The USA has literally more than one mass shooting1 per day. It has reached the point where these don’t even reach the news any longer unless there’s some special angle to make them “interesting”. The reaction to this, from an outsider perspective, should be “maybe we should do something about the proliferation of freely available guns”. The reaction to this, again from an outsider perspective, seems to be rather “OMG I BETTER BUY MORE GUNS!!!111oneoneoneeleventy!”
What gives? How come the USA has not yet figured out that doubling down on the strategy that led to the nation having a shocking murder rate for the developed world is not a working solution?
What is it about the USA and guns that makes you tolerate this state when you’ve got a culturally-similar nation to the north of you that, despite your cultural problems being imported, still doesn’t have your kill rate?
1 Defined as a shooting event in which at least 4 people other than the shooter are injured or killed.
We live in a country where people value their guns more than the lives of their brothers and sisters and especially children. The shootings happen so often that they are numb to them, the only thing they’re worried about is their possessions being taken away, a few hundred kids a year won’t deter them. They like to claim we simply need more mental health resources, and it’s not a gun issue, yet simultaneously refuse to fund those resources or take them seriously (you know who I’m talking about 😉). It’s sick.
Someone wrote a novel with a similar theme. Something about a catch…?
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I assume you want an answer with a little more meat on the bones, though.
Yeah, that was kind of the desire, yes. 😉
- a very real segment of the population that believes hunting and agrarian outdoor life are important, either to them as a lifestyle, or as a part of the “proper” American culture.
This one I reject out of hand. I’ve heard it before, but … uh … sorry, USAnians, you are nowhere near unique on this point. Again, look to the north. My own family has about 50% of its male population being avid hunters (and that’s with only about 25% of them living in rural regions). All of these hunters have firearms. All of them. There are hunters in the UK. In Germany. THERE ARE HUNTERS IN CHINA! Who hunt with firearms. But who don’t have this fanatical belief that they absolutely need semi-automatic weapons (easily converted to fully automatic) with 80-round magazines. There’s something else behind the sickness than a culture of hunting.
- a sense of American exceptionalism that if we do something and live in the greatest country on Earth, then changing it to be like the rest of the world necessarily implies that this change must be a weakening of the American spirit in some vague, unformed way.
This one smacks more of the truth to me. Every American I speak with in-depth, left-wingnut or right-wingnut, has this bizarre, deeply-seated belief that America is a land of exceptionals. Some think that it’s the land of the exceptionally bad: exceptional racism, exceptional sexism, exceptional thisism, exceptional thatism. Others think it’s the land of the exceptionally good: exceptional technology, exceptional social structures, exceptional this, exceptional that. But both agree that the USA is somehow exceptional.
When in truth it’s dead average in most things. Even in its thinking of how exceptional it is.
- a huge number of other issues and priorities that make the political party that is less committed to the gun culture unwilling to spend its political capital on gun issues. As horrifying and preventable as they are, even our huge number of mass shootings still leave the US a fairly safe place to live by global standards.
By “global” standards meaning what? It’s hard to tease out “safety” in the statistics, but there are some interesting proxy statistics you can get hints from. Statistics like "life expectancy"1, or “infant mortality” or the aforelinked murder rate. I mean sure, if you want to compare yourselves to Benin or Angola, yeah, you’re safer. But how 'bout you compare yourselves to the better parts of the world instead of the worse if you want to claim being #1? (Collective you, not you you.)
And I guess the final question on this topic is … do you understand how insane your nation looks to the rest of the world? That you have, and I quote…
other issues and priorities
…that outweigh 24,415 (at the time of writing) slaughtered citizens thus far in 2023? That the BARBIE movie gets more political talk time than ALMOST 25,000 AMERICAN CITIZENS SLAUGHTERED BARELY HALF WAY THROUGH THE YEAR?
Do Americans understand this, and if so, what do they think of it?
1 Selection criterion: I randomly went over the list of nations and clicked on western industrialized nations as I found them. I’m linking so you can add any others you think I missed because I guarantee you I missed loads.
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First, c’mon, “insane” is not a useful descriptor for a nation, regardless of the difficulty in wrapping your head around the peculiar challenges.
One of the more popular definitions of “insanity” is “doing the same thing and expecting different results”.
By that standard, yes, I’m sorry, the USA is insane. (And not just on the gun thing, but it’s the most visible and startling manifestation of said insanity.)
I mean every time there’s a popular mass shooting in your nation the gun sales go up. Every. God. Damned. Time. Because the solution to the problem of people shooting each other up with guns available willy-nilly is obviously to increase the number of guns. This is just plain nuts.
It’s like how your solution to voting in a bad government is to vote in … a … bad government.
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To you there is no purpose or reason for a normal person to ever be armed so the concept of protecting that right is alien.
I’ll make you a deal. You don’t tell me what I think and I won’t tell you what you think. If you want to know what I think, ask. Don’t tell me. Get it? Got it? Good.
I come from a family that has a large number of ardent hunters. About half the men in my family are hunters and own firearms, despite only a quarter of them living in rural regions. It is thus pretty fucking obvious that I know the purpose for a normal person to be armed, no? But there’s a huge world of difference between having a few hunting rifles and shotguns vs. having semi-automatic (easily converted to fully!) weapons with massive magazines (like, say, the Nevada shooter used). There are very few (if any?) nations in the world that ban private ownership and use of firearms entirely. This includes CHINA. This is because practically every nation in the world understands there is grounds for private ownership of firearms. The USA is not as exceptional as it likes to believe it is … except in its exceptional levels of ammosexuality.
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They see firearm ownership as a moral failing or privilege. That attitude is shown in the laws they want and how they talk about gun owners. Maybe you’re just the type that think the only moral guns are your guns, as in a fudd based position.
Or maybe I’m just not an American ammosexual. (You fired a blank again, incidentally. I don’t personally own guns and have personally never owned them. I have used them: both in service in the Armed Forces and in hunting with my father. You really are bad at reading minds. You should probably stop.)
The semi-autos aren’t that easy to convert to full-auto.
As the Vegas shooter found out to his disadvantage. That’s why the body and injury count was so low there. Imagine how many people he’d have killed if he could have prayed-and-sprayed! He’d likely have caused the largest mass casualty shooting in American history!
That argument might work better in places where the only firearms civilians are allowed to own are for hunting/sports but that isn’t the case in the US.
Yes. We’re well aware of American ammosexuality outside the USA. That’s why we look on your nation as utterly fucking insane.
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It was implied I wanted to ask Americans who actually thought instead of bleating about their God-given right to shoot everything that moves while they fucked their firearms. Oh, and Americans who didn’t try unsuccessfully to actually make shit up on what my opinions of private firearms ownership, previous firearm experience, and current firearm ownership situation is. (ASK, dudes, don’t TELL. It’s not that hard, even for Americans!)
I’m of the opinion that guns have existed in the US since its inception but the issues we’ve had with mass shootings seem to be a fairly recent thing maybe in the past 30 years or so. This leads me to believe that the issue we currently have is due to some other root cause.
I’m sure that if we were to get rid of every gun in the US we would see a reduction in gun violence but I don’t believe it would have any impact on overall violence because the root cause of all our violence is elsewhere.
I don’t have a good solution to our problem but I’d start with raising the standard of living for our citizens by providing universal healthcare and doing something about unchecked capitalism that seems to benefit only the rich at the expense of everyone else.
Edit: Ranked choice voting would help as well so we’re not stuck in this shitty two-party deadlock.
I’m of the opinion that guns have existed in the US since its inception but the issues we’ve had with mass shootings seem to be a fairly recent thing maybe in the past 30 years or so.
They’ve been a thing for FAR longer than 30 years. There has been more of them recently, but much of that is due to better technology reducing the costs of ownership and increasing the availability of the kinds of weapons really suited to killing large numbers more efficiently. Factor in the face-heel turn of the NRA in the '70s and you’ve got one Hell of a toxic stew, yes, but the ingredients for this sickness are well over a hundred years old. There’s something in the American psyche that says guns are the solutions to all problems: domestic and foreign.
I’m aware that mass shootings have existed long before the 90’s but my understanding is that the frequency has increased significantly in recent decades. Maybe it’s due to better record-keeping or changing criteria used to define mass shootings. I’m not a data scientist. It certainly feels like they’ve become more frequent since the 90’s.
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4 or more killed is the actual definition of a mass murder. 4 or more injured or killed by a shooting sounds like a perfectly reasonable definition for a mass shooting.
Don’t like the terminology? How 'bout you stop shooting each other so much? Or is that too much to ask?
One word: Corruption
I own two long rifles, three handguns and three AR-15s. (Contrary to popular belief, AR-15s are not assault rifles.) Down in my basement, I have about 50 lbs of various types of gun powder, along with thousands of bullets and maybe about 50k primers. Additionally, I have maybe 20k loaded cartridges total for all of my firearms. When I go to the range, I will expend several hundred rounds in a trip to keep up my practice and maintain my skill.
I was raised around firearms and they have never been a big deal. As far as I know, me or anyone in my family or circle of friends has ever shot up a school or committed a mass murder. When I am out and about, I only carry a firearm if absolutely necessary and that is rare. However, there are some places here in Denver you need to be armed. Period.
I was in the military, I hold a good job and support my family. Since I started my career, I have been in something related to security for as long as I can remember. Now, I am a professional infosec engineer. What I am saying, is that I am a somewhat normal and responsible person.
For me, it’s really about the engineering that is involved in precision shooting at long distances of about 1000 yards or more. The physics is absolutely amazing!
With all of that said, guns do not define who I am. They are a super interesting and fun part of my life, but that is about it. Now, I can go on about what others can do to prevent the wrong people from misusing firearms, but I will pass on that today and talk about me instead.
Why should my rights be restricted because a few other people are idiots? Why go out of the way to punish the millions of responsible owners for the tragic mistakes of others?
At the end of the day, if someone wants to kill others, they are going to do it. Be it with a vehicle, 747 or explosives put together from chemicals obtained at the grocery store, it’s going to happen.
We can throw numbers around about who was killed by what and twist them how we want for the sake of argument. That is a waste of time. If there were several problems that I could identify, it’s the shitty education, shitty mental health service and the horrid law enforcement that is here in the US that are the culprits. This, of course, is the fault of our broken government.
Fix that shit first before you punish citizens that go out of their way to uphold the current laws.
If I could take you to the range for one day with this rifle, you might end up falling in love with the sport as well!
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An AR-15 is a superb hunting weapon, so I am not quite sure where you get your information. 22 caliber is quite good for small deer (when used in the proper circumstances) and 6.5mm and up is great for hogs or the like. It’s perfect for the field and you can easily modify it any way you need to match the environment as you did describe perfectly yourself. I can actually carry an AR pistol as well as my primary rifle while hiking through very rough terrain.
While I appreciate, and even respect, the ELI5 on AR-15s there is much more to know about different calibers and their specific functions.
While ARs can tolerate many of the shitty modifications people do to them, they can be extremely finicky at the same time. A poorly planned hair trigger or full auto mod can cause massive, destructive, malfunctions. Most of the redneck videos you see on YouTube are mostly bullshit. I have broken enough AR parts to know this firsthand.
I should also note that the enjoyment of firearms is not just stick go boom, it’s the engineering precision of it all that I love. The seductive power of it all is great for a bit. However, when that is over, the engineering aspects dominate for me.
However, there are some places here in Denver you need to be armed. Period.
Sounds like you’ve got a radically different problem than “I NEED GUNZZZZZ!” to solve.
If I could take you to the range for one day with this rifle, you might end up falling in love with the sport as well!
(P.S. I’ve fired larger. Far larger. About 100mm larger, give or take a few mm… The other branch of my 50% hunting family is former military. Including me.)
