2022 is America's deadliest year for mass shootings.

[rjs330]

That's another thing that would require a tax increase.

As it is, we already have the highest per capita number of people incarcerated
View attachment 325767

We even beat out the two commie bloc countries that people often make "gulag jokes" about.

"More Jail" hasn't been a particularly effective strategy for us, and has produced a pattern of recidivism. If you're not going to do anything for the people while they're in and focus on some rehabilitative aspects, there's no reason to expect that their behavior will be any better when they leave. A person with no substantive opportunities is going to be in the exact same position when they get out in 5-10 years.

It makes people shutter to think of doing something like Norway does, and is often met with scoffs and snark about how "that looks like an apartment, they're being too soft on them, the bad guys deserve harsh punishment and conditions"

But their end results are better.
In the US, 76% of prisoners released are back in jail again within 5 years. In Norway, that number is 20%.


Police are often ill-equipped to prevent shootings, only respond to them. It's simple logistics. Even if we quadrupled the size of the police force in the US, they still can't be everywhere at once. Unless you want a full-blown police state?

"We have health insurance" is a bit misleading. People who can hold down steady jobs that offer benefits have health insurance. And even many of those have high deductibles and out of pocket thresholds to meet before the insurance starts chipping in. Even if one is fortunate enough to have one of the retail jobs that offer a health plan, trying to meet a $2500 deductible and cover a $50 copay on monthly prescriptions is a daunting task for a person on a very fixed income.

And we have some free clinics in low income areas, but those hardly fill the gaps. If you're a broke mentally ill person, trying to find someone to give you a ride so you can wait 3 hours to see a nurse practitioner (with little to no training in psychiatry) so they can give you an Ativan and send you on your way is hardly suitable.

Almost every gun was legally purchased at some point if you trace it back far enough, it's not as if gang members are constructing Glock 9mm and 38 specials in their garage. If the problem is that unscrupulous people are selling guns to other unscrupulous people without a paper trail, that sounds like a justification for some restrictions on private sales, yes?

Saying this as a person who enjoys guns and owns several (from handguns all the way up a few decked out AR's), people are looking for a "best of both worlds" option where one doesn't exist. They want them to "crack down on the bad guys ability to get a gun", but refuse to entertain any law or measure that would inconvenience their gun buying experience in any way or impose anything they see as a "hassle".

More jail hasn't worked because it's really not more jail. People go in then they come out and do more crime. Why? Because they are criminals. So what to do.

I say if you commit an act of violence with a gun you go to jail forever. These guys don't care if you toss em in jail for a few years.

They might if they knew it was forever. So wouldn't care, but I don't really care if they do or not. You commit a violent gun crime and you are in for good. Never to see the outside of a jail cell again.

 

[rjs330]

No, that would be "tyranny".

I'm sure all those gangsters will run right down and get a gun permit.

 

[disciple Clint]

Go on. I could be wrong. Yet gun ownership in America is staggering to the rest of the world. Here are some slightly out of date numbers from Wikipedia:

Americans made up 4 percent of the world's population but owned about 46 percent of the entire global stock of 857 million civilian firearms."[7] U.S civilians own 393 million guns. American civilians own more guns "than those held by civilians in the other top 25 countries combined.[8]

American civilians own nearly 100 times as many firearms as the U.S. military and nearly 400 times as many as law enforcement."[9] Americans bought more than 2 million guns in May 2018,[9] more than twice the total number of arms possessed by law enforcement agencies in the United States combined.[9] In April and May 2018, U.S. civilians bought 4.7 million guns, which is more than all the firearms stockpiled by the United States military.[9] In 2017, Americans bought 25.2 million guns, which is 2.5 million more guns than possessed by every law enforcement agency in the world put together.[9] Between 2012 and 2017, U.S. civilians bought 135 million guns, 2 million more guns than the combined stockpile of all the world's armed forces.[9]

Well all those who think that guns should be outlawed are going to have to explain why all those guns have not resulted in a much larger number of shootings. Easy to explain since the number of guns that are owned by legal law abiding citizens has nothing to do with the criminal use of guns, that in it self defeats the logic behind gun control laws. What we need are criminal control laws and a justice system that functions to protect the public instead of protecting the criminals.

 

[disciple Clint]

That's another thing that would require a tax increase.

As it is, we already have the highest per capita number of people incarcerated
View attachment 325767

We even beat out the two commie bloc countries that people often make "gulag jokes" about.

"More Jail" hasn't been a particularly effective strategy for us, and has produced a pattern of recidivism. If you're not going to do anything for the people while they're in and focus on some rehabilitative aspects, there's no reason to expect that their behavior will be any better when they leave. A person with no substantive opportunities is going to be in the exact same position when they get out in 5-10 years.

It makes people shutter to think of doing something like Norway does, and is often met with scoffs and snark about how "that looks like an apartment, they're being too soft on them, the bad guys deserve harsh punishment and conditions"

But their end results are better.
In the US, 76% of prisoners released are back in jail again within 5 years. In Norway, that number is 20%.


Police are often ill-equipped to prevent shootings, only respond to them. It's simple logistics. Even if we quadrupled the size of the police force in the US, they still can't be everywhere at once. Unless you want a full-blown police state?

"We have health insurance" is a bit misleading. People who can hold down steady jobs that offer benefits have health insurance. And even many of those have high deductibles and out of pocket thresholds to meet before the insurance starts chipping in. Even if one is fortunate enough to have one of the retail jobs that offer a health plan, trying to meet a $2500 deductible and cover a $50 copay on monthly prescriptions is a daunting task for a person on a very fixed income.

And we have some free clinics in low income areas, but those hardly fill the gaps. If you're a broke mentally ill person, trying to find someone to give you a ride so you can wait 3 hours to see a nurse practitioner (with little to no training in psychiatry) so they can give you an Ativan and send you on your way is hardly suitable.

Almost every gun was legally purchased at some point if you trace it back far enough, it's not as if gang members are constructing Glock 9mm and 38 specials in their garage. If the problem is that unscrupulous people are selling guns to other unscrupulous people without a paper trail, that sounds like a justification for some restrictions on private sales, yes?

Saying this as a person who enjoys guns and owns several (from handguns all the way up a few decked out AR's), people are looking for a "best of both worlds" option where one doesn't exist. They want them to "crack down on the bad guys ability to get a gun", but refuse to entertain any law or measure that would inconvenience their gun buying experience in any way or impose anything they see as a "hassle".

Let me make this simple, the police can reduce crime if the criminal justice system functions as it should but instead the system puts people right back on the street to repeat the same crime day after day. And incarceration is effective because people do not victimize the public if they are locked up in prison. Very little crime is the result of a legal gun owner using a gun and criminals do not obey gun laws. Crime will stop being an ever increasing problem as soon as the justice system puts criminals where they belong. The criminal is not the victim when that is understood by all crime will decline.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Let me make this simple, the police can reduce crime if the criminal justice system functions as it should but instead the system puts people right back on the street to repeat the same crime day after day. And incarceration is effective because people do not victimize the public if they are locked up in prison. Very little crime is the result of a legal gun owner using a gun and criminals do not obey gun laws. Crime will stop being an ever increasing problem as soon as the justice system puts criminals where they belong. The criminal is not the victim when that is understood by all crime will decline.

But as I referenced in my previous post, we already have the highest rate of incarcerated citizens per capita.

Throwing more and more people in jail clearly isn't the magic bullet. And the prisons themselves aren't doing a great job of rehabilitating criminals if they're coming out the same (or worse) as they went in.

Paying out house people in jail is expensive. And seems like at a certain point some other issues need to be addressed upstream.

Are you suggesting that the US simply has more "bad guys by birth" or immoral people inherently? I don't think that's the case at all.

I think we need to ask ourselves a few questions.

(When compared with other developed countries)
Why do we have more people turning to criminal lifestyles?
Why do we have the need for so many more police?
Why do we have the need to have more prisons and to keep people in there longer?

If we need more prisons/cops/incarcerated people per capita in order to keep our neighborhoods safe than say Finland, Switzerland, or Sweden (we're already at double what they have), perhaps it's time to look at some of the things they're doing differently.

As noted, I don't think we have more people who are immoral and willing to stoop to that level than other countries. I think other countries have done a better job of making that kind of lifestyle less tempting for people who may have the propensity to do so under other circumstances.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

More jail hasn't worked because it's really not more jail. People go in then they come out and do more crime. Why? Because they are criminals. So what to do.

I say if you commit an act of violence with a gun you go to jail forever. These guys don't care if you toss em in jail for a few years.

They might if they knew it was forever. So wouldn't care, but I don't really care if they do or not. You commit a violent gun crime and you are in for good. Never to see the outside of a jail cell again.

I think we need to look more at the upstream problems. Why do we have so many more people deciding to enter that lifestyle than say Finland, Sweden, or Switzerland?

If we already have (per capita) twice the police and twice the incarcerated population, and that's evidently "still not enough", and when the people do get out, they're no better than when they went in...clearly we're just spinning our wheels here. (and that applies for people who are only in a month, or people who are in for 10 years)

If we've produced a society that's so void of meaningful opportunities that we have to lock up such a huge percentage of the population just in order to have "safe streets", it means we've failed in some other areas.

How many times do repeat that pattern before we stop and consider that maybe there are some upstream issues that need to be addressed?
If we gave the "tough on crime" folks carte blanche to handle the problem the way they see fit, and in 30 years we have 10% of the population locked up, and still have the highest violent crime rates, would they then realize that maybe there was another piece of the puzzle they weren't considering?

 

[expos4ever]

Uvalde would like a word.

Touche - cannot figure out how to add the accent.

 

[Zoii]

Well, we tried to build a wall at the southern border. That's where the drugs come from, and that's obviously where guns would come in, if they were made illegal.

...But we can't build a wall, because it's racist.

There's no way to sever our country from international crime, without being called racists, unless you can help us find a solution.They dont need to smuggle in guns when you can equip an army from walmart

 

[Zoii]

No of those were ever good ideas and we can clearly see the results of liberal policies.

Then keep doing what you are doing - and do not dare to suggest you empathize with the father carrying his dead son from a school. Do nothing and the same thing repeats itself.

The trouble with Americans is they have no clue how to benchmark - If you did you'd look around and note its just USA of the OECD nations that has this problem.

 

[Zoii]

But let's peer into the future first, at what possible scenarios might come in doing so, to make sure it's safe:

What If

What if we legislate against guns, so that all citizens have no guns, but then, gang members smuggle in guns anyway, along with the drugs. Then, in that case, we would have armed gangs controlling the streets, and we would have gangs killing random people (revenge killings) just like the cartels do in Central and South America everytime the police make a "bust".

Essentially, we might be creating an even worse problem, where everyone is afraid of the armed gang members, with no way to stop them from running the streets and taking control of entire communities.

As it stands currently, gangs cannot control entire communities, because they might get shot at by an armed random citizen, considering that the citizens who are not gang affiliated, are currently armed equally with gangs. Tipping that balance might be a mistake, unless there's some way of accomplishing it that I'm not seeing.

Why don't you benchmark against OECD nations that have exerted gun control - literally took away their citizens weapons - and note how that completed turned around the mass shootings, suicides and gun violence in general.

You Americans are so quick to hang onto your weapons and using gangs as your excuse- well instead of bleating about it, control your gangs and remove their weapons - then make it damn hard and expensive to get hold of one.

My understanding is that you guys can purchase an AK47 for under $1K - In Australia that same gun can only be bought on the black market and it will cost 20K - If you have 20K in small change, then you're probably going ok and don't need to be a ratbag with a gun. Gun prohibition works. It just wont work in the USA because your guys don't want it to. And so the paediatric body bags keep mounting.

 

[Pommer]

Let me make this simple, the police can reduce crime if the criminal justice system functions as it should but instead the system puts people right back on the street to repeat the same crime day after day. And incarceration is effective because people do not victimize the public if they are locked up in prison. Very little crime is the result of a legal gun owner using a gun and criminals do not obey gun laws. Crime will stop being an ever increasing problem as soon as the justice system puts criminals where they belong. The criminal is not the victim when that is understood by all crime will decline.

If only we had more prisons!

 

[Say it aint so]

Clearly the answer is more guns on the streets.
Clearly the answer is more unpermited concealed weapons in every glove box.
Clearly the answer is being able to walk into any public place USA open carrying and armed to the teeth.

 

[Desk trauma]

Clearly the answer is more guns on the streets.
Clearly the answer is more unpermited concealed weapons in every glove box.
Clearly the answer is being able to walk into any public place USA open carrying and armed to the teeth.

We’re past all that, time for:

Also time to start giving posthumous medals to those who give their lives in mass shootings for our second amendment rights.

 

[Brihaha]

Also time to start giving posthumous medals to those who give their lives in mass shootings for our second amendment rights.

The Congressional Medal of Sacrifice. Because that's what America is engaging in....human sacrifice.

The baby holding a gun in your cartoon reminds me of GOP politicians' Christmas cards.

 

[Desk trauma]

The Congressional Medal of Sacrifice. Because that's what America is engaging in....human sacrifice.

We should also build an American version of the pond of blood in Tehran to honor the second amendment martyrs. There’s room somewhere on the national mall.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

We’re past all that, time for:

View attachment 325961
Also time to start giving posthumous medals to those who give their lives in mass shootings for our second amendment rights.

I think putting the focus on mass shootings and/or specific types of deterrence with regards to certain kinds of crimes is probably missing the boat with regards to why someone would want to carry.

I would agree with critics who suggest that a lot of the "open carry showboating" with AR-15s is nothing more than people either trying to intimidate, or puff up their chest because they feel level of "bravery" that they wouldn't otherwise if they were unarmed.

But, there is some data to suggest that there is at least a certain level of deterrence to knowing someone may have a gun.

I'll have to dig up the link (I know I've posted it on here before so I can search for it), but there was a DOJ study/survey where they interviewed incarcerated felons, and something like 30% of them had stated that at some point in their criminal "career", they had planned a crime that they didn't go through with due to finding out that the potential target was likely armed.

Some surveys have reported that as high as 80% of felons have specifically avoided houses where they knew the homeowner was likely armed.

And there is some data to suggest that there are quite a few "Defensive Gun Uses" every year.

Low-end estimates are in the range of 55,000 to 80,000 incidents per year, while high end estimates reach 4.7 million per year. When other studies have been done to eliminate false positives and false negatives, the number lands between 500k and 1 million.

And obviously not every "defensive gun use" involves "shots fired" so to speak. There are those instances where it's "woman walking home from the bus stop at night, creepy guy starts following her and harassing her, she pulls a gun out of her purse, bad guy runs away"


Obviously, there are some directly related factors in the mix. The primary one being, if everyone wasn't armed to the teeth, there'd be fewer instances where a person needed to defend themselves with one. Sort of a "people having guns are solving a quarter of the problems created by people having guns" kind of deal. The other caveat is that the political faction that's the most dead-set against gun restrictions, are the faction that's also the most dead-set against the kinds of social initiatives that reduce crime.

So from a superficial view where we're only looking at gun crimes specifically, it seems like an easy answer, get rid of as many of the guns as you can and it'd be a net positive on that particular aspect.

The rub is that without guns (which are the ultimate equalizer), even though it'd reduce gun crime to get rid of them all, there are certain physical inequalities (the most prominent being, between men and women) that would leave a lot of people (primarily women) at a stark disadvantage. It'd be nice if we could have a society where the bigger and stronger didn't prey on the smaller and weaker (or didn't play the numbers game), but unfortunately we don't have that type of society here in the US at the moment.

All that being said, I'd like to see our "gun culture" resemble something like the Czech Republic has

Gun law in the Czech Republic - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Where people can own/carry guns for self-defense, can still have the "fun stuff" to take the range, but with an upstream vetting and legal framework that allows them to still boast one of the lowest murder rates in the world.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Why don't you benchmark against OECD nations that have exerted gun control - literally took away their citizens weapons - and note how that completed turned around the mass shootings, suicides and gun violence in general.

You Americans are so quick to hang onto your weapons and using gangs as your excuse- well instead of bleating about it, control your gangs and remove their weapons - then make it damn hard and expensive to get hold of one.

My understanding is that you guys can purchase an AK47 for under $1K - In Australia that same gun can only be bought on the black market and it will cost 20K - If you have 20K in small change, then you're probably going ok and don't need to be a ratbag with a gun. Gun prohibition works. It just wont work in the USA because your guys don't want it to. And so the paediatric body bags keep mounting.

It's important to compare cultures when looking at "trying to compare nation A to nation B".

What may be easy to do in UK or Australia may not be so easy in other places.

I've noted before, the US has a gun culture...like it or not, it's there and it's not going away. So looking at nations that didn't have a gun culture, and trying to implement a carbon copy of their policies are doomed to failure and strong pushback. You can reduce drunk driving deaths by draconian levels of beer and wine control. Look at certain middle eastern countries and how low their drunk driving rates are...so clearly that's the solution, right? How easy (or impossibly hard) do you think that'd be to clone those policies in say, Germany, France, or Italy where enjoying those types of beverage has a deep cultural tie-in?

If the US wants to make our gun culture safer, we should be looking to emulate other countries that had/have a gun culture, and managed to foster a pretty safe society.

As noted in my reply to another user, the answer is not to look to the UK, but to look to the Czech Republic

Gun law in the Czech Republic - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

They're a country where gun ownership is a constitutional right
They're a country where people can own/carry guns for defensive purposes (as hunting isn't terribly popular there, most guns there are for defensive reasons)
They're a country where people can have AR-15s without restrictions pertaining to "type of gun"

Yet, when you look at their murder rates, they're on par with the Nordic countries and actually performing better than the UK and Australia.

That should be the country that the US tries to learn from and emulate. They have common-sense upstream restrictions and licensing/vetting, and they were able to achieve the same low murder rates as countries that took much stricter approaches.

Looking at ways to make something that a lot of people like, a lot safer...is much easier and more achievable than trying to completely take away something that a lot of people really like (which is dang near impossible in most cases)

 

[Whyayeman]

I've noted before, the US has a gun culture...like it or not, it's there and it's not going away.

Agreed. Mass shootings are facilitated by the comparative ease with which firearms can be obtained, even by troubled young men who are in the main the culprits of these dreadful events.

I think America needs a public debate on why such people are so numerous in their society. Since the love affair with guns looks as if it will not end soon it behoves Americans to find and fix that issue. I expect it needs resources - psychiatric, social, financial.

Where is the will for spending money in this area?

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Agreed. Mass shootings are facilitated by the comparative ease with which firearms can be obtained, even by troubled young men who are in the main the culprits of these dreadful events.

I think America needs a public debate on why such people are so numerous in their society. Since the love affair with guns looks as if it will not end soon it behoves Americans to find and fix that issue. I expect it needs resources - psychiatric, social, financial.

Where is the will for spending money in this area?

I don't think that we have more people who fall into that category than other first-world countries, we just do a terrible job addressing the issue. I don't think the piece of land you happened to be born on makes more or less likely to have psychiatric issues, but it does dictate how likely you are to be able to get help for it (especially if you don't have a good job that offers good healthcare benefits)

Our "mostly for-profit" healthcare system is the primary culprit in my estimation.

The sentiments of "our problems are mental health related" and "That's someone else's problem, I don't wanna pay for it, cuz if they take an extra $5 out of my paycheck, that's socialism!" don't gel. (if someone is being sincere about the state of healthcare)

Every society is always going to have mentally ill people, some of which, to an extent where they can't hold down a solid 9-5 job that pays all the bills, or may not make enough that they can seek out specialists for their problems on top of their other bills.

That's why I, even as someone who's libertarian leaning in most other areas of society and government, still think there's tremendous value in public healthcare spending. If it costs me an extra couple of bucks per paycheck to make sure that a bipolar person who works retail (or maybe doesn't work at all) gets the help and meds they need, that's a small price to pay given the net positives.

 

[Whyayeman]

a small price to pay given the net positives.

Quite.

Off-hand, I can't think of any advanced country which does less than America in this area. It is not the whole of the problem but it is a significant part of it. Countries which could never be regarded as socialist have comprehensive health care systems.