Another mass shooting, another chapter of our polarized arguments about guns and gun violence. Or maybe since the number of high profile killings is growing at an alarming rate, I should say, “another page turned” rather than “another chapter.”
My advocacy for what I consider to be common sense gun regulation isn’t going to change any minds. So here are some numbers from today’s New York Times. Draw whatever conclusions you will.
The article has a telling graph comparing the number of gun homicides per day in the U.S. and other Western countries if each of them had the same population we do. Our rate is up at about 27 per day, after which there’s a large empty space which continues until you get to 4 or 5 per day. That includes Greece, Canada, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal and Finland. Most other countries are in the 1 or 2 per day range.
[The] level of violence makes the United States an extreme outlier when measured against the experience of other advanced countries.
Around the world, those countries have substantially lower rates of deaths from gun homicide. In Germany, being murdered with a gun is as uncommon as being killed by a falling object in the United States. About two people out of every million are killed in a gun homicide. Gun homicides are just as rare in several other European countries, including the Netherlands and Austria. In the United States, two per million is roughly the death rate for hypothermia or plane crashes.
In Poland and England, only about one out of every million people die in gun homicides each year — about as often as an American dies in an agricultural accident or falling from a ladder. In Japan, where gun homicides are even rarer, the likelihood of dying this way is about the same as an American’s chance of being killed by lightning — roughly one in 10 million.
We can take cold comfort in the gun death rates in El Salvador and Mexico, which are considerably higher than ours. But Chile’s rate is less than half what ours is, and Israel’s is a quarter our rate.
We have a public health issue here, seeing as how dying, especially for preventable reasons, is not good for people’s health, and like other public health issues, there are ways to work on improving the situation. But today I didn’t come here to preach.
This article appears in Jun 9-15, 2016.
Remove the major gun control cities and America becomes very gun safe statistically.
The great thing about Chicago is, that only the criminals have guns. But the bad news is they prey on the unarmed. And utopia is not going to happen no matter how much you want it to.
Save your breath. It’s a lot easier to blame an object and feel good about yourself than facing reality. Gun laws don’t work period. Ask Chicago. Those who hate guns will always hate guns. Period.
lol
atlanta, new orleans, st louis, memphis and birmingham are all among the most dangerous cities in this country and all of them are in states with open carry and very loose restrictions on laws and there is no exception to those laws in those cities.
chicago is not even in the top 20.
but please, continue to cherry pick the facts that agree with your thinking and ignore the ones that dont confirm your biases.
for the record im not saying i favor a gun ban, im perfectly okay with this state’s laws. i am saying that if you think things are always safer without restrictive gun laws you are dead wrong
Is that like Palisades New Jersey? Wouldn’t surprise me. What kind of gun laws do those top 20 cities have ?
is what like palisades new jersey. the fuck are you talking about;
and i just told you
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_…
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for each of these states there are no laws further restrictive laws in those cities, and each of these states has at least one of the most dangerous cities in the country
dont be lazy.
There’s a town in Jersey called Palisades. It’s full of assholes. just saying. That’s 5. It leaves you with 15.
“We can take cold comfort in the gun death rates in El Salvador and Mexico, which are considerably higher than ours. But Chile’s rate is less than half what ours is, and Israel’s is a quarter our rate”.
So maybe we should ban people from El Salvador and Mexico, because they either don’t respect a gun or their neighbors, because they never went through an anger management class? And allow more Chileans and Israeli’s because they have control over their anger, respect what a gun can do and respect more of their own neighbors? There is a correlation between those in Beverly Hills and those in the poorer parts of town and how each handles a firearm and respects their neighbors!
If the problem we face is the now routine mass murders, a partial solution is simple: ban assault weapons and corresponding ammunition entirely from sales to the public. Someone tell me why they need an weapon more powerful than those carried by our police for hunting or self defense and I will be glad to listen. But here we are speaking of a very small percentage of all killed by guns every year.
If we are concerned with the daily, one on one, carnage in our cities, primarily inflicted by criminals and gang members on their neighbors, that is a different story. You can’t ban weapons that are already widely available and in the hands of assholes who do not think twice about using them indiscriminately. A solution here would be to empty our prisons of low level dealers and users to make room for anyone who so much as brandishes a weapon – and to keep them in prison for long terms.
“We have a public health issue here…” No we don’t have a public health issue here, we have a problem with lunatics having easy access to weapons designed for the battlefield and we have a crime problem with criminals, gang members and their wannabes shooting themselves and innocent bystanders. Calling on the National Institutes of Health or the Center for Disease Control is no more an answer here than calling on the Department of Homeland Security to deal with income inequality.
Words that need to be banned from usage by politicians after the next inevitable massacre: “our thoughts and prayers do to the victims and their families.”
Bullshit.
I believe that banning gun posession and ownership by wife beaters and bar brawlers will eliminate most of our gun problem. There is a direct link between most mass shooters and prior domestic violence toward a spouse, child or mother. The Orlando shooter is a perfect example.
If we’re not able to accomplish universal background checks, we should at least be able to create a National Wife Beaters Registry and require checking it as a condition of completing a sale.