I think I misunderstood I did not mean that the people do not matter or that murder by gun ( or any other means should be acceptable. Whether that sometimes people seem to think we have a LOT of people that die in mass shootings when in reality the number is quite low. 2/3 of all gun related deaths are by the person's own hand. Then you have a certain percentage that are accidental ( usually involving some sort of carelessness on the part of the shooter ( though not always. Then you have a certain percentage where it would not have matter because someone wanted a particular person or persons dead and therefore would have been likely to use just about any method. Then you have a percentage that are justified homicides ( self-defense) by the time you remove all of that really the number of people that would saved by tighter firearms restrictions in terms of preventing mass shootings is quite low, Mental health and focusing on safety around firearms would seem to be a better option.
You know, I fully realize that I can come across as abrasive in these gun threads sometimes. The thing is though I was actually raised in a gun owning family, surrounded by gun owning family friends back before the ban in the UK. I think I was about 7 the first time I held an AK47, and I really don’t have any cast iron ideological issues with firearms.
But here’s the thing, back when a mass shooting (two actually) led to first the banning of semi-automatic rifles and then handguns, it was my family and their friends who had to give up their weapons. And there was plenty of grumbling about how ‘good gun owners shouldn’t be punished for what a few psychos did’ etc etc. But especially in the wake of the second attack, Dumblane, where a school full of kids were slaughtered, most people just accepted that this couldn’t be allowed to happen again. And it hasn’t. Since Dumblane happened in 1996 we’ve had exactly 1 mass shooting, which was a madman with a shotgun and a .22 rifle who drove around a rural area murdering 12 people.
Now don’t get me wrong, we’ve had terrorist attacks since, we’ve had gang related shootings and the like, but in terms of people going crazy and trying to just kill lots of people it hasn’t happened that they’ve just carried on at the same rate just using other means. Because other means just aren’t effective. Yes people still murder, but without a gun to make it easy it’s far less likely to result in mass casualties, suicides attempts are far, far less likely to be fatal, and so on.
When you see us people from other countries imploring you guys to change on guns, it’s purely because we’ve seen how effective change can be. Remember when mass shootings in the US were front page news around the world? I do. People everywhere were shocked after Columbine. Shocked beyond words after Sandy Hook. Now? Mass shootings are happening so often we can barely keep track, let alone be shocked any more.
We want you to change because we don’t want your people to keep getting butchered. That’s all.
