Everybody knows that sane, law abiding citizens become mass murderers the moment they hold a gun in their hands.
Yes, limiting access to the tools of murder will decrease murders caused by those same tools, but it does nothing to eliminate the murderous intentions of those people.
If we truly care about people's well being we should be doing both, reduce the risk of senseless shootings and massacres (gun control) and assist those with murderous intentions and other mental health issues who, believe it or not, are also victims of our sick culture and so-called societies.
Isn't it interesting that tons of people own guns in America and DON'T shoot people? Or the fact that we had crazy people and assault weapons previously without mass shootings.
Looking at these issues as if they're either-or is ridiculous. Of course you're going to need a multivariate approach. You're not going to get rid of the guns, and you're not going to get rid of crazy people. We need to address gun laws, mental health laws, and societal collapse overall. There's no singular approach that will fix everything.
well... it is a mental health problem. Plus culture. Switzerland has guns and just as many people with mental health problems as the rest of the 'developed' world, but almost 0 shootings.
Call it a mental health problem, a societal health problem, whatever. Unless we accept that wanting to slaughter the people around you is an unfixable natural quirk of some people's human experience, then this cannot be purely a gun control issue.
It can be surprisingly difficult to get a therapist in the US if you don't have insurance. Honestly, I found the process remarkably frustrating even with insurance.
I don't know what it's like in the other countries listed, but they all have much better healthcare systems than the US, so I imagine it's much easier.
They just don’t have easy access to guns. Doesn’t mean the guy with schizophrenia down the street found a compound bow and hasn’t been threatening people and requires 5 police officers each and every time someone calls it in.
It doesn’t mean the guy who set himself on fire the other day was a figment of everyone’s imagination.
It doesn’t mean the guy stabbing people in the neck just outside of one of the main stations because the bible told him to doesn’t exist
Or the other guy wielding a machete outside another one of the stations threatening people with it just didn’t happen.
It doesn’t mean there isn’t domestic violence because of someone’s underlying undiagnosed problems.
please stop downplaying mental illness and violence.
As a non American I can't see a simple solution to the problem, guns are already abundant so banning them won't magically make them disappear, attempting to sieze them would probably cause a dark stain (ala Boston massacre) in the countries history and you've got to deal with the fact that the USA only exists because they had the fire power to make it so which is ingrained in a lot of people.
I wish there was a magical solution but I fear its a choice between a slow, turbulent transition or a quick, brutal, bloody change.
I hear of people getting stabbed like atleast once every two weeks lol.
Gun kill more people at once, which makes bigger headlines, but desperate people are still doing horrible things becuase of a lack of safety nets.
Other than the immediate body count, the only difference is how easy it is to ignore.
Edit: I'm not saying gun control won't stop gun violence. Pretending that the metal health doesn't play a role in why people trapped in a bad situation end up doing drastic things is just wrong.
It just gives those in power an excuse to ignore how societal deficits harm people, and it doesn't really convey a convincing argument for gun control. It comes off as if you think gun control will fix everything, when it just make gun violence exclusively less prevalent.
Those same people who point to mental health are the ones denying any kind of public funding to address such issues (aka voting "no" on proposed legislation). There might be similar rates of mental health challenges in other countries - but we can also acknowledge that the US lags far behind in offering any kind of supportive system for those in need.
They don't kill people, but they certainly poison society wherever they are. It's like the mentally sick can't keep themselves from administrative positions.