High school shooting in Parkland FL

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'd be thrilled if we could just eliminate most of the accidental deaths from handguns.

[pocaracas]

I'd remove the violent from there.... just crime free criminal record... and confiscation as soon as that record became less free.
Periodic Psych and medical eval. Do you want someone who develops Parkinson's to handle the arsenal he's amassed while Parkinson's free? (just an example)

https://www.thetrace.org/2015/07/gun-bac...s-failure/

To a degree, what your'e asking for is already in place.  The practicality of confiscation, though, is tricky.  You want to send a bunch of cops into black neighborhoods to confiscate their guns on a regular basis?  I can imagine some undesirable side effects to that plan.

Confiscation can get tricky, yes.
But I can envision that, just as some may evolve into unsustainable situations like you mentioned, many people will be conscientious enough to understand the risks and will give them up, willingly.... particularly, if a certain reasonable monetary value is exchanged for them.
Most of the time, cops wouldn't even be required.... but they are the best trained to handle it.

[henryp]

https://www.thetrace.org/2015/07/gun-bac...s-failure/

To a degree, what your'e asking for is already in place.  The practicality of confiscation, though, is tricky.  You want to send a bunch of cops into black neighborhoods to confiscate their guns on a regular basis?  I can imagine some undesirable side effects to that plan.

Confiscation can get tricky, yes.
But I can envision that, just as some may evolve into unsustainable situations like you mentioned, many people will be conscientious enough to understand the risks and will give them up, willingly.... particularly, if a certain reasonable monetary value is exchanged for them.
Most of the time, cops wouldn't even be required.... but they are the best trained to handle it.

Black folks peacefully playing along with the state's disarming of black neighborhoods might be overlooking some aspects of black history.  I think their wariness of the US government is more than a little justified.

[Silver]

I'd be thrilled if we could just eliminate most of the accidental deaths from handguns.

I'd be thrilled if we could just eliminate citizen ownership of guns.

[pocaracas]

Confiscation can get tricky, yes.
But I can envision that, just as some may evolve into unsustainable situations like you mentioned, many people will be conscientious enough to understand the risks and will give them up, willingly.... particularly, if a certain reasonable monetary value is exchanged for them.
Most of the time, cops wouldn't even be required.... but they are the best trained to handle it.

Black folks peacefully playing along with the state's disarming of black neighborhoods might be overlooking some aspects of black history.  I think their wariness of the US government is more than a little justified.

Black folk attitudes is another mentality problem that need addressing. But that's for another thread...

[CapnAwesome]

For those who can't compare numbers, I give you... numbers!

Instead of comparing the US with individual countries, like some of you like to point out that Norway had this, Sweden had that, France had another gun shooting... how about we throw in the whole of the EU?
The EU has some 500 million people.
The US has some 325 million people.

Gun laws vary a bit throughout the EU, but not a lot.

According to this https://www.flemishpeaceinstitute.eu/sit..._in_eu.pdf, the EU has approximately 6,700 gun related deaths per year. Of which some 5,000 are suicides, 1,000 are homicides and the remaining 700 are unspecified (accidents?)
Guns exist in the EU and they do cause people to die.

So, the EU gets something like 1,000 homicides per 500 million people, or to put it in nicer numbers: 200 homicides per 100 million people.

How does the US fare?
According to this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41488081, the US has some 31,000 gun related deaths per year. Of which 20,000 are suicides, 10,000 are homicides and about a thousand are unspecified.

In homicides, the US get 10,000 for a population of 300 million, or 3,300 homicides per 100 million people.


Clearly 3,300 is larger than 200. That means that 15 times more people are killed in the US than in the EU, on purpose, with a gun.
Clearly, whatever distinguishes the US from the EU leads to an increase in homicides.


The psychological state of the people should be disregarded, as that is supposed to be roughly equivalent across both populations.
Socio-economics probably plays an important role here, given the stressful nature of US health care and retirement plans, compared to the EU's.
But the action to take a gun and kill someone else... that requires the gun to be present. And this is the major difference between the US and the EU.

According to this http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publ...383_en.pdf, 5% of EU citizens own a firearm and other 5% claim to have owned one. 90% never owned a gun.

According to this http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/06/2...ownership/, 30% of US citizens own a gun.... no mention of past ownership, but they do say that 11% of those who don't own guns lives with someone who does own one.

Just comparing present gun owners, 5% in the EU vs 30% in the US, there are 6 times more gun owners in the US.
Put that next to our previous ratio of 15 more homicides in the states and you see that the increase in gun ownership correlates with (more than) twice the increase in homicide rate.
Of course, correlation does not imply causation...

I think the US needs to have a revolution of attitude towards guns. Once that is done, the legislation follows.
Based on all of these numbers, I feel immensely safer living in the EU than I would in the US.
Of course, overall, there is a relatively low risk of any one person in particular dying due to a gun. 3,300 per 100 million, that's 3/100,000, or 0.003%
While, in the EU, the same risk is of 0.0002%. One order of magnitude lower! That's significant.

When 2/3 of gun related deaths are suicides, it's a hard sell to say regulating guns is going to prevent any of those.

That's why it's a nonsense statistic. What other stat groups suicides, murders and accidents together.

No guns would prevent all of the accidents, none of the suicides and some of the murders. It's only the last number that needs to be debated. So it needs to be three statistics to have any value whatsoever.

That statistic drives me crazy when people use it, because it's such obvious propaganda, that people regularly use. Like when people compare the gun deaths of the us and uk, but not the murder rate, which is obviously the important stat. (Btw, not accusing you of the latter, at least, but it is done regularly)

[pocaracas]

When 2/3 of gun related deaths are suicides, it's a hard sell to say regulating guns is going to prevent any of those.

That's why it's a nonsense statistic. What other stat groups suicides, murders and accidents together.

No guns would prevent all of the accidents, none of the suicides and some of the murders. It's only the last number that needs to be debated. So it needs to be three statistics to have any value whatsoever.

That statistic drives me crazy when people use it, because it's such obvious propaganda,  that people regularly use.

Try reading some of what I wrote, instead of spewing hate towards statistics.
I'd advise to go into some of those links as well, but I understand that it can become too much.

[CapnAwesome]

https://www.thetrace.org/2015/07/gun-bac...s-failure/

To a degree, what your'e asking for is already in place.  The practicality of confiscation, though, is tricky.  You want to send a bunch of cops into black neighborhoods to confiscate their guns on a regular basis?  I can imagine some undesirable side effects to that plan.

Confiscation can get tricky, yes.
But I can envision that, just as some may evolve into unsustainable situations like you mentioned, many people will be conscientious enough to understand the risks and will give them up, willingly.... particularly, if a certain reasonable monetary value is exchanged for them.
Most of the time, cops wouldn't even be required.... but they are the best trained to handle it.

Trying to confiscate guns in the U.S. would cause an untold amount of mass shootings. If you cared about mass shootings at all. I for one, don't think 'from my cold dead hands' is a bluff.

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When 2/3 of gun related deaths are suicides, it's a hard sell to say regulating guns is going to prevent any of those.

That's why it's a nonsense statistic. What other stat groups suicides, murders and accidents together.

No guns would prevent all of the accidents, none of the suicides and some of the murders. It's only the last number that needs to be debated. So it needs to be three statistics to have any value whatsoever.

That statistic drives me crazy when people use it, because it's such obvious propaganda,  that people regularly use.

Try reading some of what I wrote, instead of spewing hate towards statistics.
I'd advise to go into some of those links as well, but I understand that it can become too much.

I edited my post two seconds afterwards to acknowledge that, no reason to be a dick. It is a nonsense statistic though, or do you think gun deaths some sort of value? It doesn't tell you the murder rate of a country. I mean, I'm in favor of voluntary suicide, so in favor of some gun deaths and obviously against others. So the stat is nonsense when a cancer victim ending their own life and a murder of a child are both 'gun deaths ' I mean do some thought experiments with that stat and the murder/suicide/accident mix and you'll see that pretty quick.

Also try responding thoughtfully to my points, not being a dick to feel smug. Also I agree with a lot of your other points, which is why I didn't respond to them. Just think gun deaths is a pointless stat.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'd be thrilled if we could just eliminate most of the accidental deaths from handguns.

I'd be thrilled if we could just eliminate citizen ownership of guns.

My case is a sub set of your case, of course, but I think my case is at least slightly more possible.

[CapnAwesome]

Also I don't disagree with a lot of your other points, which is why I didn't respond to them. I just disagree with the value of gun deaths as a stay.