Today, in Monterey Park, California, President Biden will announce an Executive Order with the goal of increasing the number of background checks conducted before firearm sales, moving the U.S. as close to universal background checks as possible without additional legislation. The Executive Order will also keep more guns out of dangerous hands by increasing the…
I’m curious to know what you would propose to address the ever increasing gun violence happening in the US. The solution can’t be ‘nothing’ because ‘nothing’ is not working.
Before you reply, understand that I am not the original poster which you replied to and my values, unexpressed as they are, are different from theirs.
I would propose that it’s entirely pointless to focus on gun violence specifically because it’s defined not by what makes it a problem (the violence) but rather by the arbitrary tool involved (guns). You could reduce gun violence to zero, and nothing would be better if the overall violence stayed the same. Which literally all available evidence demonstrates that it would, as you’re not the first person to want authoritarian gun grabbing in place.
I would disagree that it’s pointless to focus on gun violence. While I do agree that in most circumstance focusing on the tool to create a solution is misguided, I do not agree that focusing on guns in this case is arbitrary. Nearly all other tools have multiple purposes to which they are designed where violence is not an intended use.
Guns on the other hand are created to do only one thing; kill. You can use them in other ways, but their purposes is singular; to end the life of another living thing. Even as a tool of self-defense or as the Second Amendment intended, the intent is the death or threat of death of the opposition.
While I do believe that removing guns would massively decrease violence, as proven by literally every other country that has done so, I am also not opposed to personal gun ownership. I just think it should be well regulated. I do think focusing gun violence is worthwhile, while also agreeing that it won’t completely address the issue of general violence in the country (there’s no silver bullet here, pun intended).
But we shouldn’t stop there and fly a ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner. As you implied, there is a deeper rooted issue that’s responsible for the rise in violence; it’s American prosperity. We have 24/7 news feeds blasting hatred-addicting messages to distract from corpos and billionaires are sucking up every last cent from the American public. Prices across the board are going up while everyone’s pay is staying the same or going down. The prosperity is dying. People are justifiably angry. Anger leads to violence. Violent people who feel they have no path back to prosperity pick up guns.
While I disagree with the first half of your comment* your final paragraph really hits the nail on the head. The concentration of power by a select few due to policies designed to favor large businesses and the death of the middle class if not remedied will only lead to strife. When people are impoverished they become desperate, and when they are desperate they’re willing to take more drastic means of resolution.
*IMO it’s a suicide net style of solutions, one that attempted to solve an issue without resolving the underlying motivation. Actions occurs when motivation is met with means. Intentional acts do not occur without motivation even when supplied with the means. In this scenario the means are firearms (though in other cases they could be anything from clubs to words) and the motivation in most cases is tied to this polarization and disparity.
So then surely you should be able to provide hard data that shows reducing gun violence has a specific and measurable impact on violence as a whole, no?
Well first, I would focus on violence, not gun violence.
And we are in one of the most peaceful times in all of history. It started going up in 2020, which coincides with covid.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate
My personal thought is that there’s other factors involved, namely the effects of covid, and the effects of the response to covid. A stressed person is much more likely to be violent than an unstressed person.
Of course without a proper study, its impossible to be certain.
That is misleading. While the violent crime rate basically flatlined between 2000-2017, it started going up shortly after the Trump presidency began in 2018-2019, prior to 2020 when it really started to skyrocket.
Also, trends are going to be different between states so looking at the US as a whole is not very good data to look at. Crime goes up in places and crime goes down in others. Understanding the details of where the changes are most drastic is absolutely important.