Dayton and El Paso: 'Good Guys With Guns' Can Rarely Stop Mass Shootings - "The gunman who opened fire in Dayton, Ohio early Sunday killed nine people and wounded 14 in just 32 seconds before police responded and took him down.Dayton, along with the shooting at an El Paso, Texas Walmart the day before, are the most recent mass shootings that show how, despite the presence of trained officers and armed civilians—the people the National Rifle Association would call “good guys with guns”—gunmen can inflict horrific casualty counts within seconds, before anyone can respond. Experts on violent crime say such incidents make clear that despite the NRA’s post-Sandy Hook justification, relaxing gun laws to let more people to arm themselves has done nothing to prevent mass shootings. It’s likely to make things worse if armed civilians intervene when shootings erupt in public places, says John Donohue, a Stanford Law School professor whose research has focused on gun violence and policy. “Unless you’re very well trained, you usually add more to the body count than you subtract,” Donohue says.But it’s an experiment that has played out across the United States at the cost of hundreds of lives. The notion that a “good guy with a gun” can prevent a mass shooting gained traction after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., when NRA then-Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said, “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” during a defiant press conference amid rising calls for gun control. Many states have taken that advice to heart in the years since. In states where Republicans have control, laws that loosen gun restrictions increased by 75% in the wake of mass shootings... Nearly every state implemented new gun laws after the Sandy Hook shooting, with about two-thirds enacting laws that made access to guns easier and gave more rights to gun owners... While mass shootings have not increased in frequency since 2012, they have become deadlier... while police or other armed response can end a rampage and save lives, authorities typically can’t respond fast enough to prevent an active shooter entirely––and the death tolls add up in seconds.“It really is unbelievably lucky how effective the police response was in these recent mass shootings,” Donohue says. “And there were probably loads of people carrying weapons around and they did nothing. You can’t expect them to.” There was at least one armed citizen at Cielo Vista Mall near the Walmart in El Paso during the shooting. Army Pfc. Glendon Oakley said in interviews that he was carrying a licensed handgun and drew it when he heard the gunshots... But, he said he didn’t see the shooter and so instead focused on rescuing as many children as he could... It’s rare to find instances of armed civilians responding to mass shooters in public spaces, even when they have the legal right to carry weapons––like most residents of Texas and Ohio do. Typically, mass shootings occur in crowded, populated areas—and people never respond exactly how they might imagine they’d react, says Joe Hendry, director of risk assessments and a national trainer at the ALICE Training Institute, which focuses on response strategies to shootings.“Carrying a concealed weapon is basically for the defense of yourself. It’s a whole different level of training and expertise to defend others”... Even law enforcement officers, who receive training to respond to mass shootings, often don’t react as expected. For one thing, police usually respond to shootings once they are already underway—whether they appear on the scene within a few seconds or several minutes, the damage has already been done. According to Hendry, only about one in five rounds fired by officers responding to shootings hit their targets.“It’s a very difficult thing to shoot in a room that’s full of people, while someone is shooting at you,” he says.And even with the proper training and being in the right place, armed citizens cannot always stop a shooter before the assailant opens fire."
Mass shootings aren't growing more common – and evidence contradicts common stereotypes about the killers - "A 2017 public policy statement by the American Psychological Association’s media psychology and technology division specifically recommended politicians should stop linking violent games to mass shootings. It’s time to lay this myth to rest.
Early reports suggest that the El Paso shooter was a white racist concerned about Latino immigration. Other shooters, such as the perpetrator of the Christchurch, New Zealand attack, have also been white supremacists.Overall, though, the ethnic composition of the group of all mass shooters in the U.S. is roughly equivalent to the American population. Hateful people tend to be attracted to hateful ideologies. Some shootings, such as the 2016 shooting of police officers in Dallas, were reportedly motivated by anti-white hatred. Other shooters, such as the 2015 San Bernardino husband and wife perpetrator team, have espoused other hateful ideas such as radical Islam.Most mass homicide perpetrators don’t proclaim any allegiance to a particular ideology at all. Of course, mass homicides in other nations – such as several deadly knife attacks in Japan – don’t involve U.S. race issues...
I’ve seen the suggestion that individuals with mental illness account for just 5% of violent crimes. However, that assertion is based on research like one Swedish study that limited mental illness to psychosis only, which is experienced by about 1% or less of the population. If 1% of people commit 5% of crimes, that suggests psychosis elevates risk of crime... So improving access to mental health services would benefit a whole range of people and, by coincidence, occasionally bring treatment to someone at risk of committing violence. But focusing only on mental health is unlikely to put much of a dent in societal violence...
Using standard definitions, most data suggest that the prevalence of mass shootings has stayed fairly consistent over the past few decades... mass homicides have stayed stagnant while other homicides have plummeted in frequency is a question worth asking.Nonetheless, it does not appear that the U.S. is awash in an epidemic of such crimes, at least comparing to previous decades going back to the 1970s."
Mom shoots 'intruder' who turned out to be her daughter - "A mother allegedly mistakenly shot her 18-year-old daughter when she came home from college to surprise her. The unnamed Girard, Ohio, woman fired a single shot at a person she assumed was an intruder, striking her daughter in the arm... "If you realize someone has a gun for protection and they're not expecting you, announce yourself when you enter the home," Chief Norman advised. "Even if you're getting up to get a drink of water in the middle of the night, just announce yourself.""
Clearly, more guns are the solution
Meme - "Why Do I Need an AR-15? Because Some Day the Government May Tell Me I'm Not Allowed to Put My Sick Son on a Plane and Fly Him to Italy for Treatment and Believe Me whenI Tell You I WILL Be Putting Him on That Plane #AlfieEvans"
"I Need an AR-15 in Case I Need to Hijack a Plane to Fly My Son to a Country With Socialized Healthcare Is Currently My Favorite Take on Gun Ownership"
Anger causes violence: Treat it rather than mental illness to stop mass murder. - "In the wake of a string of horrific mass shootings by people who in many cases had emotional problems, it has become fashionable to blame mental illness for violent crimes. It has even been suggested that these crimes justify not only banning people with a history of mental illness from buying weapons but also arming those without such diagnoses so that they may protect themselves from the dangerous mentally ill. This fundamentally misrepresents where the danger lies. Violence is not a product of mental illness. Nor is violence generally the action of ordinary, stable individuals who suddenly “break” and commit crimes of passion. Violent crimes are committed by violent people, those who do not have the skills to manage their anger. Most homicides are committed by people with a history of violence. Murderers are rarely ordinary, law-abiding citizens, and they are also rarely mentally ill. Violence is a product of compromised anger management skills... Paolo del Vecchio of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has said, “Violence by those with mental illness is so small that even if you could somehow cure it all, 95 percent of violent crime would still exist.”"
Of course it's much easier to blame mental illness than gun laws and gun availability
Brazil Has an Idea to Fix Rampant Gun Violence: More Guns - WSJ - "Brazil’s murders are largely carried out with guns made in the country and originally sold legally... Many states failed to fully implement the gun-control law by removing guns from circulation—an unpopular measure in many crime-ridden areas—while the country also didn’t do enough to prevent guns flooding into the black market, said Tulio Kahn, a former security consultant to the government. “The problem, as ever in Brazil, is that the law is good, it just needed to be enforced,” he said... “It would be like a tropical version of a Bruce Willis movie or an old-fashioned Western, where everyone is armed and bad-tempered, going around shooting each other over the smallest thing,” said Rafael Alcadipani, a security expert at Brazil’s Getulio Vargas Foundation, a higher education institution focused on public administration. Mr. Alcadipani has been embedded in Brazil’s police force for the past six years.Mr. Kahn, the former security consultant, said the problem isn’t just gangs or criminals armed with illegal weapons, but ordinary law-abiding Brazilians—the “good citizens,” as Mr. Bolsonaro likes to call them. In São Paulo, the majority of murders are everyday altercations that spiral out of control, often committed by first-time offenders, he said."
More examples of how legal guns become illegal ones. So regulations on 'law abiding citizens' can keep guns out of the hands of criminals
Understanding the Second Amendment: What Dana Loesch's CNN Town Hall statements got wrong about history - "Mason’s statement at the Virginia Ratifying Convention was a criticism of Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution, which gave Congress the power “to provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the militia.” Mason’s fear was that if Congress had this power, they would decide to only conscript the poor into service. Not an unreasonable fear, mind you, given the way most wars have gone. It is often the poor fighting and dying, while the rich enlist in champagne units or sit at home tending to their “bone spurs.”... It is important to know that, at the time the constitution was signed, there was significant opposition to having a standing army, and state militias were supposed to fill that gap. The state, in turn, was supposed to arm and train them. They were there to suppress insurrections—specifically slave insurrections and anti-tax insurrections like the Whiskey Rebellion, and to fight Native Americans who, god forbid, wanted to continue living where they were living—not to start them. From the second Military Act of 1792 until the establishment of the National Guard in 1904, all “free, able-bodied white male citizens” were conscripted into state militias and were required to fight at the behest of the government. So yes—guns for certain individuals. But individuals that were trained and disciplined, and not all that free."
All the gun nuts crazy about the Second Amendment always ignore the "well regulated" bit. To say nothing of "militia"
The True Meaning of the Second Amendment - "Of all the changes the new Constitution made in the relations of state and nation, the new central government’s arrogation of power over the militia was the most radical single feature of the new system. Under the Articles of Confederation, from 1777 on, states were required to maintain their own “well regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered”... The states were further protected by remarkable supermajority rules: Unless nine states out of 13 agreed, Congress couldn’t declare war, raise an army, or even appoint a “commander in chief of the army or navy.” Even if the nation was invaded, five states could stop any military response; even if the other eight agreed, they would not even be able to appoint a commanding general, much less march against the enemy.All told, the arms and the military power remained solidly in state hands, with the confederation government taking over only in the direst circumstances, and after humbly asking the states for permission... In the Constitution of 1787, by contrast, the federal government would control virtually every aspect of war, peace, and military structure... it suggests that, in adopting what became the Second Amendment, members of Congress were attempting to reassure the states that they could retain their militias and that Congress could not disarm them... Dick Heller, a law-abiding citizen, can own a handgun in his home for self-protection. The text and context, however, don’t point us to an unlimited individual right to bear any kind and number of weapons by anyone, whether a minor or a felon or domestic abuser. That would be a right that, if recognized by the courts, has the potential to disrupt our society at a profound level; a right that, as Fallows’s correspondent blithely asserts, renders the damage of gun violence “utterly irrelevant.”There’s no other such right anywhere in the Constitution. To prove that the Second Amendment transcends all others, the proof would have to be damned strong. I haven’t seen it yet."
Mass shootings are low in Switzerland. Here's why. - "The country's gun ownership rate is high... its rate of deaths from gun violence is still high for Europe... Switzerland has mandatory military service for able-bodied adult men, and women may volunteer for military service as well... many Swiss people own firearms and are highly trained in their use by default... Since many Swiss citizens obtain their weapons through the military, this acts as a major avenue by which gun owners' capability can be verified... some Swiss police may ask for a certificate from a psychiatrist prior to approving a gun license, which is required before buying most kinds of guns in Switzerland."
The 3 Gun-Control Laws That Work Best in the U.S. - "A new study by researchers Michael Siegel, Molly Pahn, Ziming Xuan, Eric Fleegler, and David Hemenway finds conclusive evidence that states with stricter gun-control laws have lower rates of both murders and suicides. (Nearly two-thirds of U.S. gun deaths are suicides.) We covered an earlier study that found that states with higher rates of gun ownership had higher rates of teen suicide. Research by one of us (Richard) has found that states with stricter gun-control laws have fewer gun deaths. And a meta-analysis of more than 130 studies across 10 nations found strong evidence of the same.But this new study scrutinizes how different types of gun laws—alone and in combination—affect homicides and suicides. The study examines 10 different types of measures, including universal background checks, age limits for handgun purchases, concealed-carry laws, assault-weapon bans, prohibiting purchases for those who have committed violent crimes, stand-your-ground laws, and bans on large-capacity ammunition magazines. The study tracks the effects of the 10 gun laws below on gun deaths between 1991 and 2016, while controlling for factors like gun ownership, the overall violent-crime rate (excluding homicide), alcohol use, unemployment, poverty rate, and density (at the state level), all of which affect the rate of gun deaths. It’s not just that gun control works—and it does, according to the study—it’s that particular kinds of gun-control measures are significantly more effective than others. In fact, three types of restrictions are most effective, individually and in combination, in reducing the overall homicide rate. They are: universal background checks, bans on violent offenders purchasing guns, and “may-issue” laws (which give police discretion in issuing concealed-carry permits). Universal background checks are associated with a nearly 15 percent drop in the homicide rate. Measures that prohibit people who committed a violent crime from owning a handgun are associated with an even larger reduction in homicide, 18 percent. Conversely, requiring police to approve concealed-carry permits unless the applicant meets explicitly stated exclusion criteria—so-called “shall-issue” laws—are associated with a nearly 10 percent higher homicide rate. None of the other seven firearm laws had a statistically significant association with the homicide rate when controlling for other factors... An analysis the researchers did in a related policy brief shows that gun-control restrictions work even better when they are enacted in combination. States with all three of the most effective measures—universal background checks, bans on violent offenders, and “may-issue” laws (which give police discretion in issuing concealed-carry permits)—had homicide rates that were 36 percent lower. States with two of these measures had 13-percent lower rates, and those with just one had 6-percent lower rates... The most effective gun-control measures are those that regulate who has legal access to guns as opposed to what kinds of guns they have access to, the study concludes. Especially effective are measures that restrict the access of people with a history of violence. Certain kinds of gun-control measures have more public support than others. For example, a large majority of Americans support universal background checks, including a whopping 97 percent of people in gun-owning households. Meanwhile, just two-thirds of Americans and roughly half of people in gun-owning households support assault-weapons bans."
The problem is that regulating who has legal guns is racist, discriminatory etc
A growing background check loophole is making US gun laws even weaker - "Under federal law, the great majority of checks are completed with few problems. But a small few are deemed inconclusive, at which point the FBI can ask for three business days to complete a check. If the FBI doesn’t complete those background checks within three business days — maybe it can’t get the right information in time, or maybe a report takes too long to fax to the FBI — then the would-be buyer is allowed to purchase a gun despite not completing a background check."
The Role Of Impulsiveness Is One Of The Saddest Things About Suicide - "Anywhere from one-third to 80% of all suicide attempts are impulsive acts, according to The New England Journal of Medicine. 24% of those who made near-lethal suicide attempts decided to kill themselves less than five minutes before the attempt, and 70% made the decision within an hour of the attempt. Suicidal urges are sometimes caused by immediate stressors, such as a break-up or job loss, that go away with the passage of time. 90% of people who survive suicide attempts, including the most lethal types like shooting one's self in the head, don't end up killing themselves later.
So if you don't have a gun and need to look for a more drawnout method...
5 reasons metal detectors in schools are a bad idea, according to security expert - "Ken Trump, president of Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services, believes metal detectors are an unsustainable, knee-jerk political reaction. He cautions against their use for practical reasons like cost, and because they are often seen as a replacement for better strategies... In order to do the job, a metal detector would have to be coupled with other measures that simply are not realistic. First and foremost, they must be in use around the clock, 365 days a year, to prevent someone from stashing a weapon, Trump said. All ground-floor windows need to remain permanently shut so no one can pass anything into the building. No one can prop open a door, even temporarily, and every entrance and exit would need to be manned. Some of these measures could violate local ordinances and fire codes. And everyone, young and old, student and staff, parent and visitor, would need to be screened every time they enter, no matter the purpose.If you want to go see a play, report for athletic practice or games, use the gym outside school hours, or attend a public meeting, you'd have to go through the metal detector. Even just dropping off your child's lunch or going to a parent-teacher conference would require the same... What if it breaks? Can the school district or the city afford to fix it?The one-time installation cost can buy a sense of security "instead of investing in more longer-term strategies that are focused on people"... In 2013, a 14-year-old in Atlanta was shot in the neck inside a school that used them. Administrators admitted the machines were "not operable" that day. A Minnesota school with a metal detector, guards and fencing was the site of a mass shooting in 2005 that left seven people dead. The gunman killed an unarmed security guard manning the detector, and the other guard fled for his life... Trump said the best way to find out about a weapon in school is to build relationships with students and make them feel comfortable reporting it to a trusted adult."
Right-to-Carry Laws and Violent Crime: A Comprehensive Assessment Using Panel Data and a State-Level Synthetic Control Analysis - "This paper uses more complete state panel data (through 2014) and new statistical techniques to estimate the impact on violent crime when states adopt right-to-carry (RTC) concealed handgun laws. Our preferred panel data regression specification, unlike the statistical model of Lott and Mustard that had previously been offered as evidence of crime-reducing RTC laws, both satisfies the parallel trends assumption and generates statistically significant estimates showing RTC laws increase overall violent crime. Our synthetic control approach also strongly confirms that RTC laws are associated with 13-15 percent higher aggregate violent crime rates ten years after adoption. Using a consensus estimate of the elasticity of crime with respect to incarceration of 0.15, the average RTC state would need to roughly double its prison population to offset the increase in violent crime caused by RTC adoption."
Breaking down the NRA-backed theory that a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun - "“It’s not very often that somebody with a gun who’s a private citizen plays a useful role in ending these mass shooting events,” Donohue said.David Chipman, who served as a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms for 25 years before becoming a senior policy adviser at gun violence prevention advocacy group Giffords, said there is insufficient training for many armed civilians.“I was a good guy with a gun. I was a member of ATF's version of SWAT and I know what it takes, and the training that is required to perform during a critical incident when rounds are being fired at you,” Chipman told ABC News.“I can imagine scenarios wherein trained hands, a gun could be used in self-defense of oneself. It’s a whole ‘nother thing to imagine [how] a gun in untrained hands could somehow result in winning a gun battle, and my belief is that this ‘good guy with a gun’ messaging really is a sales technique to encourage people to believe that their capabilities with a gun are well beyond what they would actually be like in scenario like Parkland,” Chipman said, referring to the recent Florida shooting"
A Drumbeat of Multiple Shootings, but America Isn’t Listening - The New York Times - "lives are [easily] shattered when a firearm is readily available — in a waistband, a glove compartment, a mailbox or garbage can that serves as a gang’s gun locker. They document the mayhem spawned by the most banal of offenses: a push in a bar, a Facebook taunt, the wrong choice of music at a house party. They tally scores of unfortunates in the wrong place at the wrong time: an 11-month-old clinging to his mother’s hip, shot as she prepared to load him into a car; a 77-year-old church deacon, killed by a stray bullet while watching television on his couch. The shootings took place everywhere, but mostly outdoors: at neighborhood barbecues, family reunions, music festivals, basketball tournaments, movie theaters, housing project courtyards, Sweet 16 parties, public parks. Where motives could be gleaned, roughly half involved or suggested crime or gang activity. Arguments that spun out of control accounted for most other shootings, followed by acts of domestic violence... nearly three-fourths of victims and suspected assailants whose race could be identified were black. Some experts suggest that helps explain why the drumbeat of dead and wounded does not inspire more outrage... often, a minor dust-up — a boast, an insult, a decision to play basketball on another gang’s favorite court — was taken as a sign of disrespect and answered with a bullet... “White folks don’t want to say it because it’s politically incorrect, and black folks don’t know how to deal with it because it is their children pulling the trigger as well as being shot”... No one worries more about black-on-black violence than African-Americans. Surveys show that they are more fearful than whites that they will be crime victims and that they feel less safe in their neighborhoods.Most parents Mr. Abdullah meets are desperate to protect their children but are trapped in unsafe neighborhoods, he said, “just trying to survive.” And some are in denial, refusing to believe that their sons are carrying or using pistols, even in the face of clear evidence... F.B.I. statistics show that African-Americans, who constitute about 13 percent of the population, make up about half of both gun homicide victims and their known or suspected attackers... Both he and Mr. Abdullah say they wish some of the outrage over police killings of unarmed African-Americans would spill over to victims who die in anonymity in routine gun violence... From his hospital bed, one of four young men shot last May at one of Cincinnati’s most violent intersections pointed a police officer to a suspect. He gave the man’s first name. And he suggested that he had been shot in retaliation for an earlier shooting in the same area.Officers were able to identify the suspect and confirm that his car had been shot up a few days earlier, said Police Specialist Mark Longworth, who headed the inquiry.But “that’s where this case died,” he said. The injured victim attributed his information purely to “street talk,” not to direct knowledge that would stand in court. Hints are not evidence.“It’s frustrating because if people would do the right thing, we could probably prevent some of these shootings from happening,” Specialist Longworth said. “But in that world, very few things are worse than being labeled a snitch.” Nationally, nearly half of last year’s shootings with four or more casualties ended in the same way: no arrest; often, not even a suspect... A wounded 3-year-old named Jabarri seemed the best hope of persuading witnesses to come forward, the detective said. Sometimes, the moral outrage over a child victim overwhelms the code of silence... “We have had cases where people found out who talked and that person wound up dead. ‘So if the police cannot protect me, why would I jeopardize my life and my family?’ ”"
If you talk about black people killing other black people that's victim blaming and racism
Black lives only matter when they can be used for political benefit to shame white people
The "more guns, less crime" model posits rational actors. So we should give every country, including North Korea, nuclear weapons so they will be less likely to use them
Woman shoplifting in Walgreens fatally shot in head by bystander - "the woman was shoplifting and was confronted by the manager around 11:30 p.m.Another man then intervened and got into an argument with the woman. Police said he then pulled out a gun and shot her in the head."
The only thing that stops a shoplifter is a good guy with a gun
High School Bans Student After He Goes To Shooting Range With His Mom, Snapchat Post - "A 16-year-old student at a Colorado high school was informed by the school district Wednesday that he was not allowed to return to classes until the school could conduct an investigation into an anonymous tip that he had posted "threatening" content online... The caption for the post read, "Finna be lit," which he explained to Complete Colorado is just slang used among his peers meaning he's "excited" about the chance to go to the range with his mom, who he hadn't seen in a few weeks due to his parents being separated... "This is exactly the mechanics of the Red Flag Law," Reams told the outlet. "Someone filed an anonymous complaint, without the other person knowing it was being filed, but instead of him being deprived of his Second Amendment rights, he’s being deprived of his ability to go to school without due process."The teen simply "exercised his First Amendment right to use his Second Amendment right," said Reams, adding, "I hope this doesn’t make him fear that in the future.""
WaPo Lists All Deaths From Mass Shootings In Last 54 Years; Gun Rights Advocates Respond - ""Mass shootings are horrible, but your chances of being killed in one are about the same as being struck by lightning [49 per year]," wrote one gun control advocate. "Chicago has the same number of people killed about every two years. The USA is a massive country, 327 million people. This isn't to under[mine] the severity of mass shootings, they are horrible and we all want to put a stop to them. However, putting a list of names of people killed over a 65 year period is pure sensationalism and an attempt to exaggerate the problem."... gun control advocates' renewed push for banning assault weapons ignores the prominence of other types of guns, particularly handguns, in mass shootings. A study by Statista released this year found that between 1982 and August 2019, handguns were used in 93 mass shooting incidents, shotguns in 26, and rifles in 45."
Since you're more likely to drown in a swimming pool than be killed by a terrorist...
Effects of Missouri’s Repeal of Its Handgun Purchaser Licensing Law on Homicides - This study estimates the impact of Missouri’s 2007 repeal of its permit-to-purchase (PTP) handgunlaw on states’ homicide rates and controls for changes in poverty, unemployment, crime, incarceration, policing levels, and other policies that could potentially affect homicides. Using death certificate data available through 2010, the repeal of Missouri’s PTP law was associated with an increase inannual increase in firearm homicides rates of 1.09 per 100,000(+23%), but was unrelated to changesin non-firearm homicide rates. Using Uniform Crime Reporting data from police through 2012, the law’s repeal was associated with increased annual murders rates of 0.93 per 100,000(+16%)."
Doubtless there was a conspiracy to cover up the true fall in firearms deaths by forcing coroners to wrongly classify deaths as gun deaths!
Missouri Gun Laws 101: Answers to common questions - "According to Missouri law, it is a crime to refuse to sell a firearm to a purchaser who isn’t barred from possessing a firearm."
Liberatarians need to protest this infringement on the right to free association!
Data Confirm Semiautomatic Rifles Linked to More Deaths, Injuries - Scientific American - "The biggest take-home message is that in an active shooter incident, an assailant with a semiautomatic rifle may be able to hurt and kill about twice the number of people compared to if they had a non-semiautomatic rifle or a handgun"
Dank Star Wars Memes Cantina - "No one: Americans: Weapons are part of my religion"
Trump's knife crime claim: how do the US and UK compare? - ""There is more we can all do to combat this violence, but to suggest guns are part of the solution is ridiculous,” said Professor Karim Brohi, trauma surgeon at the Royal London Hospital. “Gunshot wounds are at least twice as lethal as knife injuries and more difficult to repair.""
Of course, gun nuts claim that criminals will kill using other weapons so there's no point banning guns, not realising that this means that there's no reason for them to have guns too - since (according to their logic) guns are no more lethal or effective than weapons such as knives (since other weapons are perfectly substitutable for guns), law abiding citizens can use weapons such as knives to defend themselves just as well as with guns too. But then guns have a religious significance to them, so
Deadly knife crime: How does London compare to New York? - "London’s knife murder rate is lower than in Trump’s hometown city, New York"
So much for gun nuts mocking Europe for knife crime
Switzerland has lots of guns. But its gun culture takes different path from US. - "The Swiss’s historic relationship to their arms as members of a standing militia, their motives for keeping them, and the regulations around them diverge from the American experience. It’s one reason that the prevalence of arms here is not accompanied by a scourge of gun violence... There is no official count of guns in Switzerland. But according to the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, Switzerland has more guns circulating per capita than any country besides the US and Yemen. The most recent government figures estimate about 2 million firearms in Swiss households. Conscription is mandatory for Swiss males, and citizen soldiers store their weapons at home, making up the bulk of guns in households today.The militia, and the culture it has fostered, is seen as part of the common good, binding a nation together in a mission of national security. That differs widely from America’s individualistic gun culture. According to a Pew poll in 2017, 67 percent of those who own guns in the US cite their personal protection as a major motive. And differences with the US don’t end at cultural ones. In Switzerland, regulations have become much more stringent since the free-wheeling days before a Weapons Act was put into place in 1999. And they have steadily tightened over the past 15 years. Military guns, once given to members after their service and passed down for generations, can now only be acquired after service with a firearms acquisition license. Since 2007, army-issued ammunition cannot be kept at home. A gun under the bed for self-protection? Impossible in Switzerland. Loaded guns, whether military or for sport, cannot be carried on the streets here without a special permit which is rarely issued. Because of conscription, the Swiss are highly trained in weapons handling and storage. As he drives away from the shooting range Sunday, Mr. Steffen says he would never want the right to transport his army rifle loaded. “No, no,” he says, “that is crazy. For us, guns are for sport, and protection of our country, only.”Switzerland does grapple with gun death rates higher than European neighbors, the vast majority of it suicide. Guns also play a troubling role in domestic disputes. But unlike the US, gun deaths out of self-defense are a rare phenomenon... The homicide rate in the US is about six times that of the Swiss national average. But when comparing domestic violence that ends in death with a firearm, the ratio is just under 2 to 1, a much smaller gap of gun deaths between American and Swiss households. “It is very illustrative,” Mr. Killias says. “It’s not so much that American people are more aggressive, or Swiss are so terribly more peaceful, it’s simply that gun use in the street [in the US] is quite common,” he says. “That is why robbery quite often ends with a shooting in America, whereas in Switzerland it is practically never the case.”... Lang worries about language he hears from the hard-line gun lobby about “self-protection,” against refugees and migrants or cuts in police budgets, a concept that is largely a taboo in Swiss society. Lang calls this the “Americanization” of the Swiss mentality... following strict guidelines, the rifle is in the cellar, the firing pin is in the cupboard, and the ammunition is at a military facility. “I don’t look at it like a gun,” he says. “It’s like a long, heavy piece of metal. It’s useless.” Mr. Völkle says he accepts the status quo here because there haven’t been widespread gun problems in his country, unlike the wrenching violence the US is living through. After Parkland, Fla., he once again looked across the Atlantic in bewilderment.“Mostly it’s just baffling to us that nothing gets changed after something like this happens,” Völkle says. “I assure you if more people died it would very, very quickly change, and you would not be able to keep your gun at home anymore.”" It is hard to commit gun crime with a rifle
