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Surely you have seen the graphs comparing america to other stable democracies. Americans kill each other using guns way more often than the citizens of any remo

by lerouxb 14y ago

Surely you have seen the graphs comparing america to other stable democracies. Americans kill each other using guns way more often than the citizens of any remotely comparable country. You can't kill people using a gun if you don't have a gun. If it isn't guns that is the problem, then what is it? Something in the water? The air? Genetic? Americans just love killing each other and would happily do it with their hands or knives or cars or pillows or whatever if they couldn't legally buy guns? Maybe, but what does that say about American society? I don't think there's much wrong with society apart from your interpretation of your constitutional rights. This guy who everyone on the left and right labelled a coward is such a coward but would have crossed the border to illegally buy a gun from (presumably) some drug-cartel gangsters and committed the crime anyway if he couldn't easily buy it legally over the internet? I don't buy it. Guns have everything to do with it. Assault rifles have everything to do with it. He wouldn't be able to kill and maim that many people using a six shooter or a knife or a truck. End of story. And the guy is crazy. How is that a political or societal issue? Something unique about America made him crazy? America has a higher percentage of crazy people? Again, no one believes that. There are crazy people everywhere and in all countries yet we don't see crazy people in other countries that aren't currently in civil war killing each other at this scale all the time. You can't stop crazy people but you can at least try to limit the damage. I live in South Africa. We have notoriously porous borders. Most of the rest of africa is flooded with assault rifles and other illegal weapons, so if you want to get a gun illegally it should be easy. Legal gun sales, gun licenses, etc are tightly regulated not unlike Australia. Whatever political or societal or cultural problem you can point out in America, we have that too. Probably worse. Yet we don't have these massacres. We have a high crime rate, yes, but we don't have this sort of thing. You say we're jumping to conclusions, fine. What other realistic interpretation do have to offer? How do you propose America deals with the "black or hispanic inner city" problem? Make laws to take away their guns, but allow the rural whites to keep theirs? Good luck with that. I suppose you would argue that those black and hispanic youths have illegal weapons. Fine. Maybe. But where would you even find illegal weapons if there are hardly any unaccounted for legal ones to begin with?

learc83 14y ago
>I live in South Africa. Your homicide rate is 7 times ours. >Legal gun sales, gun licenses, etc are tightly regulated not unlike Australia. Yet you have 7 times the murder rate. >If it isn't guns that is the problem, then what is it? Obviously it's not the guns. America has 7 times the guns (per capita), but 7 times less murders (per capita). Going by your example there is an inverse linear relationship between guns ownership and homicides. >Maybe. But where would you even find illegal weapons if there are hardly any unaccounted for legal ones to begin with? We have 300 million guns in America, they are nearly all unregistered. There is simply no way to remove them. Furthermore if you tried to confiscate them, there are literally tens of thousands of heavily armed people just waiting for the government to try to take away their guns. The death toll would dwarf any killings you could prevent. If you banned all guns the black market price would skyrocket and many of those 300 million guns that are currently just sitting unused in basements would end up on the streets. The only possible outcome is that after the initial carnage, chaos and insurrection, law abiding citizens give up their guns, while hundreds of millions of guns are still circulating in the hands of criminals. Then once the violence stops, thousands of gun enthusiasts will start manufacturing more firearms. You cannot possibly understand how seriously many American's believe in our right to own firearms. Discussing banning, or Australian style restrictions is a moot point--it cannot happen in the foreseeable future.
- lerouxb 14y ago
  Look closer at the statistics. Just like most other countries it is mostly people killing people they know within their own communities. Typically relatives. Look at what they use to kill each other, how many people they kill per incident, the demographics of the people doing the killing and being killed, etc. A crazy high percentage is things like off-duty cops using their service pistols to kill their own families, for example. We're a messed up country for all sorts of other reasons that are obviously too long to go into here. But we don't have people regularly shooting up schools, malls and cinemas. (And South Africa as an example made up maybe 10% of my comment.)
  - learc83 14y ago

by lerouxb 14y ago

learc83 14y ago

>I live in South Africa. Your homicide rate is 7 times ours. >Legal gun sales, gun licenses, etc are tightly regulated not unlike Australia. Yet you have 7 times the murder rate. >If it isn't guns that is the problem, then what is it? Obviously it's not the guns. America has 7 times the guns (per capita), but 7 times less murders (per capita). Going by your example there is an inverse linear relationship between guns ownership and homicides. >Maybe. But where would you even find illegal weapons if there are hardly any unaccounted for legal ones to begin with? We have 300 million guns in America, they are nearly all unregistered. There is simply no way to remove them. Furthermore if you tried to confiscate them, there are literally tens of thousands of heavily armed people just waiting for the government to try to take away their guns. The death toll would dwarf any killings you could prevent. If you banned all guns the black market price would skyrocket and many of those 300 million guns that are currently just sitting unused in basements would end up on the streets. The only possible outcome is that after the initial carnage, chaos and insurrection, law abiding citizens give up their guns, while hundreds of millions of guns are still circulating in the hands of criminals. Then once the violence stops, thousands of gun enthusiasts will start manufacturing more firearms. You cannot possibly understand how seriously many American's believe in our right to own firearms. Discussing banning, or Australian style restrictions is a moot point--it cannot happen in the foreseeable future.

lerouxb 14y ago
Look closer at the statistics. Just like most other countries it is mostly people killing people they know within their own communities. Typically relatives. Look at what they use to kill each other, how many people they kill per incident, the demographics of the people doing the killing and being killed, etc. A crazy high percentage is things like off-duty cops using their service pistols to kill their own families, for example. We're a messed up country for all sorts of other reasons that are obviously too long to go into here. But we don't have people regularly shooting up schools, malls and cinemas. (And South Africa as an example made up maybe 10% of my comment.)
- learc83 14y ago