.
        Hokusai 5y ago
        Less violent societies with less encarcellation rates than the USA exist. That is the minimum that the USA should aspire to.
        xxpor 5y ago
        There's a huge gap between the US and utopia. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
        BurningFrog 5y ago
        Fully agreed!
      - cgriswald 5y ago
        I'm not sure how to reconcile your choice to downplay deterrents with a claim that regulation is the way forward. Regulation without disincentives is meaningless, isn't it? To my mind, the US has a violence problem and guns much more so than a gun violence problem. Focusing specifically on murder by guns, California and Texas, who are largely similar in murder rates are also largely similar in murder-by-gun rates despite having regulatory environments that are about as far apart as you can get in the United States. I'm not taking a position here, and I understand there might be compounding factors (like both states being border states); but it does make me wonder if what has been effective in other cultures will be effective in the United States. I think your points about reducing poverty and providing for education are on point. Generally speaking, states that I consider "poor" states and regions within states that are generally depressed seem to have higher gun-murder rates. They also seem to have generally more violence. These are things we should focus on anyway (and would probably also help with gun-suicide and gun-related accidents). In the US, I think both sides in this argument are generally disingenuous. Speaking very broadly... Gun control advocates manipulate statistics and call any death by gun "gun violence" as if there is no distinction between a suicide victim and a murderer. They also don't separate out legal versus illegal gun access in the use of gun murder, which I think is meaningful if you're talking about adding more laws/regulations. Some are at least honest enough to state they want to restrict all private gun ownership. Again, broadly speaking, they push laws that are about restricting legitimate gun ownership rather than promoting responsible gun ownership. On the flip side, gun control opponents oppose any change in law and while they acknowledge that there are differences in types of gun-related deaths, they aren't any more nuanced in their views about it and generally don't seem to acknowledge that non-murder gun deaths are also a problem we need to work on. I'd much rather see everyone gather around responsible gun ownership for those that want it. (And I do think that more severe punishment would be useful in reducing accidents and maybe suicides, even though I think it wouldn't do anything for murders.) This has turned into a bit of a ramble I suppose, but I'm just generally wondering what you think the path forward should be, why you think such a path would work in the United States specifically, and how regulations work if deterrents don't work.
    - hyperman1 5y ago
      In general, people assume they won't get caught. This means there is in most cases no deterring effect from any punishment. The human mind simply does not work that way. There is however an effect from people being basically lazy and doing things that make sense only in the spur of the moment, without thinking things through. If getting a gun meant a headache inducing amount of work and waiting time, only people who really want a gun would have one. This is basically the situation in the rest of the world. There are guns, and criminals that want one have no problem getting one on the black market. But even so, most criminals don't get a gun, because the day to day situation simply doesn't give you exposure to them.
    - jrochkind1 5y ago
      Correct
    - brnaftr360 5y ago
      No, that means that the idea that deterrents are constructed on is flawed. The fact of the matter is that no matter what "the people" opt to do, is that state forces in America are reactionary and not preventative - innocent until proven guilty. These people aren't even doing the mental accounting where Z disincentivizes X if it isn't plainly obvious. The most responsible and humane thing to do is to ask why are they able to skip that gap. I think what you'll find is that they're victims to society in many cases - removed from opportunities through any number of institutional or economic processes. E.g. criminal record, or living in an economically depressed area (which itself has many widespread effect). In other cases they're possessed of a genuinely destructive pathology. And in any of these cases they're probably poor. This shit occurs when people are poor. Stop making poor people and violence goes down to the point where pathologically violent or otherwise unstable people are the baseline.
    - adhesive_wombat 5y ago
      That capital punishment is not a deterrent simply goes to show that there a fatal (ha) flaw in the justification for it, leaving behind all the usual worries about executing innocents, giving the state the power to kill those it wants to or even the cost. Either some criminals are not in a state of mind where any rational cost-benefit calculation is happening at all, or a considered cost-benefit calculation puts their own life below the perceived benefit of the act (maybe religiously motivated attacks, say). Alternatively they truly think they won't get caught, which, depending on the crime, place and competence might be the most rational reason. There is nothing that you can do so to deter these "irrational" crimes by just twiddling knobs on the sentence harshness generator.
  - candiddevmike 5y ago
    There are too many guns out there now and no one has the political will to reduce them, just like climate change/carbon taxes.
- melling 5y ago
  "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Well, the reason has been debated endlessly so we should skip the debate here. What we can try to figure out is how to make it more difficult for people who commit crimes with a gun to get away with the crime. It's unlikely we will ever catch the person who committed this crime, for example. More technology might help. Machine learning, cameras, ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfire_locator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfire_locator
  - Karellen 5y ago
    It always confuses me how people quote the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution to end the argument without further discussion, as if it's impossible to - you know - amend the constitution somehow, if one wanted to. If people want to keep guns for their own reasons, they're allowed to have those reasons and should argue them. But the fact that the constitution was once amended to allow them to is not, by itself, a reason to keep doing so. That's just circular reasoning.
    - melling 5y ago
      I simply quoted it for completeness. Feel free to debate it endlessly or amend the Constitution, etc. We have a lot of pre-existing material. In the meantime, I’m simply trying to have a discussion on using technology to lessen an immediate problem where we should be able to get a little more consensus.
    - ufo 5y ago
      The thing I never understood is why the jurisprudence puts more emphasis on the "right to bear arms" part than in the "a well regulated militia" part.
      - sigstoat 5y ago
        there's a lot which has been written on the subject, from all perspectives. you can find whatever explanation will satisfy your political leanings.
- devwastaken 5y ago
  "public examples" don't scale.
juanbyrge 5y ago
Now all of a sudden those physics problems involving shooting a gun while on a train seem a lot more depressing :(
drenvuk 5y ago
this is heart breaking. just a while ago there was a child shot while being driven down 880 in the bay area when some people were shooting at each other while driving. he wasn't even on the same side of the highway. these kinds of incidents shouldn't be possible.
- rasengan 5y ago
  The pain the parents must be feeling is unimaginable and will never heal. This is an example of failure of society -- you give up freedoms to gain securities, but then these securities aren't delivered and you are left upset why the system has failed you, but you have not the freedom to do anything about it.
  - Game_Ender 5y ago
    The funny thing is, that in the United States we give up the day to day security of living in a society with fewer guns and much less gun violence because of the freedom citizens have to own guns. I am not saying it really feasible to change the approach in the United States, but it's not really honest to claim that widespread firearms ownership does not have costs. The simple way to think about it is that it decreases the marginal cost, and increases the impact, of many things like suicides, and senseless rampages.
- babyshake 5y ago
  You can say guns don't kill people, people kill people. But people without guns cannot knife the passenger of another vehicle on the highway or stab 15 people to death within a couple minutes.
  - amscanne 5y ago
    I’m not making a commentary on guns, but there are lots of ways that people can be insanely stupid and reckless and end innocent bystanders lives. Talking about highways made me think of this one immediately: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Interstate_75_rock-throwing_deaths https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Interstate_75_rock-thro...
fouc 5y ago
This sounded like the start of a joke. Unfortunately it's just a cruel reality.
- moonbug 5y ago
  in America, perhaps.
asiachick 5y ago
- xwdv 5y ago
  It’s a third world country but so what, people live in third world countries. To survive you must live with a third world mentality. Accumulate money and power, so that you can keep you and your family safe and insulated from the dangers of larger American society. As the inequality grows, I seek to distance myself more from those who may one day decide to raise pitchforks.
  - nextstep 5y ago
    Exactly. Don't try to change the system, just worry about yourself and your friend's/family's wellbeing. Even if the country goes to shit, you can certainly live in a nice gated community while those who aren't so fortunate raise pitchforks.
    - number6 5y ago
      Something along the lines of making American great again? Or the other side of the pendulum? Seems like society stays in the middleground between these opposing forces
    - ricardobayes 5y ago
      What you don't get is those who will raise the pitchforks are not the 'unwashed masses'. It's the mailman, your 'sandwich artist' and the cart girl from the golf course.
      - xwdv 5y ago
        This is why anyone with significant wealth should make it a goal of building a self sustainable off grid home that frees the need for daily cheap labor found in on-grid lifestyles. Maintain robust internet connections so you can stay communicated with peers while things boil over.
xwdv 5y ago
Just goes to show, there will be a time when you think you are safe and happy, in a home with the love of your life – and suddenly a bullet blows through a wall and into your heart, and you will know it was never meant to be. Fade to black.
- trwhite 5y ago
  I don't think you would have time to know or feel anything after being shot. If this is a joke, it seems in bad taste to me. Nonetheless what a terrible waste of human life.
  - xwdv 5y ago
    How is it a joke? It’s a statement doesn’t even have a punchline. And most deaths are rarely instantaneous, in fact I feel even getting shot in the brain isn’t instant but rather leaves you alive and bewildered for a few seconds until you die.
  - vmception 5y ago
    Bleeding out gives you plenty of time to know what happened, or if a bone was shattered you will know too. You will be very lucky if a bullet hits something to make your blood pressure drop too fast. Its not the most common way bullet injury plays out.
    - trwhite 5y ago
      Thankfully not something I, a civilian, in a gun-free society have to think about.
      - skeptical1 5y ago
mynameishere 5y ago
There are plenty of videos on youtube with people putting projectiles through drywall [0] and it turns out even the "wimpy" rounds like 22lr go right through multiple layers with ease. The practical lesson is to "hit the deck" when the bullets start flying, just like in combat. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsBKwzssfwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsBKwzssfwU
- version_five 5y ago
  Somehow I think the practical lesson should be about more than learning to take cover when a gunfight breaks out. I'd like to think there is a better discussion to be had about how to prevent this from happening.
  - Filligree 5y ago
    What discussion is there to be had? Every country other than the US already knows how to solve this.
    - tomjakubowski 5y ago
      I think you ought to qualify that some. Many countries have much higher rates of deaths by firearm (intentional or not) than the United States.
      - Filligree 5y ago
        Not all of them have solved it, no. But the United States is the only place I’m aware of that pretends the presence of firearms is a good thing.
- robin_reala 5y ago
  The practical lesson here is to not visit the US if you can avoid it.
  - yardie 5y ago
ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
01acheru 5y ago
> The shooting happened early Sunday morning > the sound of more than 30 gunshots coming from an apartment complex directly behind Shepards > The shooting appeared to be a random act involving individuals participating in the reckless discharge of firearms How can this happen and keep happening? It is not only about the number of weapons around in the US: the households with weapons in the US are 42% (2017 data), 37.9% in Finland, 16.6% in New Zealand, 28,6% in Switzerland (2005 data). But stuff like that in the US is in the tenfold to hundredfold when compared to similar episodes in any other country that is not bloody poor or a war zone. Why is that? data: gunpolicy.org RIP
- newaccount2021 5y ago
  Thirty shots fired is not random. This isn't kids shooting at bottles in the backyard. Feels like details here are being omitted. If thirty shots can be fired in your neighborhood without an immediate and massive police response, you should move immediately.
  - stevehawk 5y ago
    define immediate. it takes seconds to fire thirty rounds. it takes minutes for police to respond to anything
    - coldtea 5y ago
      Ten to twenty minutes, and closing down the whole 1+ mile area, like it was a terrorist attack. That would be the case in a civilized city/country. Else, it appears as if 30 gunshot rounds is like routine in that place, so it's a kind of shithole.
      - noodlesUK 5y ago
        In the west coast city I lived in last year, it wasn’t uncommon (more than once per week easily) for people to drive around in trucks at night (or even in the day sometimes) and just unload magazines into the sky for no apparent reason. In any other country I’ve ever visited, this would result in a huge news response condemning the act along with a significant police response. I never even saw most of these on the news or saw any significant police response.
moonbug 5y ago
MadSudaca 5y ago
While I’m uncertain of whether what I’m about to ask is proper due to the nature of these news, it’s something I’ve been asking myself for some time and I’d like to know what thoughtful people think on this matter. Would banning guns make the USA a more or less violent country?
- potiuper 5y ago
  A civil / guerilla war would happen - more violent.
- Vosporos 5y ago
  Not necessarily, Switzerland & Finland also have high gun ownership rates. What needs to be done a real education in terms of firearm handling, more restrictions when it comes to ammunition and get out of the culture that firearms are for republicans, rednecks and hillbillies, and be over with the cult of guns.
  - stevehawk 5y ago
    do you really think the people firing those guns did it because they didn't know about gravity? or do you think they did it because they didn't care?
  - jcims 5y ago
    I generally agree, I'd much rather create a society that can be trusted with dangerous things than to nerf everything. >real education in terms of firearm handling We used to do this as part of physical education in the midwest US. We had a 1-2 week course on gun safety and would shoot shotguns and rifles (no pistols though). >get out of the culture that firearms are for republicans, rednecks and hillbillies Agree but this means shushing the people that reject firearms based on that specific association. >be over with the cult of guns There isn't just one 'cult of guns' in the US. The vast majority of gun owners are just normal people, but cult-wise there's the tacticool mall operator type with $8K of gear and cringeworthy social media, the Charlton Heston old guard that fondles their Colt single action on Sunday afternoons, the brooding emo outcast that constantly makes vague threats from mom's basement and the hood rats and gang bangers that dgaf about anything. Statistically its the last two that have had the biggest effect on mass shootings [1] and homicide rates [2], but addressing it head on is super complex and politically dangerous so nothing really gets done. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_S... [2] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-2.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
dystroy 5y ago
Nobody comments on the 20 minutes waiting for the ambulance ? In a city ? In France, when I helped an old lady who had slipped on ice, the emergency services were on site in less than 5 minutes, with all the competences and material to provide life saving interventions. And this was just normal. Why does it look normal in the US to have to wait 20 minutes after having called for a gunfire, and only for a transport ambulance ?
- tschellenbach 5y ago
  That's indeed a terrible response time
- pylua 5y ago
  I live in the Atlanta metropolitan area. When my son had his first seizure 911 did not even pick up. I know in our case, when an emergency happens, people panick, and keep trying to call 911; I have to wonder if that makes the phone lines backed up even more. They called back over 10 minutes later ( I believe; I don't recall the exact number of minutes ). Had to give up and get a neighbor to rush us to the hospital. As an American, it really does feel like the wheels are falling off of the bus so to speak.
- Jolter 5y ago
  I don’t have the facts but it would make some sense for emergency response medics to wait until Police have declared the area safe. Might have been a factor.
- zh3 5y ago
  Owner of a local (UK) Indian restaurant recently went home for a holiday. Came back in a neck brace with terrible bruising, so of course I asked him what happened, he said his car came off the road and rolled into a ditch. He was trapped and thought he would drown. Fortunately for him, lots of people came running and dragged the car (with him still inside) out of the ditch, got him to hospital. The kicker was he said (he's a quiet, older, straight talker) "Thank God it didn't happen in the UK, if it had I would be dead."
  - 5y ago
coolspot 5y ago
> I held him for another 20 minutes while we waited for the ambulance, she said. And while we were waiting, there were more gunshots fired. > No arrests were made. Bumping into downstairs neighbors in the elevator will be awkward for some time.
- Kye 5y ago
  Probably not an elevator: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Brookhaven,+GA/@33.877765,-84.3386564,7615m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x88f5089505f9f565:0x851a6587d0c37ec1!8m2!3d33.8650186!4d-84.3371266 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Brookhaven,+GA/@33.877765,...
carabiner 5y ago
But guns are a tool, aren't they? Guns don't kill people; people kill people.
- MayeulC 5y ago
  Seems like you miss a sarcasm indicator. I'm having a hard time imagining a justification for personal ownership of fully-automatic firearms, especially for hunting.
- makerofthings 5y ago
  Pencils are tools and you could kill someone with a pencil. Doesn't happen all that often though.
  - krapp 5y ago
    Pencils don't have their own Constitutional Amendment or multi-million dollar industrial lobby.
    - harshreality 5y ago
      I think lobbies and advertising tend to be bad — lobbying obviously, and advertising because it extends ordinary business practices to include artificially increasing demand for products; these "features" of capitalism are allowed—advertising under the guise of "informing" people of availability of products, and lobbying under the guise of keeping politicians informed of issues of genuine public concern—but if we're honest, those corporate activities go far beyond that. I'm an individual gun rights absolutist, but I'm also fine with restricting those aspects of corporations. There's no point in getting mad about the gun industry's activities in those respects without being even more incensed about the food and pharma industries. Those destroy a lot more healthy life years than the gun industry ever could. Not much is done, though, because capitalism and because 1A — even though I don't think the 1A inherently applies to corporations, at least not to formally registered ones; nothing about them is an inherent right. In exchange for the power to pool multiple people's resources — capital, tangible property, and labor — under a single authority, once that pool gets sufficiently large, the state imposes requirements that it could never impose on individual natural persons. Incidentally, nothing in the 2A is specific to firearms. Pencils, when carried or used as weapons, do fall within the meaning of "arms" in the 2nd amendment—they're just not very good compared to kubotons. So do knives, swords, baseball bats, golf clubs, and bows&arrows. None of those are regulated even remotely as much as guns are. Of course, they kill far fewer people, but they're used sometimes. And yet, no specific reporting on them is available: all edged weapons, from folding knives to katanas and broadswords, tend to be lumped together, as are all blunt objects, whether a table lamp or a golf club or baseball bat owned by someone who doesn't play golf or baseball.
phendrenad2 5y ago
Happened in an Atlanta suburb. Where were the police? Surely a group of people can't get away with firing off guns near an apartment complex and get away with it?
spalt 5y ago
nathanvanfleet 5y ago
As a Canadian who moved to the United States this is something that I worry about all the time. That putting myself into this situation might just randomly lead to some random violent event happening to me. I remember that within a month of moving here about a block from me there was reports of someone driving their car down the sidewalk. Just last month someone was high on something, climbed up on the top of the Castro theatre, and started throwing cinder blocks down on people. While that's not really the riskiest situation it kind of summarizes some things that seem "normal" in the US that I would never dream might happen where I am from.
- amscanne 5y ago
  FWIW, people drive down sidewalks in Canada too (famously in 2018). While on average the U.S. may have more violence than Canada, it’s certainly not correct say that it is “normal” in the U.S. and you would never dream of it in Canada. To frame it another way: I imagine that the safer neighborhoods in the U.S. are still safer than danger neighborhoods in Canada. The U.S. is also 10x the size of Canada, so you expect 10x as many bad things happening. (I’m also a Canadian living in the U.S. and it bugs me a bit when Canadians romanticize Canada in this way. Your perception is probably much more related to the specific places you lived in Canada and live now and the US.)
sometimeshuman 5y ago
I regret I have no direct comment regarding the parent story other than to express sympathy. But as a U.S. resident I couldn't tell you how many times I have walked past my neighbors' blood on the sidewalk, heard gunshots at night, lived in buildings with bullet damage, or been in situation where I suspected a gun might end my life. My experiences should not be possible, yet they continue. "The Small Arms Survey stated that U.S. civilians alone account for 393 million held firearms. This amounts to "120.5 firearms for every 100 residents."[0] --mildly upsetting story but it's relevant to my subsequent comment-- When I was 10 years old I would ride my BMX bike into a large vacant lot that had abandon cars that were stripped, riddled with bullet holes, and/or hollowed out by fire. But there were also small dirt mounds that were fun to jump. I paused to watch some kids do jumps when I noticed an angelic looking boy my age pointing a revolver at my head about 15 feet from me. I could tell the hammer was pulled back and I tried to keep calm by telling myself it was a toy. We did not break eye contact and ~8 seconds into the staring contest I felt my face involuntarily twist into a blend of defenseless smile and tortured expression. That's when he pulled the trigger and the heavy hammer strike sounded confirming it was not a toy. His focused expression then changed into that special satisfied grin unique to sadists and we both resumed looking at the other BMX riders as if nothing had happened. I don't think his friends noticed the incidence or would have cared if they did. I saw this repeatedly growing up where angelic looking kids commit crimes with impunity. I didn't have that look so I knew if I were ever to say something no one would believe me and perhaps I'd be the one in trouble. You also don't appreciate events like this as a child since everything is normal to child. -- At the risk of down votes, the U.S. should come to terms that the ship has sailed regarding meaningful gun control given there are more guns than people. We should teach gun safety practices including hands on training as early as possible in schools. Perhaps by demystifying guns the boy in my story above would have reminded his parents to lock-up there gun, know to treat all guns as loaded, and the criminal penalties his family could face. Perhaps one of his friends would have also have stopped him if we could change the culture. As a reminder children are curious. Do not ever give your sweet looking child the benefit of the doubt when it comes to firearms. Later today I will ride my dirt bike in there nearby hills where again there are abandoned burned out bullet ridden vehicles, so the above story isn't just in my distant past. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_ownership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_ownership
riddleronroof 5y ago
themgt 5y ago
1) The US homicide/violent crime rate has been much higher than most/all of the rest of the developed world for many decades at least. 2) But since the early 1990s violent crime had been consistently declining, which got to the point the decline was taken as almost a baked-in feature of national discourse. 3) Since a blip up in 2015 the homicide rate plateaued, and then jumped by an unprecedented 30% starting ~summer 2020. This sort of spike didn't happen in ~any other countries during this time. These are the (mostly) uncontested facts, but the debate seems very confused to me because people will point to one or another structural factor as "the reason" for so many American murders, without specifying whether they're referring to 1 or 3 or explaining how that accords with 2 also being true. My assumption is any holistic explanation that encompasses 1/2/3 will not be monocausal, but it's primarily the dramatic recent spike that's causing public attention and concern, and longstanding structural factors don't seem well-suited to explaining a huge overnight jump in murders after a reversion from a decades-long decline.
- harshreality 5y ago
  1) The US approach to multiculturalism, drugs, mental health, and social safety nets has been different from most of the rest of the developed world since the mid-20th century. 3) I wonder what happened culturally and economically from early to mid 2020. Quite mysterious. 2) Economic prosperity, increased surveillance, and simply learning that there are better ways to engage in the drug trade than murdering people over street corner turf, probably contributed to the decrease in violent crime. There was an article a while back about how gangs in LA had essentially transformed themselves in the past few decades—less standing out on street corners, more delivery/pick-up kinds of operations; I can't find a link right now. They still do some of the same stuff, but there's less of it. Also, if you buy the environmental lead explanation or abortion explanation, those are available too.
- muzika 5y ago
  2020 was when the “defund the police” movement has started in the US.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
strickman 5y ago
I left Atlanta for the Gulf Coast a few months ago. Guns are irrelevant, it's the quality of people that matters. From now on I'll adhere strictly to the creed, "live among people that think like you do" and I will only maintain residence in a conservative geography.
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Gun violence is not evenly distributed across the country, even after you account for population density. We have plenty of statistics and we know what the differences are but because those numbers show a very inconvenient truth, we instead some up with all kinds red herrings and tangents to try to explain it away, while also promoting look-busy solutions that don't address the actual source of the problem, which once again, is extremely unevenly distributed.
- Redoubts 5y ago
  > those numbers show a very inconvenient truth Could you be plain about the point you’re making here?
  - hiptobecubic 5y ago
    Their point seems to be that everyone knows their point and no one can say it.
    - tormeh 5y ago
      Or that there's no point saying it because addressing it would require unpopular trade-offs. Like extending the welfare state or tightening gun control. Not even worth debating. Nobody likes to be told that they can't both have their cake and eat it too.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    It sounds like they're talking about the socioeconomic factors behind the violence. I believe there's a book called American Homicide that covers them in detail. The extremely basic overly simplified summary I have is that people who don't have hope or think they've been cheated have less incentive to work within the broken system. https://news.northeastern.edu/2020/01/06/can-gun-violence-be-traced-back-to-socioeconomic-root-causes/ https://news.northeastern.edu/2020/01/06/can-gun-violence-be...
    - dariusj18 5y ago
yason 5y ago
Thirty gunshots is about the same amount that the whole Finnish police discharge in one year countrywide. And those police gunshots are investigated individually as for whether each shot was deemed legal.
gregors 5y ago
U.S. still isn't #1 in gun related deaths. While mass shooting and random shootings are terrible terrible things. And because they are terrible terrible things they tend to get a lot of press, 2/3 of gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-deaths-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-death...
mgarfias 5y ago
You all need to get out of your echo urban chambers.

125 points by baybal2 5y ago

> The shooting appeared to be a random act involving individuals participating in the reckless discharge of firearms. While the second amendment arms US citizens and for reason, simultaneously, the punishment should be 100x greater than it is today for any gun violence of any kind that isn't pure self defense. Whether it's this or school shooters, a serious public example needs to be made that is strong enough to send a chilling effect to stop this horrendous behavior. I feel so sorry for him and his loved ones.

grey-area 5y ago
Your militia is not well regulated.
Hokusai 5y ago
> the punishment should be 100x greater than it is today for any gun violence of any kind that isn't pure self defense Even capital punishment for the shooter will not give that man his live back. If the USA was not so obsessed with owning weapons he would be alive, thou. > to send a chilling effect The USA puts more people in prison that any other developed country, by much. Vengeance does not stop bullets, removing weapons from the streets do.
- rasengan 5y ago
  That means that capital punishment is not enough of a deterrent - same with prison.
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
    Sounds to me like its not possible for such a deterrent to exist, I wonder what solutions other countries have come up with
    - hkt 5y ago
      Gun control and restorative justice approaches seem to be the trick. From the outside it appears a militarised police apparatus isn't working for the US and would be a great target for substantial budget cuts.
      - InsomniacL 5y ago
        Why would you talk about reducing the budget of your current solution before replacing it with something else? Do you think the situation would not get substantially worse? You could ban guns tomorrow but the type of people who are firing 30 shots in to random houses aren't going lay down their arms.
        hkt 5y ago
        Because you can then reallocate the funding from the solution that doesn't work (militarised police, mass incarceration) to solutions that do. The police don't prevent people from firing thirty random shots into a house, but decent alternatives to crime - even for those with little or no educational achievements - might. It requires a holistic approach though, with multiple agencies and policies working together, which is a hard transition from targeted intervention, whether that be policing or sticking plasters. There's a leap of faith involved in making that connection, but it is a small leap once you look at other countries and see how their systems work. The fundamental step is to not make life so awful that desperate people decide a high-stakes life of crime is worth it.
    - guerrilla 5y ago
      What you do is find the root causes and work on eliminating them. A lot of this stuff is just caused by poverty or mental illness. You can just eliminate those and be done with a large part of the problem.
      - netizen-936824 5y ago
        How would we eliminate poverty?
  - Hokusai 5y ago
    Because better than deterrents, based in punishment, is to create a non violent society. That can be accomplished by regulating weapons, reducing poverty and exclusion, better education, etc. Punishment is very limited as an education tool. It has some uses, but positive incentives complement it and, in the end, are more powerful.
    - BurningFrog 5y ago
      "Why don't we just create a utopian society instead" is never a good argument.
      - Hokusai 5y ago
        Less violent societies with less encarcellation rates than the USA exist. That is the minimum that the USA should aspire to.
      - xxpor 5y ago
        There's a huge gap between the US and utopia. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
        BurningFrog 5y ago
        Fully agreed!
    - cgriswald 5y ago
      I'm not sure how to reconcile your choice to downplay deterrents with a claim that regulation is the way forward. Regulation without disincentives is meaningless, isn't it? To my mind, the US has a violence problem and guns much more so than a gun violence problem. Focusing specifically on murder by guns, California and Texas, who are largely similar in murder rates are also largely similar in murder-by-gun rates despite having regulatory environments that are about as far apart as you can get in the United States. I'm not taking a position here, and I understand there might be compounding factors (like both states being border states); but it does make me wonder if what has been effective in other cultures will be effective in the United States. I think your points about reducing poverty and providing for education are on point. Generally speaking, states that I consider "poor" states and regions within states that are generally depressed seem to have higher gun-murder rates. They also seem to have generally more violence. These are things we should focus on anyway (and would probably also help with gun-suicide and gun-related accidents). In the US, I think both sides in this argument are generally disingenuous. Speaking very broadly... Gun control advocates manipulate statistics and call any death by gun "gun violence" as if there is no distinction between a suicide victim and a murderer. They also don't separate out legal versus illegal gun access in the use of gun murder, which I think is meaningful if you're talking about adding more laws/regulations. Some are at least honest enough to state they want to restrict all private gun ownership. Again, broadly speaking, they push laws that are about restricting legitimate gun ownership rather than promoting responsible gun ownership. On the flip side, gun control opponents oppose any change in law and while they acknowledge that there are differences in types of gun-related deaths, they aren't any more nuanced in their views about it and generally don't seem to acknowledge that non-murder gun deaths are also a problem we need to work on. I'd much rather see everyone gather around responsible gun ownership for those that want it. (And I do think that more severe punishment would be useful in reducing accidents and maybe suicides, even though I think it wouldn't do anything for murders.) This has turned into a bit of a ramble I suppose, but I'm just generally wondering what you think the path forward should be, why you think such a path would work in the United States specifically, and how regulations work if deterrents don't work.
  - hyperman1 5y ago
    In general, people assume they won't get caught. This means there is in most cases no deterring effect from any punishment. The human mind simply does not work that way. There is however an effect from people being basically lazy and doing things that make sense only in the spur of the moment, without thinking things through. If getting a gun meant a headache inducing amount of work and waiting time, only people who really want a gun would have one. This is basically the situation in the rest of the world. There are guns, and criminals that want one have no problem getting one on the black market. But even so, most criminals don't get a gun, because the day to day situation simply doesn't give you exposure to them.
  - jrochkind1 5y ago
    Correct
  - brnaftr360 5y ago
    No, that means that the idea that deterrents are constructed on is flawed. The fact of the matter is that no matter what "the people" opt to do, is that state forces in America are reactionary and not preventative - innocent until proven guilty. These people aren't even doing the mental accounting where Z disincentivizes X if it isn't plainly obvious. The most responsible and humane thing to do is to ask why are they able to skip that gap. I think what you'll find is that they're victims to society in many cases - removed from opportunities through any number of institutional or economic processes. E.g. criminal record, or living in an economically depressed area (which itself has many widespread effect). In other cases they're possessed of a genuinely destructive pathology. And in any of these cases they're probably poor. This shit occurs when people are poor. Stop making poor people and violence goes down to the point where pathologically violent or otherwise unstable people are the baseline.
  - adhesive_wombat 5y ago
    That capital punishment is not a deterrent simply goes to show that there a fatal (ha) flaw in the justification for it, leaving behind all the usual worries about executing innocents, giving the state the power to kill those it wants to or even the cost. Either some criminals are not in a state of mind where any rational cost-benefit calculation is happening at all, or a considered cost-benefit calculation puts their own life below the perceived benefit of the act (maybe religiously motivated attacks, say). Alternatively they truly think they won't get caught, which, depending on the crime, place and competence might be the most rational reason. There is nothing that you can do so to deter these "irrational" crimes by just twiddling knobs on the sentence harshness generator.
- candiddevmike 5y ago
  There are too many guns out there now and no one has the political will to reduce them, just like climate change/carbon taxes.
melling 5y ago
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Well, the reason has been debated endlessly so we should skip the debate here. What we can try to figure out is how to make it more difficult for people who commit crimes with a gun to get away with the crime. It's unlikely we will ever catch the person who committed this crime, for example. More technology might help. Machine learning, cameras, ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfire_locator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfire_locator
- Karellen 5y ago
  It always confuses me how people quote the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution to end the argument without further discussion, as if it's impossible to - you know - amend the constitution somehow, if one wanted to. If people want to keep guns for their own reasons, they're allowed to have those reasons and should argue them. But the fact that the constitution was once amended to allow them to is not, by itself, a reason to keep doing so. That's just circular reasoning.
  - melling 5y ago
    I simply quoted it for completeness. Feel free to debate it endlessly or amend the Constitution, etc. We have a lot of pre-existing material. In the meantime, I’m simply trying to have a discussion on using technology to lessen an immediate problem where we should be able to get a little more consensus.
  - ufo 5y ago
    The thing I never understood is why the jurisprudence puts more emphasis on the "right to bear arms" part than in the "a well regulated militia" part.
    - sigstoat 5y ago
      there's a lot which has been written on the subject, from all perspectives. you can find whatever explanation will satisfy your political leanings.
devwastaken 5y ago
"public examples" don't scale.

juanbyrge 5y ago

Now all of a sudden those physics problems involving shooting a gun while on a train seem a lot more depressing :(

drenvuk 5y ago

this is heart breaking. just a while ago there was a child shot while being driven down 880 in the bay area when some people were shooting at each other while driving. he wasn't even on the same side of the highway. these kinds of incidents shouldn't be possible.

rasengan 5y ago
The pain the parents must be feeling is unimaginable and will never heal. This is an example of failure of society -- you give up freedoms to gain securities, but then these securities aren't delivered and you are left upset why the system has failed you, but you have not the freedom to do anything about it.
- Game_Ender 5y ago
  The funny thing is, that in the United States we give up the day to day security of living in a society with fewer guns and much less gun violence because of the freedom citizens have to own guns. I am not saying it really feasible to change the approach in the United States, but it's not really honest to claim that widespread firearms ownership does not have costs. The simple way to think about it is that it decreases the marginal cost, and increases the impact, of many things like suicides, and senseless rampages.
babyshake 5y ago
You can say guns don't kill people, people kill people. But people without guns cannot knife the passenger of another vehicle on the highway or stab 15 people to death within a couple minutes.
- amscanne 5y ago
  I’m not making a commentary on guns, but there are lots of ways that people can be insanely stupid and reckless and end innocent bystanders lives. Talking about highways made me think of this one immediately: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Interstate_75_rock-throwing_deaths https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Interstate_75_rock-thro...

fouc 5y ago

This sounded like the start of a joke. Unfortunately it's just a cruel reality.

moonbug 5y ago
in America, perhaps.

asiachick 5y ago

xwdv 5y ago
It’s a third world country but so what, people live in third world countries. To survive you must live with a third world mentality. Accumulate money and power, so that you can keep you and your family safe and insulated from the dangers of larger American society. As the inequality grows, I seek to distance myself more from those who may one day decide to raise pitchforks.
- nextstep 5y ago
  Exactly. Don't try to change the system, just worry about yourself and your friend's/family's wellbeing. Even if the country goes to shit, you can certainly live in a nice gated community while those who aren't so fortunate raise pitchforks.
  - number6 5y ago
    Something along the lines of making American great again? Or the other side of the pendulum? Seems like society stays in the middleground between these opposing forces
  - ricardobayes 5y ago
    What you don't get is those who will raise the pitchforks are not the 'unwashed masses'. It's the mailman, your 'sandwich artist' and the cart girl from the golf course.
    - xwdv 5y ago
      This is why anyone with significant wealth should make it a goal of building a self sustainable off grid home that frees the need for daily cheap labor found in on-grid lifestyles. Maintain robust internet connections so you can stay communicated with peers while things boil over.

xwdv 5y ago

Just goes to show, there will be a time when you think you are safe and happy, in a home with the love of your life – and suddenly a bullet blows through a wall and into your heart, and you will know it was never meant to be. Fade to black.

trwhite 5y ago
I don't think you would have time to know or feel anything after being shot. If this is a joke, it seems in bad taste to me. Nonetheless what a terrible waste of human life.
- xwdv 5y ago
  How is it a joke? It’s a statement doesn’t even have a punchline. And most deaths are rarely instantaneous, in fact I feel even getting shot in the brain isn’t instant but rather leaves you alive and bewildered for a few seconds until you die.
- vmception 5y ago
  Bleeding out gives you plenty of time to know what happened, or if a bone was shattered you will know too. You will be very lucky if a bullet hits something to make your blood pressure drop too fast. Its not the most common way bullet injury plays out.
  - trwhite 5y ago
    Thankfully not something I, a civilian, in a gun-free society have to think about.
    - skeptical1 5y ago

mynameishere 5y ago

There are plenty of videos on youtube with people putting projectiles through drywall [0] and it turns out even the "wimpy" rounds like 22lr go right through multiple layers with ease. The practical lesson is to "hit the deck" when the bullets start flying, just like in combat. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsBKwzssfwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsBKwzssfwU

version_five 5y ago
Somehow I think the practical lesson should be about more than learning to take cover when a gunfight breaks out. I'd like to think there is a better discussion to be had about how to prevent this from happening.
- Filligree 5y ago
  What discussion is there to be had? Every country other than the US already knows how to solve this.
  - tomjakubowski 5y ago
    I think you ought to qualify that some. Many countries have much higher rates of deaths by firearm (intentional or not) than the United States.
    - Filligree 5y ago
      Not all of them have solved it, no. But the United States is the only place I’m aware of that pretends the presence of firearms is a good thing.
robin_reala 5y ago
The practical lesson here is to not visit the US if you can avoid it.
- yardie 5y ago

ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

01acheru 5y ago

> The shooting happened early Sunday morning > the sound of more than 30 gunshots coming from an apartment complex directly behind Shepards > The shooting appeared to be a random act involving individuals participating in the reckless discharge of firearms How can this happen and keep happening? It is not only about the number of weapons around in the US: the households with weapons in the US are 42% (2017 data), 37.9% in Finland, 16.6% in New Zealand, 28,6% in Switzerland (2005 data). But stuff like that in the US is in the tenfold to hundredfold when compared to similar episodes in any other country that is not bloody poor or a war zone. Why is that? data: gunpolicy.org RIP

newaccount2021 5y ago
Thirty shots fired is not random. This isn't kids shooting at bottles in the backyard. Feels like details here are being omitted. If thirty shots can be fired in your neighborhood without an immediate and massive police response, you should move immediately.
- stevehawk 5y ago
  define immediate. it takes seconds to fire thirty rounds. it takes minutes for police to respond to anything
  - coldtea 5y ago
    Ten to twenty minutes, and closing down the whole 1+ mile area, like it was a terrorist attack. That would be the case in a civilized city/country. Else, it appears as if 30 gunshot rounds is like routine in that place, so it's a kind of shithole.
    - noodlesUK 5y ago
      In the west coast city I lived in last year, it wasn’t uncommon (more than once per week easily) for people to drive around in trucks at night (or even in the day sometimes) and just unload magazines into the sky for no apparent reason. In any other country I’ve ever visited, this would result in a huge news response condemning the act along with a significant police response. I never even saw most of these on the news or saw any significant police response.

moonbug 5y ago

MadSudaca 5y ago

While I’m uncertain of whether what I’m about to ask is proper due to the nature of these news, it’s something I’ve been asking myself for some time and I’d like to know what thoughtful people think on this matter. Would banning guns make the USA a more or less violent country?

potiuper 5y ago
A civil / guerilla war would happen - more violent.
Vosporos 5y ago
Not necessarily, Switzerland & Finland also have high gun ownership rates. What needs to be done a real education in terms of firearm handling, more restrictions when it comes to ammunition and get out of the culture that firearms are for republicans, rednecks and hillbillies, and be over with the cult of guns.
- stevehawk 5y ago
  do you really think the people firing those guns did it because they didn't know about gravity? or do you think they did it because they didn't care?
- jcims 5y ago
  I generally agree, I'd much rather create a society that can be trusted with dangerous things than to nerf everything. >real education in terms of firearm handling We used to do this as part of physical education in the midwest US. We had a 1-2 week course on gun safety and would shoot shotguns and rifles (no pistols though). >get out of the culture that firearms are for republicans, rednecks and hillbillies Agree but this means shushing the people that reject firearms based on that specific association. >be over with the cult of guns There isn't just one 'cult of guns' in the US. The vast majority of gun owners are just normal people, but cult-wise there's the tacticool mall operator type with $8K of gear and cringeworthy social media, the Charlton Heston old guard that fondles their Colt single action on Sunday afternoons, the brooding emo outcast that constantly makes vague threats from mom's basement and the hood rats and gang bangers that dgaf about anything. Statistically its the last two that have had the biggest effect on mass shootings [1] and homicide rates [2], but addressing it head on is super complex and politically dangerous so nothing really gets done. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_S... [2] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-2.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

dystroy 5y ago

Nobody comments on the 20 minutes waiting for the ambulance ? In a city ? In France, when I helped an old lady who had slipped on ice, the emergency services were on site in less than 5 minutes, with all the competences and material to provide life saving interventions. And this was just normal. Why does it look normal in the US to have to wait 20 minutes after having called for a gunfire, and only for a transport ambulance ?

tschellenbach 5y ago
That's indeed a terrible response time
pylua 5y ago
I live in the Atlanta metropolitan area. When my son had his first seizure 911 did not even pick up. I know in our case, when an emergency happens, people panick, and keep trying to call 911; I have to wonder if that makes the phone lines backed up even more. They called back over 10 minutes later ( I believe; I don't recall the exact number of minutes ). Had to give up and get a neighbor to rush us to the hospital. As an American, it really does feel like the wheels are falling off of the bus so to speak.
Jolter 5y ago
I don’t have the facts but it would make some sense for emergency response medics to wait until Police have declared the area safe. Might have been a factor.
zh3 5y ago
Owner of a local (UK) Indian restaurant recently went home for a holiday. Came back in a neck brace with terrible bruising, so of course I asked him what happened, he said his car came off the road and rolled into a ditch. He was trapped and thought he would drown. Fortunately for him, lots of people came running and dragged the car (with him still inside) out of the ditch, got him to hospital. The kicker was he said (he's a quiet, older, straight talker) "Thank God it didn't happen in the UK, if it had I would be dead."
- 5y ago

coolspot 5y ago

> I held him for another 20 minutes while we waited for the ambulance, she said. And while we were waiting, there were more gunshots fired. > No arrests were made. Bumping into downstairs neighbors in the elevator will be awkward for some time.

Kye 5y ago
Probably not an elevator: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Brookhaven,+GA/@33.877765,-84.3386564,7615m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x88f5089505f9f565:0x851a6587d0c37ec1!8m2!3d33.8650186!4d-84.3371266 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Brookhaven,+GA/@33.877765,...

carabiner 5y ago

But guns are a tool, aren't they? Guns don't kill people; people kill people.

MayeulC 5y ago
Seems like you miss a sarcasm indicator. I'm having a hard time imagining a justification for personal ownership of fully-automatic firearms, especially for hunting.
makerofthings 5y ago
Pencils are tools and you could kill someone with a pencil. Doesn't happen all that often though.
- krapp 5y ago
  Pencils don't have their own Constitutional Amendment or multi-million dollar industrial lobby.
  - harshreality 5y ago
    I think lobbies and advertising tend to be bad — lobbying obviously, and advertising because it extends ordinary business practices to include artificially increasing demand for products; these "features" of capitalism are allowed—advertising under the guise of "informing" people of availability of products, and lobbying under the guise of keeping politicians informed of issues of genuine public concern—but if we're honest, those corporate activities go far beyond that. I'm an individual gun rights absolutist, but I'm also fine with restricting those aspects of corporations. There's no point in getting mad about the gun industry's activities in those respects without being even more incensed about the food and pharma industries. Those destroy a lot more healthy life years than the gun industry ever could. Not much is done, though, because capitalism and because 1A — even though I don't think the 1A inherently applies to corporations, at least not to formally registered ones; nothing about them is an inherent right. In exchange for the power to pool multiple people's resources — capital, tangible property, and labor — under a single authority, once that pool gets sufficiently large, the state imposes requirements that it could never impose on individual natural persons. Incidentally, nothing in the 2A is specific to firearms. Pencils, when carried or used as weapons, do fall within the meaning of "arms" in the 2nd amendment—they're just not very good compared to kubotons. So do knives, swords, baseball bats, golf clubs, and bows&arrows. None of those are regulated even remotely as much as guns are. Of course, they kill far fewer people, but they're used sometimes. And yet, no specific reporting on them is available: all edged weapons, from folding knives to katanas and broadswords, tend to be lumped together, as are all blunt objects, whether a table lamp or a golf club or baseball bat owned by someone who doesn't play golf or baseball.

phendrenad2 5y ago

Happened in an Atlanta suburb. Where were the police? Surely a group of people can't get away with firing off guns near an apartment complex and get away with it?

spalt 5y ago

nathanvanfleet 5y ago

As a Canadian who moved to the United States this is something that I worry about all the time. That putting myself into this situation might just randomly lead to some random violent event happening to me. I remember that within a month of moving here about a block from me there was reports of someone driving their car down the sidewalk. Just last month someone was high on something, climbed up on the top of the Castro theatre, and started throwing cinder blocks down on people. While that's not really the riskiest situation it kind of summarizes some things that seem "normal" in the US that I would never dream might happen where I am from.

amscanne 5y ago
FWIW, people drive down sidewalks in Canada too (famously in 2018). While on average the U.S. may have more violence than Canada, it’s certainly not correct say that it is “normal” in the U.S. and you would never dream of it in Canada. To frame it another way: I imagine that the safer neighborhoods in the U.S. are still safer than danger neighborhoods in Canada. The U.S. is also 10x the size of Canada, so you expect 10x as many bad things happening. (I’m also a Canadian living in the U.S. and it bugs me a bit when Canadians romanticize Canada in this way. Your perception is probably much more related to the specific places you lived in Canada and live now and the US.)

sometimeshuman 5y ago

I regret I have no direct comment regarding the parent story other than to express sympathy. But as a U.S. resident I couldn't tell you how many times I have walked past my neighbors' blood on the sidewalk, heard gunshots at night, lived in buildings with bullet damage, or been in situation where I suspected a gun might end my life. My experiences should not be possible, yet they continue. "The Small Arms Survey stated that U.S. civilians alone account for 393 million held firearms. This amounts to "120.5 firearms for every 100 residents."[0] --mildly upsetting story but it's relevant to my subsequent comment-- When I was 10 years old I would ride my BMX bike into a large vacant lot that had abandon cars that were stripped, riddled with bullet holes, and/or hollowed out by fire. But there were also small dirt mounds that were fun to jump. I paused to watch some kids do jumps when I noticed an angelic looking boy my age pointing a revolver at my head about 15 feet from me. I could tell the hammer was pulled back and I tried to keep calm by telling myself it was a toy. We did not break eye contact and ~8 seconds into the staring contest I felt my face involuntarily twist into a blend of defenseless smile and tortured expression. That's when he pulled the trigger and the heavy hammer strike sounded confirming it was not a toy. His focused expression then changed into that special satisfied grin unique to sadists and we both resumed looking at the other BMX riders as if nothing had happened. I don't think his friends noticed the incidence or would have cared if they did. I saw this repeatedly growing up where angelic looking kids commit crimes with impunity. I didn't have that look so I knew if I were ever to say something no one would believe me and perhaps I'd be the one in trouble. You also don't appreciate events like this as a child since everything is normal to child. -- At the risk of down votes, the U.S. should come to terms that the ship has sailed regarding meaningful gun control given there are more guns than people. We should teach gun safety practices including hands on training as early as possible in schools. Perhaps by demystifying guns the boy in my story above would have reminded his parents to lock-up there gun, know to treat all guns as loaded, and the criminal penalties his family could face. Perhaps one of his friends would have also have stopped him if we could change the culture. As a reminder children are curious. Do not ever give your sweet looking child the benefit of the doubt when it comes to firearms. Later today I will ride my dirt bike in there nearby hills where again there are abandoned burned out bullet ridden vehicles, so the above story isn't just in my distant past. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_ownership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_ownership

riddleronroof 5y ago

themgt 5y ago

1) The US homicide/violent crime rate has been much higher than most/all of the rest of the developed world for many decades at least. 2) But since the early 1990s violent crime had been consistently declining, which got to the point the decline was taken as almost a baked-in feature of national discourse. 3) Since a blip up in 2015 the homicide rate plateaued, and then jumped by an unprecedented 30% starting ~summer 2020. This sort of spike didn't happen in ~any other countries during this time. These are the (mostly) uncontested facts, but the debate seems very confused to me because people will point to one or another structural factor as "the reason" for so many American murders, without specifying whether they're referring to 1 or 3 or explaining how that accords with 2 also being true. My assumption is any holistic explanation that encompasses 1/2/3 will not be monocausal, but it's primarily the dramatic recent spike that's causing public attention and concern, and longstanding structural factors don't seem well-suited to explaining a huge overnight jump in murders after a reversion from a decades-long decline.

harshreality 5y ago
1) The US approach to multiculturalism, drugs, mental health, and social safety nets has been different from most of the rest of the developed world since the mid-20th century. 3) I wonder what happened culturally and economically from early to mid 2020. Quite mysterious. 2) Economic prosperity, increased surveillance, and simply learning that there are better ways to engage in the drug trade than murdering people over street corner turf, probably contributed to the decrease in violent crime. There was an article a while back about how gangs in LA had essentially transformed themselves in the past few decades—less standing out on street corners, more delivery/pick-up kinds of operations; I can't find a link right now. They still do some of the same stuff, but there's less of it. Also, if you buy the environmental lead explanation or abortion explanation, those are available too.
muzika 5y ago
2020 was when the “defund the police” movement has started in the US.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago

strickman 5y ago

I left Atlanta for the Gulf Coast a few months ago. Guns are irrelevant, it's the quality of people that matters. From now on I'll adhere strictly to the creed, "live among people that think like you do" and I will only maintain residence in a conservative geography.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

Gun violence is not evenly distributed across the country, even after you account for population density. We have plenty of statistics and we know what the differences are but because those numbers show a very inconvenient truth, we instead some up with all kinds red herrings and tangents to try to explain it away, while also promoting look-busy solutions that don't address the actual source of the problem, which once again, is extremely unevenly distributed.

Redoubts 5y ago
> those numbers show a very inconvenient truth Could you be plain about the point you’re making here?
- hiptobecubic 5y ago
  Their point seems to be that everyone knows their point and no one can say it.
  - tormeh 5y ago
    Or that there's no point saying it because addressing it would require unpopular trade-offs. Like extending the welfare state or tightening gun control. Not even worth debating. Nobody likes to be told that they can't both have their cake and eat it too.
- giantg2 5y ago
  It sounds like they're talking about the socioeconomic factors behind the violence. I believe there's a book called American Homicide that covers them in detail. The extremely basic overly simplified summary I have is that people who don't have hope or think they've been cheated have less incentive to work within the broken system. https://news.northeastern.edu/2020/01/06/can-gun-violence-be-traced-back-to-socioeconomic-root-causes/ https://news.northeastern.edu/2020/01/06/can-gun-violence-be...
  - dariusj18 5y ago

yason 5y ago

Thirty gunshots is about the same amount that the whole Finnish police discharge in one year countrywide. And those police gunshots are investigated individually as for whether each shot was deemed legal.

gregors 5y ago

U.S. still isn't #1 in gun related deaths. While mass shooting and random shootings are terrible terrible things. And because they are terrible terrible things they tend to get a lot of press, 2/3 of gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-deaths-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-death...

mgarfias 5y ago

You all need to get out of your echo urban chambers.