PSA: about 2/3 mass shootings are domestic violence related. If you want to fix mass shootings, start at fixing the household.
https://injepijournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40621-021-00330-0
Sure, but that takes decades. So gun control NOW, and fix the household issues.
You can ABSOLUTELY make a good point about mass shootings being the result of mental health disorders or domestic violence, and we should ABSOLUTELY be doing what we can as a society to fix those problems… but we can’t ignore the 100% common denominator in literally every mass shooting… which is guns.
The rest of the world has deep, deep family problems, too. Yet doesn’t have these problems.
And a lot of it has guns too.
The biggest outlier with guns in America is the politicization and them.
Look at Scandinavia, where gun ownership is incredibly high and many firearm laws less-strict than in the US: It’s a region of the world that has most of its shit figured out, and having guns there isn’t a big deal because the rate of violence is so low.
Here in the US, we’ve got a broken social system, essentially zero mental health care for those who really need it, easy access to firearms, and hyper-politicization around firearms that pushes mentally-unstable people towards gun ownership.
When the unstable conspiracy-theory nutjobs hear liberals saying that gun ownership is bad they’re predictably start stocking up on guns and ammo - specifically the black guns the political left keeps trying to ban. And then they snap.
That’s how the guns that make up about 1% of overall firearm deaths started being used much more frequently in mass shootings.
We do need an honest national conversation about guns and their availability, but neither side of the political aisle is willing to really, truly be honest in their policies towards firearms. So we aren’t able to have that conversation and what we end up with is the worst of all outcomes.
This isn’t a both sides thing.
Democrats support better gun regulation and better social services. Republicans fight against better gun regulation and fight against better social services. Just because Republican’s need to rally their base by gleefully twisting any reasonable regulation into “they’re taking our guns” doesn’t mean the liberal side is being dishonest.
You can’t blame liberal policies for being dishonest when pretty much that they have pushed for is completely reasonable. Only one party is being dishonest here.
Democratic gun policies don’t target the guns used most-often in mass shootings or homicides.
They often target cosmetic features, or write laws that actively interfere with development of safety features.
A prime example of the latter was a 2002 New Jersey law that would have outlawed the sale of any firearm without smart safety features once ANY gun with smart features became available.
That basically made all manufacturers immediately stop all progress on developing the technology, because releasing it would essentially crater their entire catalog of products. Therefore there’s been zero commercially-viable smart guns released to the market for over 20 years.
More recently, the ATF re-interpreted a decision regarding the definition of a stock 10 years after a new category of arm braces hit the market. The stabilizing braces were specifically submitted to the ATF for review before ever being made available to the public, and cleared by the Obama-era ATF.
Now they’ve changed their position arbitrarily, and now an estimated 20 million gun owners who purchased a firearm legally are committing a felony by owning it, and the vast majority of them don’t even know about it.
There’s constant talk on the political left about the “gun show loophole.”
There’s no such thing. There’s zero firearm sales rules that don’t apply at a gun show. Hell - on the background check form (ATF 4473) there’s even a box to check for when the background check is being performed at a gun show instead of the dealer’s normal location.
But any licensed firearms dealer still has to go through the normal process at the gun show. Private sellers don’t, but private sellers never have to go through the process (biggest issue that needs to be addressed in my opinion), so the gun show has nothing to do with it.
You also hear about gun laws on one state not mattering because of the less-strict laws in a neighboring state.
Contrary to popular belief, all long-gun sales have to follow the laws and procedures of birth the state where the purchase takes place AND the state where the purchaser lives. When I was a gun salesman in Texas and a California resident tried to buy a gun from me, I had to follow all of California’a processes as well as Texas’s, and I could only sell a long gun that was legal in California.
Why do I use “long guns” as a qualifier? Because the transfer of any handgun to an out of state resident is a federal crime. That applies to dealers as well as private individuals whether the handgun is sold or gifted. My sister lives out of state and if I die none of my pistols can be left to her without committing a felony.
My point is this: most people on the political left don’t know shit about guns, existing gun laws, or what would truly be effective. And when they TRY to write dumbass laws their ignorance poisons the well and makes gun owners who might otherwise support good ideas like improved background checks, cracking down on straw purchasers, making NICS available to private citizens, and more get super defensive.
It’s like when a 90yo who has never owned a computer tries to regulate the Internet without knowing the first thing about technology. They fuck it up and just make matters worse.
Yes, Republicans are monsters who don’t give 2 shits about murder victims. Despite the fact that firearms are a huge hobby of mine I vote Dem every election.
But the Democrats trying to write gun laws are usually no different than the Republicans who say that snow storms are proof that global warming is a hoax.
Honest debate needs honesty from both sides, and the first part of intellectual honesty is being able to admit when you don’t understand something.
Repeatedly trying to pin blame on Democrats for a lack of change in gun regulation only further exposes your actual goal here, and that isn’t to have an honest conversation. Going as far as claiming they know nothing about guns or gun laws, comparing them to climate change deniers, is a pretty bold stance to take on something you clearly don’t understand. No matter how much you need to spread this disingenuous stance, it isn’t a both sides issue. If it was, Republicans would entertain the debate - they do not. If Republicans were interested at all they would propose their own valuable legislation - instead they call for thoughts and prayers for the dead children they refuse to protect and say it is too soon to even discuss how to solve this. It is not both sides. Even if Democrats were as dumb as you hope to sell here, they are actually at the table trying. Republicans are too busy choosing money over protecting children. Not both sides at all.
And intellectual honesty requires more than admitting when you don’t understand - it means leaving your lies and agenda at the door, neither of which you appear capable of doing.
Oh and nice job dropping your previous social services point on this one, losing battle for your agenda. How very honest of you.
Where am I defending Republicans here? Show me one place where I’ve defended their behavior.
crickets
Nobody will argue against you because you are right. It’s just not sexy
That’s literally like saying we should ban cars purely because they cause car accidents… It affects way more people than it needs to and is ultimately very messy and costly. If they found a better way of teaching car safety or making it so people who are too much of an idiot to drive can’t drive, that would make more sense, even if it takes time and effort. Edit: oops replied to the wrong message.
That is another thing worth comparing: A driving licence in the US costs between $20 and $500. Practically no training required. In Germany it costs €2000-€4000 with a lot of theoretical and practical lessons. And that is the reason why you are allowed to drive at 250kmh at the Autobahn.
I mean while we’re at it we should dramatically reduce the necessity and prevalence of cars. Car culture sucks socially, economically, and ecologically.
And yet still there isn’t really a good alternative… Public transportation is slow and annoying, trains are near impossible for America to create now and still also have the issue of there only being certain times you can use it.
It took decades to get into this car hell and it’s going to take decades to get out. There would need to be some short term pain for long term gain. Unfortunately that is like humanity’s top weakness.
I live in NYC and use public transit every day. It’s not perfect but I’d take it over a car-first model any day.
So establishing a watchman force that arrests cops specifically since cops account for the plurality of DV incidents
I think this is a good problem to solve, however in tandem with other problems enabling access to weapons and subsequent deaths of many innocent people.
I do wonder why mass shootings weren’t nearly as common before 1980s/1990s, when the United States had even less gun control than we do now. There is more to it than just access to guns for sure. Don’t get me wrong, I still think stricter gun control would most definitely help, but I wonder what other factors are causing the number of mass shootings to go up.
Rising economic inequality is my guess. It’s very easy to lash out in anger and violence when everything about society tells you that you are a loser.
The rise of conservative media, probably. You’ve had decades of fox news and talk radio doing their thing, and now we have stochastic terrorism.
Couple that with the concentrated conservative efforts to reduce the quality of education in America - less educated people are more susceptible to those conservative media tactics. They can’t keep control over all of the craziness they peddle, look at the House of Representatives - they lost the plot and now we are stuck dealing with the shit show they cultivated.
fix the household
Nice dog whistle for systematic problems with capitalism
How the FUCK is captialism the cause of mass shootings lol
Because unchecked capitalism means paying people as little as possible to maximize profits, which means people are underpaid which causes undue stress at home which leads to bad shit happening.
People are like “ooh it’s so complicated everything is complex, you can’t sum up issues in one or two sentences.” But I can’t really argue with this, like shouldn’t this be obvious to everyone? People are stressed, we can’t afford to live, it seems like our world is going to die in a few decades, all directly tied to our socioeconomic paradigm of capitalism. Of course people are going to start freaking out.
Are you implying that people aren’t stressed outside of a capitalistic society? Just because capitalism leads some to high levels of stress doesn’t mean nothing else does.
Rampant profiteering off of the backs of laborers for the sake of the few. You think those laborers have the ability to maintain a happy and balanced home life after being exploited by capitalists?
Workers are exploited in nearly all forms of economic structure. How does profiteering lead to mass shootings?
If you can’t connect rampant class related abuse to mental health issues, and then to violence, you have no fucking idea about anything regarding the human condition. In fact your breath is starting to smell of boot leather.
Brother you’re literally not arguing why capitalism is the cause of this still. All you have is personal attacks and loose correlations. Class abuse is not exclusive to capitalism. Mental health issues are not exclusive to capitalism.
Weak af.
If you’re not smart enough to understand it’s ok.
Tons of lobbying money goes into making sure those laws never happen, shootings cause a rise in firearm sales. Rinse, repeat. Any talk of well regulated militia bullshit is just lip service to the useful idiots who keep them rich.
Sure but political corruption and bribery is not exclusive to capitalsm.
Not exclusive, but inevitable.
Is there a system outside of capitalism where always keeping sales peaking is a priority? Where profits are prioritized over human life?
easy and cheap ways to buy guns
create a system with no hope to move up in life when you’re poor
have a news media that creates paranoia, to sell ads
Yea it’s sooooo weird “How the FUCK is captialism the cause of mass shootings lol”
You guys use the term capitalism like if it was the boogeyman. Its just not relevant here, all of those things can happen without capitalism. Dont shoehorn a topic you barely understand
People that critique capitalism tend to do it a lot because it drives a substantial portion of human activity right now. Capitalism is probably the primary driver of all violence in the US so it seems relevant. Under a socialist system, there could be lower levels of isolation and inequality, no incentive for gun companies to increase profits so they wouldn’t market their guns to every person in America, etc. The defense industry is massive and tied directly to the issue of mass shooters. And when you say ‘fix the household,’ what does that mean other than dismantle capitalism?
Those things aren’t exclusive to or indicative of a capitalistic society. The latter two reasons you describe also exist in authoritarian socialist and communist countries, yet those don’t lead to mass shootings.
In fact, there are capitalist countries that have easy access to guns that don’t experience mass shootings on the scale of the US. Look at Canada, for example, who rank 7th in gun ownership per capita but have experienced four total mass shootings compared to 101 in the USA. (sauce: https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/mass-shootings-by-country/ and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country)
I don’t think capitalism is the best system, especially not on its own, but none of the responses I’ve gotten have argued why capitalism is the cause of mass shootings. There are way too many cultural and historical factors involved to say that it’s exclusively the fault of the economic structure of the US.
You guys can all downvote as much as you want but it seems no one actually has anything more to say than “capitalism bad” so they harvest some internet points.
The nra is allowed to “lobby” the government to tell them all how great guns are. How do you retards not see that’s a problem with capitalism lol.
Is a government caving in to the interests of the rich exclusive to capitalism?
I think you’d probably have a more sound argument if you spent less time calling people retards and instead actually argued your point. Unless you really don’t know why you hate capitalism other than that it’s the spooky boogeyman for lemmy users.
Is a government caving in to the interests of the rich exclusive to capitalism?
I don’t know, I haven’t tried the other sorts of economic organization! Let’s find out, yeah?
Republicans don’t deserve the lives they live.
Nobody deserves anything. Deserving is the shittest concept. I deserve to die because life is shit, but nobody will help.
I’m pretty sure I deserve at least a million bucks but you do you
A million bucks?! You know what you could do with that money? Two chicks, man.
You know what I’d do with a million bucks? Nothing. I’d relax, I would sit on my ass all day, I would do nothing.
Well you don’t need a million bucks to do nuthin’. Hell, look at my cousin, he’s dead broke, don’t do shit.
but nobody will help
Haven’t you been reading this thread? The police will help
🤣
You’ll even see them all get together and celebrate with a picture of them pushing a bill that will only add more to the fire we are trying to put out…
pretend all victims are in a better place while pocketing NRA dues like no tomorrow
The gun laws in US are joke, why even allow people to have guns? what is police for?
Police is for robbing people and slapping labels on them to artificially reduce their market value. They’re not gonna do anything about mass shootings because they won’t be there when they happen and don’t really care so long as their own friends and family are fed. They’re also not going to support disarming the population because they will lose that fight by numbers.
When seconds count, police are minutes away.
are you dumb? thats not what I even meant, if you have ideal justice system and law enforcements, people doesnt need gun for their security, it happens even in so called 3rd world countries.
Where were the police when the police robbed me for everything I ever worked for and kept me in jail until I lied for them to let me out? Oh right. Wish I had a gun so they would be dead.
deleted by creator
And the ambulance is even further away dealing with the last wannabe clint Eastwood that acted on that dumb as fuck sentiment.
Well that’s just a logistics problem. Really easy to solve.
having guns is fun. hunting is fun. it’s also nice to know I can protect my property should someone try to perform a home invasion. guns are fun as fuck
inb4 “why would you shoot someone who just wants your TV?”
Someone who just wants to steal my TV isn’t breaking in while both cars are parked out-front.
What about a home invasion? They are not uncommon in a lot of places.
It’s especially fun when it turns out the police are nobody’s friends. Oh wait.
You obviously haven’t met our cops.
yes… 😅
wE need to BAN TASERS
Be careful treading that line. For gun loving muricans, they love their 2nd amendment more than their actual constitution.
What do you mean?
deleted by creator
Well according to the Supreme Court, police have no duty to protect nor serve the public. Literally, they can watch you get murdered, watch the murderer get away, and still be 100% fine.
Police protect the govt. Period. Nothing else.
Guns are fun but so is having a society where I don’t have to live in fear of dying. There should be some rules on who can carry a gun.
That society doesn’t exist even in your dreams. You are going to die.
Everybody knows that mate.
Not me I’m built different
Simple way to stop mass shootings is to ban guns like anywhere else on the world.
Nobody need guns besides the cops. If you need guns than there is a problem with your country.
Cops don’t need guns because cops shouldn’t exist.
deleted by creator
Oh look, it’s those guys who think the law works.
Ha, jk. It’s the tools trying to disarm their opposition.
deleted by creator
Those guys aren’t me, but thanks for trying to put me into a box for easy handling. Keep your labels to yourself. I don’t do this bundle deal nonsense.
I don’t do this bundle deal nonsense.
Oh look, it’s those guys who think the law works. Ha, jk. It’s the tools trying to disarm their opposition.
This you?
No no no MUH AMANDMENTHHH!!!
Yes because our government is only equipped to deal with 1 issue at a time…
I mean, at this point? 1 might be a stretch.
Biden: “I like ice cream”
Trump: “I did everything right, and they indicted MEeeeee”
The perfect phone call
We need better options.
removed by mod
Ah. A moron. Hello there, moron.
It’s a bipartisan sentiment
Do republicans not like bombing Muslims?
those poor poor muslim cinamon rolls, never hurt nobody
Bruh… That’s republicans, always has been.
Remember that time Trump banned bump stocks in a weekend, something Obama tried for 8 years to do? If not, here’s the NPR article on it
So you’re saying MAGAts eat shit as long as daddy trump feeds it to them?
Why is this relevant? What point are you trying to make here? You seem a little lost and confused.
Unflinching support of Israel’s ongoing genocide is sadly one of the few things R and D parties seem to agree on.
In Germany we have on average more privately owned guns than most US states. Still… we had just TWO mass shooting in 20 years.
Why?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08GbT5ZEs08
In short: You have to qualify to own a gun. Assholes don’t get guns. And by fullfilling the laws to own a gun you actually earn respect in your community.
I am member of a German gun club where the local population, the regional police and a couple of NATO soldiers train. It took me nearly one year before I even was allowed to touch a loaded gun, all through my 14th year I was basically just taught how to clean and repair my rifle, how to handle it, how to NOT use it, only then how to use it. And after ten months I was finally given a single bullet.
I am now 30. Nowadays my family owns and shares a Sig Sauer 200, locked inside the gun club. Everyone except my Mum shots around 25 bullets per month, once a year the whole gun club repeats basic training which includes mental health checks.
And after basic training we have special events. For example six years ago a local NATO garrison was massively downsized and so they offered us to use up their overaged surplus ammunition. I got to shot pretty much anything from 9mm to 7,62mm for basically free - we collected money for the victims of a local house fire so I put €50 into the collection.
Did I ever shot a gun outside the gun club?
Actually: Yes. When I was in the US I joined my Uncle on duck hunt. He was like “ok, hold the big rifle while I show you how to shot a duck using 12gd bird shot.” - he misses, I aim and shot the duck mid-air with a .308. I didn’t know ducks could explode, but yes, they can. I paid with a badly aching shoulder, I wasn’t used to those powerful cadridges any more. He looked angry at me and grumbled the plan was to eat the duck not turn them into fine mist. The other three ducks he left for me to shot and wondered where I had learned to operate a gun like that.
When I told him a US lieutenant taught me to operate exaclty the same rifle in my gun club he was like “WTF?”. I might mention the lieutenant immediatelly settled down in my town after his duty was over because he liked Bavaria so much and wanted his kids to grow up in a less crazy nation.
Absolute bullshit, nobody is shooting a duck mid-air with a rifle. Your story is fake and lame.
“I am now 30” thats where I tapped out. You lasted way longer than I did.
It’s not that hard of a shot…ducks typically move in a straight line. It’s a dumb shot to take for sure, but it’s not an impossible one. If OP really has the training he says he has, I’d buy it.
I’d be surprised if it could even happen legally, there’s no reason to have a rifle with you to duck hunt. If DNR caught you you’d get a ticket for poaching ( you have a permit for ducks but you are out with gear to hunt deer ) and they’d keep the guns. Yes, even on private land.
Thanks for the interesting read. Really goes to show how mad we are in the US for handing out guns like candy
What is the penalty if you are caught with a gun you are not qualified to have?
Prison sentence up to 5 years.
Over an object.
Literally the war on drugs all over again.
Ok lolbertarian🙄
Now go and whine about age of consent or something
Yeah except how once you use the gun, the fucking gun is still there and can’t be flushed down the toilet.
That greatly depends on the gun. And the toilet, honestly. Have you seen those golf ball ones? Those could take a .380 or a double deuce, I bet.
What are your views on ‘objects’ such as personal hand grenades or professionally made improvised fertiliser explosives?
I find it absolutely disgusting that I’m not allowed to turn MY innocent 4 wheel brumm brummm object in to a fun party popper object of devastation!!! It’s political correctness gone mad it is !!!
(Do I need the /s?)
Edit: “Not Qualified” is not the right wording. Because Qualification only plays a secondary role. It is all about the licence.
In Germany carrying a gun without the right licence would be illegal possesion of a firearm.
But wait, even if you have a licence you can get fined for illegal transport and handling of a firearm.
Carrying a conceiled small sidearm without a special permit is big trouble. Transporting a firearm without a locked enclosure and not seperated from the ammunition is also a serious offence. At home you need a locked container. All in all it got so complicated that my Dad stopped storing guns at home. He sold one and put the other into the gun club. The club is really helpful, we can lend legal transport containers and for guns which we are not allowed to move in public they offer transport services for a small fee, usually that means a police officer moves the gun in his free time using legal transport containers in exchange for a beer.
Classic case: Someone dies and you find a loaded pistol in his inheritance. You bring it to the police. You did three offences: Carrying a conceiled firearm in public, carrying a firearm without proper container, carrying a loaded firearm. The legal way would have been: Calling the police to retrieve the firearm. To be honest, the state attourney usually closes those cases rather quick as “minor incident without criminal intent” but you still get a serious talk.
There are some exceptions for old historic muzzleloaders which are often fired at historic events without bullets. We don’t have those so I don’t know barely anything about those rules.
I appreciate your perspective on this. What you describe is about more than just ‘assholes don’t get guns’, although that is a crucial aspect. The way your family owns just ‘a’ gun, trained for a long while before shooting, respect for following gun laws. This is the opposite of the usual experience around guns in the US. We as a culture in the US are careless and wanton with guns in general from what I’ve seen.
I was shown how to use a gun when I was 6 years old, my parents were responsible though so it was only an air pistol, but heavy duty, not airsoft. We had a shotgun, 9mm pistol and a .22 rifle in the house never locked up, didn’t even have a safe to lock them if my dad wanted to, and the shotgun was often stored loaded. When people here get together to shoot, it’s not odd to hand a loaded gun to someone that has never been to a range or even seen one fired before. Plenty of people are much safer than this, but I would guess my experience is the more common from what I’ve seen.
From what I can tell, most gun safety training in the US is a single sentence: Always treat it like it’s loaded, and keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.
If you’d actually received as much safety training as you claim, you never would have taken a shot at an elevated target with a center-fire rifle.
The target wasn’t elevated. We were elevated. I tried to explain that the duck was just taking speed to take off but honestly I don’t know the right English word for that maneuver. And as I hinted, I had fired the exact same rifle two years earlier at our gun club several times. Also, I paid with an aching shoulder for my recklessness.
Reichsbürger Waffenlager und so? Gibt ja trotzdem genug schwarze Schafe.
You shot a 308 round into the air? Isn’t that unsafe? If you missed the bullet could go anywhere.
Even if he hit, the bullet is still going anywhere. Who even takes a rifle?
There have been at least 2 mass shootings in Germany since March a simple Google search reveals. 🤔
Shouldn’t “mass shootings” include “mass”?
I mean a shooting with 0 dead surely doesn’t count as such and three people from a youth gang isn’t exactly a typical mass shooting either.
Well, it’s mass shootings not mass killings. However, that’s not really important in this discussion when you can point to the
in March and this
.
Just dropping in to ask if anyone has that image. I need it to win several arguments I’m currently having on the internet.
Thank you. I will not forget this. I would fight for you.
We’re actually averaging almost 2 per day this year so far.
The public indiscriminate kind, gang violence kind, or the 3 kids shot a gun once goofing off in their school parking lot kind?
public indiscriminate kind
What does that even mean? Indiscriminately killing people in public? Like a mass shooting? Lol
gang violence kind
“Person opens fire into church killing 5 and injuring 12”
“that’s a mass shooter”
“the gunman was wearing red and those killed wore blue”
“that’s gang violence”
Do you see how stupid that take is?
3 kids shot a gun once goofing off in their school parking lot kind
Oh my bad I thought you were being genuine, this is obviously bait, please carry on
Some lists of “mass shootings” include only the public indiscriminate kind, which is what basically everyone thinks of when they hear the phrase “mass shooting,” but some do include actual gang violence (turf war) or other violence based around other crime (drug deal gone bad). Your red shirt blue shirt scenario is cute, but that would still probably be the public indiscriminate kind. The two phenomena are very different.
There was an article from a big US news source a few years ago about how there had been over a hundred school shootings in the US that year. Can’t remember which source. The list of events included many that happened near a school or on school property but only incidentally. There was at least one where kids shot a gun in a school parking lot when no one else was around. Of course that’s still a problem, but again that’s a very different phenomenon than a “school shooting” where someone tries to murder 20 students. That’s why I brought that up.
Its strange you only hear about the big ones every month then.
We gotta do something about trans people playing sports =/= we want children to show us their junk
Something something projection.
Jesse what the fuck are you talking about
Wow, it’s like the third recent green text where anon is talking about real world stuff in a grown-up way.
So anon turned out all right in the end?!
no
deleted by creator