Biden renews call for assault weapons ban after ‘tragic and senseless’ spate of July 4 shootings
Biden renews call for assault weapons ban after ‘tragic and senseless’ spate of July 4 shootings
President says ‘epidemic of gun violence is tearing our communities apart’ after mass shootings in Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Baltimore and Chicago
President says ‘epidemic of gun violence is tearing our communities apart’ after mass shootings in Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Baltimore and Chicago
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According to the Gun Violence Archive, 21,782 Americans have been killed in shootings halfway through 2023.
I know that's not 100% mass shootings, but that's still a stunningly bleak number. Rounding up from the .97 that's five human lives every hour of 2023 up to July.
It's bad, but after watching over a million Americans die of COVID while (seemingly) half or more of the country refused to take - or often even acknowledge - the most basic of preventative measures... Well, I just don't know any longer.
Shootings are far less deadly, and that's a much more murky subject as there are plenty of justifiable reasons to own a gun. You also have to wonder how many deaths are Darwin Awards, or justified self defense... It's just an incredibly complicated subject compared to "hey guys, let's wear masks."
Those numbers are intentionally misleading, they are using people that killed themselves to prop up the numbers. It's disgusting.
Explain why they don’t count as gun deaths please.
Gun deaths aren’t the number that’s important. Homicides are
If one of my family or friends shot themself or was shot due to the negligence of a "responsible gun owner", I would consider that important.
Accidents are different than intentional suicide.
Does it matter that Kurt contain shot himself in the head any more than layne Staley OD’d on heroin? No, it doesn’t.
Take the shotgun away and contain would just find another way to kill himself
I'd say that the immediate effectiveness of a shotgun blast to the head means that suicide by firearm is harder to save someone from than from an overdose. Narcan is ineffective against buckshot.
You’re missing the point. He wanted to die. He will find a way. You can ‘save’ him only so many times before he succeeds.
Also, if someone wants to die, who are you to tell them they aren’t allowed?
If Cobain was saved from an overdose and received the help he needed, who knows what could have happened? A talented influential musician and an outspoken supporter of gay rights might still be with us. Instead he had access to a shotgun.
What’s important isn’t up to you to decide. A gun death is a gun death. They ALL count.
I think the main reason that some people are against counting suicides and accidental deaths is because it puts the lie to the narrative of the responsible gun owner.
Every time someone shoots themself in the head, or a toddler shoots a sibling, it's because of an irresponsible gun owner. Usually an irresponsible gun owner that considered themself to be a responsible gun owner.
And every gun owner considers themself to be a responsible gun owner.
Personally, as someone who thinks guns can be dangerous to everyone in anyone's hands (even the most experienced and safe can have a heart attack or find themselves in some other situation where being safe with their gun might suddenly be lower on the priority list than others around you might like it to be), I don't like including suicides in that stat because it makes it easier to disqualify.
It's just the way our minds work. If one has a position they believe in and some conflicting information comes up, unless they want to believe otherwise, they'll latch on to any angle they can to disqualify it.
Including suicides makes the stat very easy to disqualify. They can be painful but they aren't scary and don't seem random when they aren't close to home, plus that whole line of thought that they'd just find another way if they didn't have guns.
Though, also personally, I don't see why accidental gun deaths should be disqualified. If anything, they are worse than deliberate murders and assaults, because that "find another way" argument applies to deliberate attacks but doesn't to accidental shootings. Accidental shootings are 100% "the only reason anyone died here was because there was a gun present".
Suicide is not what first comes to mind when someone talks about gun violence or shootings. Nobody said they don't count - just that it's misleading.
It isn’t misleading at all. A gun death is a gun death to anyone who doesn’t have a bias.
Bias? The point is that you're not as likely to just be randomly shot at the street as those statistics might make it to seem.
For me, it’s not about fear it’s about empathy. Seeing that number I didn’t think “oh no I’m going to get shot.” I thought, “that’s a lot of lives lost and families and friends impacted for the rest of their lives. A lot of permanent loss for the country. How can we have a meaningful impact that number?”
Yeah no I 100% agree that those numbers are insane and if it was my country I'd definitely want something done about it.
It's just that these statistics are often pulled out when talking about mass shootings for example and in that context including suicides and gang violence is a bit misleading in my opinion especially when the "true" numbers are just as horrific on their own.
It's just many of those deaths probably would have occurred anyways wether there is a gun ban or not.
There are lots of ways to commit suicide, guns are just convenient. Now some of those deaths probably wouldn't have happened because they may be spur of the moment decisions in a dark period, but many still would have.
Not like the deaths of children who find their parents gun in the closet or the deaths of 5+ people in a grocery store with an automatic weapon.
While it's true that some of the people that kill themselves with a gun would find other ways, the majority wouldn't. MOST suicides are spur of the moment, and having quick access to a deadly weapon makes those attempts far more successful. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/06/handgun-ownership-associated-with-much-higher-suicide-risk.html
Damn you’re cold. That’s 21,782 people’s lives we’ll never get back. Just this year. And we’re going to sit here debating whether their life is worth including.
No empathy like conservative empathy.
These disingenuous folks will tell you these folks would’ve killed themselves anyways, but they say nothing about the fact that most people kill themselves over financial or medical hardship while they shrink the social safety net to be just big enough to catch CEOs with golden parachutes.
I think in the US a lot of murders probably get classified as suicides, accidents, and self defense to avoid launching an expensive, dangerous investigation, so I would also say that suicides are overreported.
Is there any evidence to support this, or is it just what you think?
Proof? no, if there were proof our data would simply have to be better than it is. Are there a lot of statistical and geographical tendencies working against this data that are easily pointed out, yes.
The biggest ones: suicides usually occur in places where the body will be discovered and people who commit suicide tend to want to be found.
Homocides tend to be covered up more often or occur in more remote locations; lots of unsolved homocides end up as missing persons, especially in less dense areas. A few are staged as suicides or accidents.
So there's absolutely a tendency for the data to skew in certain directions. This isn't even addressing more chaotic problems liks a lack a lack of qualified coroners, incentives to not charge police who just riddle people with bullets, etc.
To be clear I can't stand the carnage and think it's one of the country's biggest faults. That being said, I'm not sure how what you've presented shows suicides as over reported. Suicide in a place likely to be found results in more accurate counting of suicide not extra deaths counted as suicide. Homicides being counted as missing persons doesn't over count suicide, it under counts homicide. Police shootings actually likely under count suicide since no police shooting is going to be labeled "suicide by cop". The qualified coroner thing is actually pretty crazy and a lot of places require little or no actual pathology knowledge, so who knows.
All this to say when we boil these tragedies down to numbers, when the discussion is assault weapons bans, suicides probably don't belong in the discussion. Disproportionally few suicides are committed with guns targeted by assault weapons bans. That doesn't remove suicide from the gun deaths discussion at all. If I might offer an unsubstantiated opinion of my own, I believe suicidal people are probably more likely to benefit from mental health intervention than the serial killers who are mass shooters. (Which is the only acceptable solution to the right, not that they're willing to pay for it.) Those a-hole attention whores ARE increasingly using guns that would likely be targeted in an AWB, and they're doing it because it helps grab the headline and gets the president to talk about how terrible what you did was. In the meanwhile this is going to remain political fodder for politicians and cannon fodder for the rest of us.
And those shouldn't count? Do you have any idea how much easy access to guns increases suicides? Many, many suicidal people would still be alive without the easy access to guns in the US. It's one of the easiest and painless ways to kill yourself.
Things like suicide are far more related to a lack mental healthcare and the stigma around getting help than weather or not people are allowed to own firearms. Not everyone has those kinds of problems. An assault weapons ban is certainly unrelated to those seeking self-harm and most crime.
a gun makes it incredibly easy to end someone, including yourself. It takes the killing out of killing and I can promise you that makes a massive difference to the number of both killings and suicides.
So we ban pain killers too? Cleaning chemicals? Rat poison?
The gun didn't make you kill yourself. Not getting help killed you. Stop chasing the guns, they aren't the the problem. The problem is that so many people see them as a solution and they need help.
try to travel a bit, see the world.
I am so tired of seeing this braindead take being used as any sort of "gotcha".
Why do pro gun Republicans always use mental health as an alternative reason for excessive firearm suicide rates, and then are nowhere to be heard from when someone proposes universal mental health access.
I'm a pro-gun leftist but, yeah, a lack of mental healthcare is an obvious issue when talking about mental health problems. There is absolutely no rational way for you to claim intentional suicide isn't a mental health issue.
If the issue was just guns existing you'd quickly be able to pass any gun laws you wanted due to the lack of gun owners. Plenty of people do not have mental health problems that would require them to be disarmed. No one is getting any treatment just because a gun ban got passed.
What I don't get is why Democrats don't call their bluff and try to create public healthcare options with the stated goal of preventing violence and issues related to mental health.
Look at suicide rates in England when they switched from coal gas to natural gas. “Sticking your head in the oven” was an incredibly accessible and effective way to kill yourself.
When coal gas was taken away, all suicides dropped.
Over time, as the carbon monoxide in gas decreased, suicides also decreased (Kreitman 1976). Suicides by carbon monoxide decreased dramatically, while suicides by other methods increased a small amount, resulting in a net decrease in overall suicides, particularly among females.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/saves-lives/
Since gas ovens are still commonplace around the world and not a major suicide device, maybe were just looking at simple correlation specific to a time and place. Just like school shootings in the US are a terrible trend, suicide by oven may have been a terrible trend in England. I don't disagree that the net effect of removing the popular tool can be significant, I definitely question if a similar result can be relied upon. Removing the gas may have just been a wake up or societal redirect that happily resulted in fewer suicides.
Coal gas, as in “artificial gas” (as opposed to natural gas) is no longer used in residential environments basically anywhere. It’s literally 50% carbon monoxide and much more toxic than natural gas which is what modern ovens use.
It is impossible to kill yourself with coal gas if you don’t have access to it. People can and do still kill themselves with carbon monoxide by leaving their cars on in a closed space, but that takes more time and effort and people have time to contemplate their decision and change their mind. This is a good thing.
Also, I’m not sure I understand your point about it being a trend. The data shows that total suicides dropped, not just suicide by oven.
Not sure which part of "if you don't have access to a gun, then you literally can not shoot yourself" isn't connecting in your mind, but it is interesting to me that it's almost like people subconsciously fight themselves to avoid arriving there.
England saw a decrease in suicide rates in the '60s & '70s last century when the levels of carbon monoxide in the natural gas supply were reduced. As a result of this change, people stopped being able to easily commit suicide by sticking their head in the unlit oven and turning it on.
It's not like these people were institutionalized and physically prevented from harming themselves. Making means of suicide too really available seems to allow people to kill themselves who otherwise would not attempt it.
Reducing access to guns- besides the obvious decrease in homicides - will likely cause a noteworthy reduction in suicide, too.
What came first, the chicken or the egg? Meaningless semantics; both are at play when it comes to someone that is suicidal. But I can assure you, suicide rates would be positively (downward trend) impacted by any sort of gun ban. I am speaking as person who has been suicidal. If I had had access to guns at certain points in my past, I likely wouldn't be here today.
Glad you’re here, and I’m glad you’re in a better place. Take good care of yourself.
Thank you. :)
K, not everyone has those kinds of problems and a ban would prevent everyone from owning a gun. That would be a bit like banning booze or cars because some people are drunk drivers.
Banning guns won't get anyone any treatment which seems vastly more important than prevent one kind of means some people may or may not seek out on their own.
why are you framing the conversation as if folks are deciding between better mental healthcare or getting rid of guns, when the conversation is about getting rid of guns or not getting rid of guns
are you misrepresenting what the conversation is actually about for a specific reason?
If you think there's any real conversation around "getting rid of guns" you are simply engaging in fantasy.
There will be no "getting rid of guns" in any of our lifetimes in the USA. Our rights to bear arms are practically set in stone with multiple SC precedents confirming the individual right that the Constitution gives us, and recent additional precedents show the sitting court interprets the legality of limiting those rights as an extremely narrow thing.
Even if all the above were not the case, the simple logistics of the matter are that we have 400 million guns in private hands, mostly unregistered, distributed across the USA. People will simply keep them no matter what you or the government tells them.
its true, never in the history of any nation has illegalising something made that thing less common
your disagreeing with the practicality of getting rid of guns does not, in fact, change the current conversation from being about how the usa should obviously get rid of guns, regardless of how difficult you lot will continue to make it 'in any of our lifetime'
That's kind of a generic reply that doesn't address the point that making them illegal is most likely impossible.
a generic reply that barely addresses any point was pretty appropriate for a generic statement that barely qualifies as having one to address, i felt like
it turns out 'the simple logistics of the matter' are that guns do not appear in the hands of criminals magically, rather the USA imports and manufactures ridiculous amounts of new killing machines for them entirely legally, making sure that getting your hands on one illegally remains as easy as absolutely possible
it turns out schoolkids and teenagers do not in fact get their military weaponry from their extensive mob/maffia/cartel ties, they take daddys entirely legally purchased firearm because having a country where millions of people can legally own guns means having a country where millions of kids can just grab one
it turns out people will not 'simply keep them no matter what you or the government tells them', because first, some people actually do care about following the law, and second, enforcement of bans on things does actually tend to lower the prevalence of those things
we know this because weve seen that happen, repeatedly, including in the USA, most every time anything was illegalised in recent history
we also know this because if a gun is confiscated from someone, it is physically impossible for that person to shoot someone else with that gun, because they do not have it
the literal only reason 'criminals can still get guns' is because theres so fucking many legal ones
One can do both.
A new assault weapon ban, while ultimately not a cure, would at least stem the tide until real effective change can be enacted.
We'll never fix our problems all at once, in grand sweeping actions. It comes in steps, which takes time. We just need to not destroy ourselves in the mean time.
Of course, that also means actually enacting that slow change, and not just paying lip service as a distraction from issues that are happening now.
My main point about an AWB in relation to suicides was more that people aren't using those kinds of weapons for suicide. The kind weapons these laws are trying to describe aren't even commonly used in crimes. The main reason they're talking about assault weapons now days is because targeting handguns first kinda stalled. That and the marketing works better for them.
There are things they could do that would be effective but it would be other left wing policies that would address root causes. The issue with that is those things seem to be even more of a lip service thing and it's kinda hard to bumper sticker that shit.
So you agree it's mostly political theater, on both sides? All the proponents of "gun rights" are just as pointless and theatrical as the gun bans they oppose? That coming out, guns blazing (as it were) against these measures is just another way to stir up an uninformed and apathetic base to action against the "liberal elite"?
Most of these measures are relatively toothless anyways, they affect tiny portions of the population, most of which just won't be able to purchase new weapons of that style, at least until the gun manufacturers find loopholes, as they always do.
There is political theater going on but with gun control laws they're not going to even stick due to lawsuits. Effectiveness is questionable as well.
The laws do not affect a tiny portion of people though. Lots of weapons that fall under the idea of an assault weapons ban are extremely popular and common. Then such laws would affect future buyers including people who do not have the opportunity to buy something now or didn't think to. Definitely a problem for someone a decade from now who was too young or wasn't into firearms yet. Like that the whole point of the ban right? Stopping people from being able to own something.
The "loopholes" aren't. They're just making something that is in compliance. The problem is they don't know how to define what they want to ban and the ban isn't actually effective for the results they claim.
48.8k people died from gun deaths last year. 54% were suicides, 43% murders, 3% other Of those murders, 3% were with a rifle. (Source was pew research)
630 rifle deaths out of 48.8k
All an assault weapon ban will do is make felons out of otherwise law abiding gun enthusiasts, and chip away at a right guaranteed in our constitution.
Nearly 50k deaths is tragic. We do need to do something about it. But banning guns does not fix the mental health issues, the income disparity, or the lack of education and social services in predominantly black or Hispanic neighborhoods, which contribute to these violent behaviors in our society.
And if you're only concerned about the deaths, consider how drug overdoses outnumber gun deaths by more than 2:1. Maybe we should make drugs illegal instead. Wait....
There have been less than 15 mass shootings since 2012 in the US where the shooter used an "assault rifle". An "assult weapons" ban wouldn't stem the tide at all. This proposed law would be like banning semi trucks because a few drunk driving incidents involved a drunk semi driver.
It stemmed the tide back in the nineties, before it was repealed in the last decade.
But that's honestly beside the point. Because everyone seems to just be against any kind of legal action against firearms, but most opponents of these measures can only point at vague options regarding "mental health" as an alternative... then balk at supporting any measures resembling it.
It's a dogwhistle that is frankly a tired ploy for populist politicians to throw at their base to distract them from real issues.
We must fight against the "evil" gun bans because if we don't fight against that, people might recognize how shit we are at our jobs and actually do something about it!
As I stated in my comment, I know it's not a cure. It's not even a very good stopgap. But at least it's fucking something. Which is more than can be said than by all the people whinging about "constitutional rights".
They also count criminals shooting criminals!
They are definitely not misleading. They break it down in the same page by suicide, accidental killing, and etc. https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
So it’s 9,611 as non-suicide deaths. That’s 51 per day and 2 per hour.
Wow. So, following those numbers, if you buy a gun, it’s more likely you’ll kill yourself than you’ll kill others.
By far, especially when you consider that a user can only commit one suicide but multiple homicides. Also, suicide is often a tragedy of convenience. The easier it is to accomplish, the more likely a person in a bad place mentally will try. Firearm accessibility eliminates any logistical barriers that might slow a person long enough for them to reconsider.
What’s the acceptable number of murders for you in this scenario?
What are the acceptable number of murders before you'd support banning in knives? Or bats?
How much of that is suicide?
About half, it was 54% in 2021. The problem with an assault weapons ban is it will do almost nothing to gun violence. More people are murdered with hammers every year then with ar15s. The vast majority of US gun violence is performed with regular pistols.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/
If they actually cared about the problem instead of just publicity, then they would look at banning pistols of all magazine capacities instead of rifles. If they wanted to do something acceptable for both sides of the aisle that could eliminate up to 40% of gun violence, they would prohibit people with domestic abuse charges from owning firearms. (See The Problem with Jon Stewart).
Or they could address the core problems facing people at the bottom of the economic scale, like hunger and mental health amd healthcare, the problems that make them desperate and emotional. Banning guns to prevent murder is akin to banning alcohol to prevent drunk driving. It works, but it hinders the majority of law abiding citizens all because a small percent of people misuse it.
The sad truth is they dgaf. So they do publicity shit like this that doesn't matter.
Is there an acceptable figure?
Try the other way around: how much gun control would impact in the total suicide number?
This article is about assault weapon bans, which are not exactly the go-to for suicide.
Look at what happened when England reduced CO access by switching from coal gas to natural gas.
Over time, as the carbon monoxide in gas decreased, suicides also decreased (Kreitman 1976). Suicides by carbon monoxide decreased dramatically, while suicides by other methods increased a small amount, resulting in a net decrease in overall suicides, particularly among females.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/saves-lives/
Suicide is often a matter of convenience. If it’s harder to kill yourself, many people are less likely to do it. I suspect reducing access to guns would reduce suicides just like it did with coal gas.
This is the sad reality. Gun violence is generally committed by sick people. Similarly, I saw this chart a few years back on Australian gun/knife violence. The plots are mirrored. Violence is sort of static.
That plot is in percentage. Of course violence is static. Because 100% of homicides are violent. Let’s see total number of homicides per year.
Edit: To clarify, if gun and non-knife homicides dropped to zero, and knife homicides dropped to one, that plot would show knife homicides skyrocket to 100%. The plot isn’t demonstrating the trend you think it is.
It's much more likely to survive a stabbing than to survive a shooting.
The loser of a knife fight dies in the street, the winner dies in the hospital.
I don't recall the origin of that or whether that's the exact wording but the general idea at least has stuck with me.
If you run away from a guy with a knife, you have to outrun the knife-wielder. If you run away from a guy with a gun, you have to outrun the bullet.
"A new Johns Hopkins Medicine analysis of national trauma data shows that trauma patients were four times more likely to die from gunshot wounds and nearly nine times more likely to die from stab wounds before getting to a trauma center in 2014, compared with rates in 2007."
That doesn't mean what you think it means. You are not twice as likely to die form a stab wound, if you are treated quickly fort a stab wound you are much more likely to survive compared to a gunshot wound. You need to look at the incidence of death percentages:
"(Gunshot wound: early, 2.0% vs. late, 4.9%; Stab wound: early, 0.2% vs. late, 1.1%)"
So a stab wound if treated early has a 0.2% chance of death compared to a gunshot wound which has a 2% chance of death, meaning gunshots are 10 times as deadly. Under late treatment its 1% chance of death for stab wounds, and 4% for gunshots, so gunshots are 4 times as deadly.
Even late treated stab wounds are half as deadly as early treated gunshots. Gunshots are far more deadly than stabbings.
That's the price we pay for freedom.
/s
That's a fucked up amount of people damn
Shaping up to outpace automobile deaths. Not to imply that our rate of automobile deaths isn't also totally unacceptable, especially compared to peer nations...