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> So, who gets to have guns then if they are confiscated from citizens? Only the elite and powerful? I'm an Australian. The answer is anyone who wants to if yo

> So, who gets to have guns then if they are confiscated from citizens? Only the elite and powerful? I'm an Australian. The answer is anyone who wants to if you aren't on one of the usual lists (the same sort of lists US has). I know one person with 40 guns at home. But ... there are rules. You have to have training, the sort of training you can typically only achieve by joining a gun club. You have to be registered. You have to have an approved gun safe. I think there is a regulation about storing the ammo separately. Nothing over the top, certainly nothing more burdensome than a car owner faces. Because it's not difficult we have our share of Olympic firearms champions, we have political parties called "The hunters and fishers party". It a wild guess, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if Australia has the same proportion of people who enjoy hunting with guns as the US does. All this is allowed, and our Olympic shooters are celebrated, just like all other sports people. > What’s stopping these crazy people from using other means possibly even more destructive if guns are somehow eliminated? Do we ban cars, trucks, fuel, fertilizers, chemicals, and poisonous household products as well? I don't know what stops them from finding other ways to kill themselves (suicide) and or others. But the statistics are pretty clear. They don't do it. Which does make you wonder about the difference between the homicide rates in the US and the rest of the world. If there is one clear difference in attitude, it's this: owning a gun for personal protection is not considered good form any Western country other than the USA. And that unsurprisingly means people don't shoot each other as often, which translates to fewer gun homicides. For example USA gun ownership: 120/100 people [0]. Australia gun ownership: 30/100. So maybe 4 times any many guns in the USA. But gun homicides: 4.12/100 in the USA, 0.18 in Australia. 22 times higher. To state the obvious: if the goal of "owning a gun for personal protection" is to keep you safer, it ain't working. In fact it's a disaster - the cure is far worse than the disease. The civil society in west is usually very good at digesting that sort of information, and acting on it. (They don't always act on it by banning or restricting gun ownership - Australia certainly didn't.) The fact the the USA's civil society hasn't managed that makes us think you yankees are a little odd. [0] https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-gun-policy-global-comparisons https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-gun-policy-global-compar...

cudgy 4y ago
> For example USA gun ownership: 120/100 people [0]. Australia gun ownership: 30/100. So maybe 4 times any many guns in the USA. But gun homicides: 4.12/100 in the USA, 0.18 in Australia. 22 times higher > The fact the the USA's civil society hasn't managed that makes us think you yankees are a little odd. First, your stat on US homicide is off by a factor of 1,000. It should read 4.12/100,000. This is going to be controversial, but the facts are the facts. Gun homicides in the US are vastly skewed toward a single group of people in urban areas. 34.9 gun homicide victims per 100,000 people are blacks. 1.5 gun homicide victims per 100,000 people are whites. Blacks are 23.3 times higher than whites to be victims of a gun homicide. Furthermore, the black victims lived in large urban areas and were shot by other blacks around 90% of the time. Now, some articles suggest that most guns are owned by white men, but I do not share the same trust in the estimate of guns that you may. How are these estimates arrived at? Anyway, assuming that one accepts the premise that most guns are owned by white men in rural America and that proliferation of guns is the main cause of gun homicides, why aren’t most gun homicides committed in rural areas by white men? Do you see the problem? Or are Australians a little odd? The issue appears to not be due to high numbers of guns. It appears to be highly concentrated in urban black communities. So why is this not discussed by the media and mostly Democratic politicians, especially when it ravages blacks in urban communities that are governed by politicians that are Democrats? Probably for the same reason that my response which is based on cold hard statistics will be flagged or voted down. The oddity of the US is not the people, but the pathetic politicians that are more concerned about a political talking point than finding the root cause of the issue. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7042a6.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7042a6.htm
- rstuart4133 4y ago
  > So why is this not discussed by the media and mostly Democratic politicians, especially when it ravages blacks in urban communities that are governed by politicians that are Democrats? One of the "facts are the facts" things you seem to have missed is gun related deaths are highest (by far) in the Republican states. I don't whether that means it's a Republican or Democrat issue. I'm not from the USA I don't know the politics that well, but from a distance, it does look like it's mainly Republicans who say things like "the answer to the gun problem is more people wearing guns". As for black vs white. There is a kernel of truth there - there is more violence in black communities, about double the death rates from what I can tell. But blacks only constitute 13% of the USA population. If you remove them the USA gun rates are still far higher than rest of the world - and that statistical difference is caused by the 80% white population, not the blacks. And that's just homicides. Most gun related deaths are suicides, which are also obscenely high in the USA. When it comes to suicides, the figures are reversed - whites have over double the rates of blacks. That means when you include all gun related deaths, the whites actually worse rates than the blacks. > more concerned about a political talking point than finding the root cause of the issue. That is a downright weird observation. It was _you_ who introduced the Republican / Democrat divide here as a talking point, not some politician. It was you who brought in the largely irrelevant race issue, rather looking for a root cause. If you looking change the discussion into an honest one that might address the issue (assuming you want it addressed), then I'd start with the person in the mirror. If you can change him, you can probably convince anyone.

cudgy 4y ago

> For example USA gun ownership: 120/100 people [0]. Australia gun ownership: 30/100. So maybe 4 times any many guns in the USA. But gun homicides: 4.12/100 in the USA, 0.18 in Australia. 22 times higher > The fact the the USA's civil society hasn't managed that makes us think you yankees are a little odd. First, your stat on US homicide is off by a factor of 1,000. It should read 4.12/100,000. This is going to be controversial, but the facts are the facts. Gun homicides in the US are vastly skewed toward a single group of people in urban areas. 34.9 gun homicide victims per 100,000 people are blacks. 1.5 gun homicide victims per 100,000 people are whites. Blacks are 23.3 times higher than whites to be victims of a gun homicide. Furthermore, the black victims lived in large urban areas and were shot by other blacks around 90% of the time. Now, some articles suggest that most guns are owned by white men, but I do not share the same trust in the estimate of guns that you may. How are these estimates arrived at? Anyway, assuming that one accepts the premise that most guns are owned by white men in rural America and that proliferation of guns is the main cause of gun homicides, why aren’t most gun homicides committed in rural areas by white men? Do you see the problem? Or are Australians a little odd? The issue appears to not be due to high numbers of guns. It appears to be highly concentrated in urban black communities. So why is this not discussed by the media and mostly Democratic politicians, especially when it ravages blacks in urban communities that are governed by politicians that are Democrats? Probably for the same reason that my response which is based on cold hard statistics will be flagged or voted down. The oddity of the US is not the people, but the pathetic politicians that are more concerned about a political talking point than finding the root cause of the issue. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7042a6.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7042a6.htm

rstuart4133 4y ago
> So why is this not discussed by the media and mostly Democratic politicians, especially when it ravages blacks in urban communities that are governed by politicians that are Democrats? One of the "facts are the facts" things you seem to have missed is gun related deaths are highest (by far) in the Republican states. I don't whether that means it's a Republican or Democrat issue. I'm not from the USA I don't know the politics that well, but from a distance, it does look like it's mainly Republicans who say things like "the answer to the gun problem is more people wearing guns". As for black vs white. There is a kernel of truth there - there is more violence in black communities, about double the death rates from what I can tell. But blacks only constitute 13% of the USA population. If you remove them the USA gun rates are still far higher than rest of the world - and that statistical difference is caused by the 80% white population, not the blacks. And that's just homicides. Most gun related deaths are suicides, which are also obscenely high in the USA. When it comes to suicides, the figures are reversed - whites have over double the rates of blacks. That means when you include all gun related deaths, the whites actually worse rates than the blacks. > more concerned about a political talking point than finding the root cause of the issue. That is a downright weird observation. It was _you_ who introduced the Republican / Democrat divide here as a talking point, not some politician. It was you who brought in the largely irrelevant race issue, rather looking for a root cause. If you looking change the discussion into an honest one that might address the issue (assuming you want it addressed), then I'd start with the person in the mirror. If you can change him, you can probably convince anyone.