President says ‘epidemic of gun violence is tearing our communities apart’ after mass shootings in Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Baltimore and Chicago
According to the Gun Violence Archive, 21,782 Americans have been killed in shootings halfway through 2023.
I know that’s not 100% mass shootings, but that’s still a stunningly bleak number. Rounding up from the .97 that’s five human lives every hour of 2023 up to July.
Those numbers are intentionally misleading, they are using people that killed themselves to prop up the numbers. It’s disgusting.
Suicide is not what first comes to mind when someone talks about gun violence or shootings. Nobody said they don’t count - just that it’s misleading.
And those shouldn’t count? Do you have any idea how much easy access to guns increases suicides? Many, many suicidal people would still be alive without the easy access to guns in the US. It’s one of the easiest and painless ways to kill yourself.
Things like suicide are far more related to a lack mental healthcare and the stigma around getting help than weather or not people are allowed to own firearms. Not everyone has those kinds of problems. An assault weapons ban is certainly unrelated to those seeking self-harm and most crime.
Try the other way around: how much gun control would impact in the total suicide number?
It’s bad, but after watching over a million Americans die of COVID while (seemingly) half or more of the country refused to take - or often even acknowledge - the most basic of preventative measures… Well, I just don’t know any longer.
Shootings are far less deadly, and that’s a much more murky subject as there are plenty of justifiable reasons to own a gun. You also have to wonder how many deaths are Darwin Awards, or justified self defense… It’s just an incredibly complicated subject compared to “hey guys, let’s wear masks.”
Obviously nothing can be done to change this. There is zero things the government can do to stop gun violence. It must just be an inherent part of life
Here’s an idea: all new guns must only be operable by the person who purchased them after going through rigorous background checks. This will be done using fingerprint technology. The gun simply will not fire unless it is in the right hands.
It’s not really that easy unfortunately. You can essentially 3D print gun parts now, and you can buy parts separately to make kits pretty easily to get around any kind of restrictions like that.
If it is so easy to 3D print guns or put together the parts, how is it that gun control measures in other countries are still effective?
SHALL. NOT.
keep talking and not doing anything i love it and ive loved every other time a shooting occurs and this same shit happens
Americanspro-gun voters keep voting for Republicans. They want the death.
The problem is pro-gun people just happen to be overwhelmingly Republican.
I used to be “sensibly” pro gun. As in, “it’s important to give people that right, but with proper controls in place.”
Increasingly, I want our country to have nothing to do with guns. The actual sensible position is very strict gun control. There’s very little reason a person should own any firearm outside of a hunting rifle in extremely controlled circumstances with extensive checks and records.
The US has 120 guns per 100 people, the highest in the world. The next highest? Yemen at ~53.
The onion said it best (every time there’s a new mass shooting), “No way to prevent this, says only nation where this regularly happens.” We can’t lie to ourselves that it’s not the lack of gun control that allows all of these shootings.
