> How big a massacre would it take before a gun control law would be carried by a majority in the US?
A majority already does but they don't really care, whereas the NRA has a relatively small numbers of highly motivated people to push against gun control bills (I believe John Oliver made that exact point recently).
The US have already got bigger massacres than the already mentioned Dunblane (18 deaths 15 injured, 1996), or Port Arthur (35 deaths 25 injured, 1996) which resulted in significant gun control increase in the UK[0] and Australia[1] respectively.
> Or is it not a matter of sheer numbers, but who gets killed?
In the UK, it was the Dunblane incident that triggered this (you can google it). In the 1990s, some madman with gun just strode inside a high-school at Dunblane in Scotland and started indiscriminate firing. Many teachers and students were killed and after this event, the UK government just outlawed the guns in the hands of civilians.
Maybe, in USA such an extreme event hasn't happened yet, so they have not banned guns yet.
> “I see no mechanism by which those laws would reduce mass shootings. A mass shooter would simply ignore them.”
And yet, there does seem to be a strong correlation between “countries with stricter gun control laws” and “countries that have low rates of gun-related deaths and homicides”.
Canada has between 6-8X fewer gun fatalities per capita compared to the United States - both homicides and unintentional/accidental gun death rates are much lower. [1]
> I am sorry, but it will stop if guns are banned for ordinary people. How many school shootings happen in China or India?
I don’t know about school shootings, but guns are banned in Puerto Rico and the island has 4 times the homicide rate of the US and 6 times the homicide rate of India. Pakistan has way more guns than most Latin American countries but much lower homicide rates.
Homicide rates in the new world have been vastly higher than in Europe and Asia for hundreds of years, long before modern gun control. At the turn of the 20th century, the homicide rate in the US was 10x higher than the UK: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/humfig/images/11217607.0002.206...
Pop quiz: from the chart of homicide rates in the UK, tell me when the major gun control legislation happened.
>If the guns pose no threat to would-be tyrants, why would they need to take them away?
because they pose plenty of threat to each other, which was in fact one of the reasons for the biggest change in modern Australian history, the Port Arthur massacre[1]
Australia, like many other nations does not have the same tolerance that the US has when it comes to violence.
> we actually can do something about the number of guns in our country
Can we? AnimalMuppet already mentioned the legal barriers, but there's another issue: the US is currently suffering from extreme political polarization which has already led to an insurrection. How do you think that would interact with an attempt at mass confiscation[0] of guns?
I fear such a policy any time in the near future would spark a civil war, leading to many times more deaths than all the school shootings added together.
[0] I read your post as implying mass confiscation. Simply restricting the purchase of new guns would take many decades to significantly reduce the number of guns in circulation.
> If fewer guns is really not the answer, then how many guns do you think you'll need to eradicate gun violence?
Even Europe with its in my humble opinion draconian gun control has not eradicated gun violence.
If gun control is the answer, why is it failing Brazil? They are actually considering making their gun laws more in line with ours. [1] They have a violence problem that is very likely a glimpse into the future of an America with European or Australian-style gun control.
The guns are not committing acts of violence, the people pulling their triggers are. To solve the gun violence problem, we need to understand why people desire to commit an act of violence.
> Same reason gun control wont happen no matter how many people get killed - ultimately its because gun manufacturers would lose money.
Depends on what you mean by gun control though. Many (myself included) are pro 2nd Amendment so it's not just the gun lobby/NRA who oppose some (not all) regulation.
I guess my point is that gun control (whatever that means) won't happen not only because of gun lobbyists but because many Americans support gun ownership.
> The numbers don't seem to bear this out. There seems to be a fairly proportional relationship between gun ownership and per capita gun deaths; see point two:
>There are about 30,000 gun related deaths per year by firearms, this number is not disputed.
"There were 39,773 gun deaths in 2017, up by more than 1,000 from the year before".[1]
>Do the math: 0.00915% of the population dies from gun related actions each year.
'Deaths per capita' is the more common unit, isn't it?
>22,938 (76%) are by suicide which can't be prevented by gun laws.
As I understand it, suicide-by-gun are more 'successful' than suicide-by-other-means. Each failed attempt is a chance to save that person or for the person to save themselves from trying again in the future. How could gun control laws not potentially impact suicide rate?
>• 987 (3%) are by law enforcement, thus not relevant to Gun Control discussion.
For some narrow definition of gun control, maybe. There has been talk of the increasing militarization of the police over the last decade+, putting more police in schools in response to school shootings, use of force by police officers in situations that seemingly could have easily avoided it. etc. All seems pretty relevant to the discussion.
>Still too many?
Yes. Staggeringly so[2].
>That's over 30% of all gun crime in just 4 cities.
America has gang/drug/poverty problems that fuel violent crimes. No one is denying that. All part of the gun control discussion.
>We don't have a gun problem...
Can you please help me understand that in relation to [2]? Because it sure looks like we have a gun problem.
> Since the anti-gun lobby cannot outlaw them completely they tack on automatic sentence multipliers
I rarely hear anyone say they want to outlaw guns completely, but perhaps that was meant as hyperbole? In any case, do you have some evidence that the multipliers were a reaction to difficulties in regulating guns?
Most Americans believe guns should be regulated more stringently; I would guess that they believe these laws are just, not a political trick. Also, at least sometimes American law more stringently punishes crimes committed with any weapon, guns or otherwise, than crimes committed without one.
> I don't know if this number is correct, but I just can't understand why guns are still allowed in USA.
Lots of reasons. One is that if congress tried to pass a law doing so, the supreme court would probably stop it thanks to the 2nd amendment. And changing the 2nd amendment is politically infeasible for a whole host of reasons (many states don't have the requisite support, AND calling a constitutional convention opens up a ton of other issues). Oh, and there's literally 300,000,000+ guns floating around in the US. How the hell is the government supposed to collect all of those? How of the budget are you willing to spend on that? Europe hasn't exactly had the most luck trying to disarm THEIR citizens, why would it work in the US with less governmental trust? [0]
But aside from the constitutional and practical reasons... "gun ownership" and "homicide rate" are basically uncorrelated worldwide. You'll often hear otherwise, but the two most common sidesteps are to change to "gun violence rate" instead of "homicide rate" (which includes gun suicides but drops murder by other means) or to only include "western" countries which has its own set of issues. Lies, dammed lies, and statistics!
Finally, even if your goal is only to reduce mass murders, restricting guns isn't really a great way to do that. The Nice truck attack [1] with 87 dead, Oklahoma City bombing [2] with 168 dead, and the more recent Kyoto Animation arson attack [3] with 35 dead all show that guns aren't exactly required to kill a bunch of people. (and also completely ignoring 9/11) Forcing people away from guns to other methods might actually increase deaths in such situations.
> I would think things like strict gun control in other countries could lead to a different ratio of murder to other violent crimes.
You'd probably be wrong. Must gun related fatalities are either self-inflicted or accidental. Murder usually occurs in a fit of rage between people who know each other, i.e. found a cheating spouse, road rage, drunk and stress, etc. You don't need a gun to kill someone, and I would wager most murder occurs through some sort of beating/strangulation.
Further, the United States is 121 on the list of intentional homicides on wikipedia[1], where as Greenland (Denmark), which arguably has tougher laws is 26 on the list. However, if you compare the list to those of the poorest nations, you'll find a much stronger correlation. violent crime is far more correlated to the wealth per person in an area than gun regulation.
Gun control is more-or-less just a politically charged topic that is used to garner votes from the public based on emotional pleas.
>There’s a reason mass shootings happen in places where a swift armed response isn’t expected.
Most mass shootings take place in the USA, which has the most guns per capita on earth by far, double the #2 country. How many more guns would make a difference?
>America obviously needs gun control and I don't particularly care if it takes talking about massacres or gangbangers to get there.
What is it about American gun control in particular that causes Europeans/South Africans/Canadians/Australians to care so much about what goes on in another country?
If it were just about saving lives you should get much more upset about the smoking rate in china, or parts of europe for that matter.
For instance you won't find me insisting that Switzerland pass harsh anti-smoking laws because I think they should, regardless of what their citizens want, just because they have more smoking related deaths than we do.
>No one can argue against there being a correlation between number of guns and number of gun related crimes.
Actually there are plenty of examples of countries where that doesn't hold.
For example our gun ownership is much higher than any country in the top 20 for intentional homicides.
And Canada, Switzerland, France, Sweden and Norway have a very large amount of guns, but very low homicide rates.
Should Canada get rid of their guns as well? They have half the guns, but far less than half the murders. If guns were causing homicides what explains all of these anomalies?
In fact from comparing the wikipedia list of countries by intentional homicide rate to countries by gun ownership, I can see no obvious correlation between the two.
You don't sound like a "gun nut", but I have to question anyone who can't acknowledge that America is way more obsessed about owning guns than the rest of the planet.
> 2,300 gun deaths a month? Because those numbers have been consistent for decades
This is also a stupid, unnecessary, ongoing tragedy that America insists cannot be avoided despite being the only country where mass shootings happen anything like as regularly.
A majority already does but they don't really care, whereas the NRA has a relatively small numbers of highly motivated people to push against gun control bills (I believe John Oliver made that exact point recently).
The US have already got bigger massacres than the already mentioned Dunblane (18 deaths 15 injured, 1996), or Port Arthur (35 deaths 25 injured, 1996) which resulted in significant gun control increase in the UK[0] and Australia[1] respectively.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre#Gun_c...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australi...
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