"It's a mental health problem!"
"It's a mental health problem!"
"It's a mental health problem!"
The UK and Canada have similar occurrences, but not in the vast number as the United States. We all understand the access to firearms is the problem.
Except for all the people trying to deflect blame from firearms by blaming mental illness. Without any will to actually address mental illness, of course.
It's all about the access to firearms.
How do you effectively remove firearms from the equation at this point? Doesn’t the US have something like 120 guns per 100 residents? I don’t want to be the guy tasked with taking someone else’s gun away, that sounds incredibly dangerous. It also doesn’t seem fair to task someone else with that duty.
I won’t disagree that it’s a problem, but I don’t have a solution either.
Every country that currently has gun control laws, at some point didn't have gun control laws and did have an armed population
They all managed to pull it off, the USA is unique in thinking this is an impossible task. And they haven't even tried
You can't, but in Canadian communities where firearms are more prevalent you see the same result. Mental illness and access to firearms is a huge red flag no matter where in the world you are.
Most places solve it with buy backs and slowly tightening the vice. So that people have both incentive and time to come to terms with it before it comes to a point where they would have to fight to keep them. The crazy gun nuts are actually more talk than action, despite how often they "say" they aren't.
That's another problem I have with simple baning of guns all your doing is disarming the responsible folk as what are you going to do with the people who fight back with said guns and what about the people who hide their guns or people that get guns illegally you have to remember that there are people that break the law
Historically, old America looks very different from the current one. I look at things like our transit network being entirely train-based, and now being completely car-based. That is a HUGE change driven by demand.
The point is just that large, glacial changes over many years are by no means impossible if we’ve set it as a target and there’s motivation. Nobody ever barged into a railway company’s office and said “We’re tearing up your lines by force and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Why not both?
A part of the problem, not the only aspect.
The German police uses less bullets every year than the average policeman in the US.
Yes you read that right, the entire German police, all of them.
When in the history of humanity has anyone, anywhere in their right mind thought, "You know what we need here? More police shootings!"
I'm begging you, for your sake, think about the things you write before you post.
Why?
Not that I'm that connected to German day to day events but it's not that country is rampant on street violence.
No tolerance for nazi scum. Never, not once not one little bit.
Fuck off.
What are you talking about? I have been to Germany and it was great.
Im picking up what your putting down... the german police force needs assult rifles.
I didn't put it down, it was taken down.
The German police needs fewer nazis!
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.
Nah, we don’t very much need to worry about the murderous intentions, as long as they’re not able to put them into action.
That’s the problem, guns let people turn those intentions into actions very easily.
The Nice, France truck attack resulted in more deaths than someone shooting pseudo-automatic high capacity magazine rifles into a crowd of hundreds of people from an elevated position for like 30 minutes straight in Las Vegas
People in Europe can easily enact their murderous intentions, they just seem to not have them at anywhere near the same scale
Fair enough, at least you are honest in your selfishness.
I would argue that gun control is more immediately actionable and greatly reduces the capability of the mentally disturbed to commit atrocities of such scale at such a common rate.
Long-term? Yes, access to mental health care and a culture that encourages receiving it will help immensely. But that takes time and will ultimately not save nearly as many people as gun control would. We need both, but gun control can happen today.
Have you ever seen anyone arguing against mental health help? Only one of the two solutions you mentioned has a bunch of idiot fighting against it.
You also can't make mental health illegal overnight. People are born with mental health issues, it's not something they buy at the store or grab from their fathers closet.
Ban guns, ban guns now. Fuck gun culture and fuck all gun owners (even the responsible ones)
I understand your point, but everytime I see someone pointing at mental issues, it just seems to be like they will point at anything except the guns. We can thoroughly take care of the more complicated part of the problem once the easy part has been solved and they are killing childrens with knives instead of bullets.
Have you ever seen anyone arguing against mental health help? Only one of the two solutions you mentioned has a bunch of idiot fighting against it.
No, the same group of people fights against BOTH the solutions.
Reagan is responsible for gutting our mental health infrastructure, and Republicans vote against increasing funding consistently.
They won't support restrictions on gun ownership because they say the problem is mental health, but they won't support spending on mental health either. (Most likely because they seem to oppose anything that would actually help people who suffer.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MentalHealthSystemsActof1980
https://sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas.html
This last one is a ddg search - you can just pick which article you want to read about Republicans voting against mental health funding.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=republicans+vote+against+mental+health+funding
What if I want to hunt so I can eat meat without supporting factory farming?
Just playing devils advocate here, I agree we need gun control in the US. But saying "fuck responsible gun owners" seems pretty black and white.
It seems to me that the media loves to latch onto gun stories to further polarize the US. Divide and conquer is the oldest trick in the book. Republicans don't want anyone thinking. They want emotional reactivity and sensationalized, impulsive retorts with lack of reasoning from both "sides" and nothing close to nuanced thought.
What about gun owners who support restrictions and bans? There is a small group of us. Also gun owners who need to have them for their job as police, security, or soldiers? Farmers and Hunters have legitimate reasons, too. The government are never going to give up guns. Neither will criminals. The cat is out of the bag on them. We will never be done with guns until a better alternative is developed like the phasers from Star Trek or something. So saying fuck people for just owning a gun is a bit shortsighted, at least in my opinion.
Username checks out
Have you ever seen anyone arguing against mental health help?
Yes, several times. Even this meme implies that arguing for more and better mental health services as a solution to massacres is foolishly wrong. Also, another reply I got here says:
Nah, we don’t very much need to worry about the murderous intentions, as long as they’re not able to put them into action.
You also can’t make mental health illegal overnight. People are born with mental health issues, it’s not something they buy at the store or grab from their fathers closet.
I think you are a bit confused about what I'm suggesting here, or I'm not understanding what you mean with this.
Ban guns, ban guns now. Fuck gun culture and fuck all gun owners (even the responsible ones)
We can thoroughly take care of the more complicated part of the problem once the easy part has been solved
You think banning guns is the easy part? History has shown us time and time again that prohibitions don't work. Even if possession of a single firearm was punished with death people would still own and trade them as it happens with drugs in places where its punished with death.
Gun control or even prohibition is like a small umbrella under heavy rain, you dont get drenched but you still get wet. We need a raincoat, a hat and rubber boots.
To be fair, better metal health services is not an absolute solution either, there are plenty more stuff we should improve in order to achieve a real solution.
Nope, fuck you. We will not ban guns, and there is nothing you can ever do about it. Our gun rights are set in stone.
If fires are happening because of so much gas around, and matches that people are lighting, you limit the amount of matches AND the amount of gasoline.
Most gun owners live in a paranoid fantasy world with a hero complex. I've heard some wild shit come from the mouths of people who own guns. Many who do own them should have them taken away. It's mostly brainwashing and less about mental disorders with these people.
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.
On the other hand, guns don't kill a lot of people in most european countries (even the ones with very little gun control)
I don't think any European country comes close to the level of lack of gun control in the US though
I mean sure, the US has almost no gun control, but in austria for example you don't even need a permit for a lot of lethal weapons.
I think it's really a culture problem, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't regulate guns a bit
Finland, Ukraine(not including war). In some way Russia, where even if you don't want, good unkle Voenkom will give you gun anyway.
I'm not sure how you'd argue a background check and being of age at a minimum as a lack of firearm control.
Which European countries have very little gun control? I wasn't aware of any european country in which anyone can just carry a loaded gun around in public for no reason.
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.
Canada, too. We have a FUCK ton of guns.
We just can't open carry them (or own handguns), so it's not in our pockets next to our phone. When it's at home locked in your hunting case, it's off your mind, and you don't think about pulling it out when people piss you off.
Because of this, we also don't have people feeling the need to buy guns to defend themselves against other people with guns in their pockets next to their phone.
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.
The fact that you keep arguing how much of a gun control issue it is amongst other contributing factors is almost as big if the reason as the lack of gun control. Its been more than 20 years since Columbine, grow the fuck up and start doing something, WHICH INCLUDES gun control
It includes more appropriately addressing actual underlying issues.
This shit is a recent phenomena and I asked myself what changed since the 90s? That's when this shit really started popping off..
Only thing I can think of is access to the internet. Before that, struggling kids were benign by themselves. But now they have open access to others like them, and they can foment together. Throw in copy cat behavior and access to guns, that's the recipe.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States
It really isn't. They are happening more frequently, but that's to be expected with the population boom that we experienced. There were mass shootings in the 1800s in this country, and that's not counting anything we did to the native Americans.
Sounds good.
The gun control crowd can stop mass murderers, criminals and domestic abusers from buying legal, semi-automatic weapons (as well as dumbshit gun owners leaving unsecured firearms around to be stolen or used in their childs suicide).
This will keep everyone much safer while the pro-gun crowd get to work on curing every mental health issue forever, fixing wealth inequality, banning video games and schools with too many doors and whatever other things they think are the root of the problem.
Until they do, indiscriminately selling guns to people clearly isn't working.
Personally, I don't want to believe that wanting to brutally murder people around you is an innate human characteristic.
Oh, cool - we're pretending there are no other differences between the countries listed, e.g. healthcare, social safety nets, etc. that may or may not have been shown to be an unavoidable majority of the underlying issues.
Gotta enjoy the meme circlejerk though, eh?
What, you don't love neolibs arguing that they need to disarm the masses they've kept in squalor?
Because it's the only moral thing to do, obviously.
From the article...
If we explain this problem as pure evil or other labels like terrorist attack or hate crime, we feel better because it makes it seem like we’ve found the motive and solved the puzzle. But we haven’t solved anything. We’ve just explained the problem away.
From other comments, healthcare and mental health resolutions are no picnic in the other listed countries either. Some places handle it a bit better, but the US is not alone in abusing its sick.
... or anywhere else, except the USA.
Running statistical analysis on the data now. Preliminary results suggest video games as the main causal effect.
For the record, we have video games, D&D and tarot cards up here in Canada.
No you dont Canada is a frozen wasteland populated exclusively by Moose. Except Newfoundland their real.
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.
Genuinely.
Have the best insurance - Want a therapist in two weeks? It'll be a one hour long phone call.
Want in person? Join a month + waiting list
Dont have the right insurance? Fuck off or pay $200 cash.
And thats for the basic Talk Therapy or if you're lucky Cognitive Behavioral Therapy route. Want a specialist for a specific issue? Waiting list.
I advocate for books - you can get the therapy + mindfulness setup from a CBT Book for Depression/Anxiety and 10℅ Happier or Eckhart Tolle. Videos are great these days, even Tiktok sometimes. I think HealthyGamer has the best vids.
Well there is another thing they all have in common...
They're all dirty commies! At least that's what Fox News told me.
Look, gun politics aside, there is a legitimate reason to have more than one hunting rifle.
30-06 is great for hunting deer, but would be an extremely poor choice for hunting squirrels and raccoons, considering that there would be very little edible material left.
must prove a need
Ahhh... Racism it is, then.
I don't think you mean it to be, but everything you're saying is total bollocks.
Particularly the part about guns per capita
The Swiss aren't perfect, mind. They didn't let women vote until the 70s ffs. My point being that these kinds of comparisons simply don't work. The US has a unique problem. But the problem is still solvable through gun control, because gun control can pervade culture, as demonstrated by many other countries.
So most countries have 70% less guns, but 100% less shootings.
Math still doesn't math.
But the problem is still solvable through gun control, because gun control can pervade culture, as demonstrated by many other countries.
How likely do you believe it is to bring about the constitutional amendment necessary to ban firearms? To gain support of 2/3s the states in addition to a 2/3 majority in Congress?
That aside, you could argue symptoms could be addressed through such extremes if it were possible to do so, but you couldn't argue such measures address underlying issues - solve problems.
ammosexuals
Ah, I see we're using conservative tactics in making an "other" group demonize and alienate.
I always say that this is more cultural than anything else.
In the sense that culture is a complete lack of social safety nets, affordable and accessible healthcare and community support resources, broken ERPO laws, etc., sure.
You could argue rampant media oversensationalism of such violence glorifies it and further incentivizes it to those seeking to commit such a gruesome suicide, but that's less culture and more partisan wedge-driving and profiteering off ad revenue.
I’m just criticising how they handle and view guns.
How do you believe we view firearms? I'm interested in hearing how we can do whatever the heck [we] want.
Just relax with the guns and emulate their Swiss brethrens who are self-disciplined about handling guns. Rights come with responsibilities.
It's fortunate, then, that the vast majority of firearm owners are responsible.
Aren't ammo, like, super regulated in Switzerland though ?
In 2021, 8 out of 10 murders in the US were committed with a firearm.
130 people die every day to a gun in the US every day in the same data set.
In 2021, the states with the highest total rates of gun-related deaths – counting murders, suicides and all other categories tracked by the CDC – included Mississippi (33.9 per 100,000 people), Louisiana (29.1), New Mexico (27.8), Alabama (26.4) and Wyoming (26.1). The states with the lowest total rates included Massachusetts (3.4), Hawaii (4.8), New Jersey (5.2), New York (5.4) and Rhode Island (5.6).
The top states are all red. The bottom states are all blue. Speaks to safety nets and education and welfare of citizens correlations as you stated.
The FBI found an increase in active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2021.
There were three such incidents in 2000.
By 2021, that figure had increased to 61.
Had me at what caused the problem, yeah. However, mass shooters have a deeply significant profile. These are young white dudes with conservative to far right beliefs. This is a demographic whose specific problems are rarely being talked about.
Isn't it strange how the US has had formidable firearms freedoms for >200 years but mass shootings only became commonplace some ~30 years ago?
Doesn't Canada have better access to mental healthcare?
Fully automatic weapons didn't exist back then.
How many fully automatic weapons do you think are used in mass shootings?
The answer is zero. This is the problem. You people want to regulate things you don't understand.
I don't know who needs to hear this but fully automatic weapons (1 trigger press=many bullets until the trigger is released) are not used in mass shootings.
Semi automatic weapons (1 trigger press=1 bullet) are and a majority of guns used in crime and defense belong in this category. I know some people get annoyed because it's seen as nitpicking but even if you are anti gun you need to understand guns enough to make a coherent argument. I recommend having someone you trust take you to a range if you can.
But yeah imagine a group of government officials wanted to regulate cell phones but constantly said tablets like the words are interchangable. Then they start using vague terms like "smart screens" all the time like it means one very particular thing. You see what I mean.
Since 1884, nice try.
those other countries still have issues.
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.
I don’t think this post is downplaying mental illness. Republicans like to point out mental illness whenever there’s a mass shooting as though that’s the cause.
This post just points out that every place has mental illness, but none of them have the availability of guns that America’s does.
What a terrible take. Can you get mental health care in those other countries, or is there a wait list and a huge bill at the end like in the US?
Wait list, yes. Bill, absolutely not.
In Canada? Huge wait list unless you want to pay, same as the USA. What's the next excuse then?
In the States it's free if you are very poor, but if you get a real job they remove the benefit. The welfare cliff is a really undiserable there.
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.
Really well put. I do often think both sides tend to jump to extremes. But as always, the best solution probably lies somewhere in the middle
The solution is to address underlying issues.
It's actually very simple. Neither party is willing to do it.
I would say gun control is worth legislating but its actually not the main issue. The main issue genuinely is the mental health and the structure of society creating powerful and complex emotions in everyone: distrust, apathy, anger that is hard to place. And these emotions are a breeding ground for either radicalizing (left) or making extremist (right) and these white dudes with comversative family backgrounds and turning to far right political beliefs rather than facing these complex feelings.
Dunno. Just recently(2 days ago) people without any guns hijacked an airport.
And are there mass shooting in Finland or Ukraine. Besides putin's mob I mean.
people without any guns
A mob stormed and airports in Russia. Americans may see Europe as an exotic place, but mobs storming airports is pretty rare here.
So are mass shootings. While they happen, they're very rare.
560 so far this year doesn't sound rare
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.
What are the mortality rates of those two weapons?
Disclaimer: I looked it up quickly and haven't read a lot.
But from what I see, it's far more likely to survive stabbing wounds than gunshot wounds. See, e.g., the collection of sources here: https://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/1997/02/24/knives-00006
So even if there were a similar amount of attacks using knives instead of guns (which isn't the case as others pointed out), then guns would still be worse.
Yes gun kill more, but we don't really have to stop at killing less people.
And the key to having even less people killed than just an effective gun control policy alone, is acknowledging that mental health does actually play a part. In a well functioning society people aren't driven to mass murder to begin with.
Saying guns are fine because knives also kill is such a brain dead argument.
Knife crime is still higher in the US per capita compared to the UK (the country often used in knife crime comparisons)....
I didn't say "guns are fine".
I said mental health does play a part.
Mental illness don't kill people, uh uh;
I kill people, with mental illness
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.
In point of fact, many of us exist who are willing to recognize the unavoidable underlying systemic issues, continue to promote firearm ownership, and continue to promote community resources, social safetynets, and otherwise helping out their fellow human.
The world isn't some purely partisan hellscape.
What if mental illness but guns? Like, lots of them.
It does, it just prefers the personal one on one touch in other places over the get em all at once way America seems to like.
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.
I think the person who made this meme should be put on watch for mental illness
as a australian this is complete crap people here either alcoholics, depressed or corrupt politicians
Can you get semi autos in Canada and the UK easily? Definitely can't in Australia. The most you're allowed is a rifle and only if you're a farmer.
That's not true. You can get a gun licence pretty easily in Australia. Anyone that passes a police background check can get one. Yeah it takes 6 months but that's probably a good thing as well. You can't just make an irrational emotional decision and get a gun.
Also the storage requirements are quite strict. You have to have a proper gun safe to own a gun.
Then it's only single shot rifles and some pistols. We also have no public carriage. You can only move guns around from point to point, not just casually carry them.
It makes access to guns very hard for the average person. Yeah it doesn't stop organised criminals having more dangerous weapons, but organised criminals aren't going into schools and massacring people.
Strict gun control has been a really positive decision in Australia. Those who want to go hunting, still can, but kids, teenagers and crazy bastards have a very hard time getting them.
I suppose that's true. I guess I was thinking about semi autos when I posted my comment and wasn't considering much else. Pretty sure it's impossible to get your hands on those as a civilian in Australia.
Canada has guns too
If they had anywhere near the process we have to get their hands on firearms they'd have significantly less firearms in the public. I've gone through the process and it's not walking into a Walmart.
I own six guns and neve signed any government form.
Few handguns. And guns in Canada aren't a religion.
Well because here you can get treatment for your mental and physical illness without ending up in debt for the rest of your life
Accessing mental health services in the UK is a nightmare though.
Was in a deep depression. I have good Healthcare and tried to make an appt with a psychiatrist to take care of it.
6 month waiting list.... I thought US Healthcare was supposed to be better than this?
Still cost me $300 when I finally got in too since it's a specialist... Fml
It's also a nightmare in much of the US if you are not rich or happen to have excellent insurance. Having to wait six months to receive a bill you can't afford isn't great.
It's basically impossible in the US.
I couldn't leave the house for 5 years becuase I was terrified of people, and when I finally went to see a GP for help all I got was "well I can't sell you a pill to fix it so I'm not going to do anything".
Hahahahaha! Mental illness treatment? In Canada? Got insurance to cover that or years to wait?
This part is no better than the USA (and surprise surprise, it's mostly privatized!)
u mean a couple weeks, right? or have you never left bumfuck, Missouri?
Even when americans hate guns they can't help revolving their entire mentality around them.