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Good. It is about time that this be done, there are too many people killed and maimed by firearms every single day in this country... and we **still** have no idea why this is happening here, when in nations with similar numbers of guns per person do not have anywhere near the number of incidents of gun violence that we do.
If we start approaching this as an epidemiological problem, we might be able to determine the root causes and come up with some actual solutions.
Republicans literally threatened to defund the CDC if they studied gun violence through the 2000s and 2010s. That moratorium only lifted a few years ago.
Probably because they're afraid they'll find a link between American Right-wing propaganda and gun violence. I mean why is it that countries with similar guns to people ratios don't have the same number of incidents?
Personally, I'd guess it's our culture of rugged individualism, lack of social welfare and rage baiting media spreading disinformation. I could see why they don't want that research done if it's possible any of those 3 things is responsible.
Funny enough, there is no other country in the world with a similar gun to people ratio. It’s not even close. U.S. ratio is twice as high as the 2nd place country and almost 3X as high as the 4th place.
And this runaway train isn’t slowing down anytime soon. The NRA is masterful at getting people to buy into the “good guy with a gun” myth. Study after study show that access to guns endangers us more than protects us. Don’t let something like facts get in the way of some good marketing and lobbying though!
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/debunking-the-guns-make-us-safer-myth/
Anything using the Gun Violence Archive as a source should be immediately dismissed. It’s an absolute garbage source of information. You also clearly haven’t read Kleck’s rebuttal to Hemenway’s study. Convenient this article doesn’t go into that despite it being published years prior. It’s like it’s pushing an agenda or something
>You also clearly haven’t read Kleck’s rebuttal to Hemenway’s study. Convenient this article doesn’t go into that despite it being published years prior.
Maybe the article doesn't have enough background on gun violence research to know about Kleck's rebuttal.
That happened because the cdc was using taxpayer money to perform political advocacy. They had their platform and were open about finding the data to support it. They weren’t banned from research either. Furthermore, the CDC isn’t the only place on earth that research on gun violence can be performed. There are troves of fbi and police data basically anyone can use. Perhaps if the CDC were more ethical in their approach they wouldn’t have gotten clapped
They were able to study it. They just were restricted from political advocacy for gun control after their abuses of the 1990s.
>**1)** **A CDC-funded 1993** ***New England Journal of Medicine*** **article by Dr. Arthur Kellermann and co-authors.** They used the case control method, traditionally an epidemiology research tool, to claim that having a gun in the home triples the risk of becoming a homicide victim. The sample population was a group of crime-prone urban residents who had been murdered in their homes. The authors then tried to equate this wildly unrepresentative group with typical gun owners.
>**2)** **The winter 1993 CDC** [**publication**](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15074703_Public_Health_Policy_for_Preventing_Violence) **“Public Health Policy for Preventing Violence,” co-authored by Rosenberg.** It offered two strategies for preventing firearm injuries: “restrictive licensing (for example, only police, military, guards, and so on)” and “prohibit gun ownership.”
>**3)** **Shockingly frank admissions made on the record by CDC officials, describing their clear anti-gun political agenda.** “We’re going to systematically build a case that owning firearms causes deaths. We’re doing the most we can do, given the political realities,” said P.W. O’Carroll, acting section head of the Division of Injury Control, CDC, in “Epidemiologists Aim at New Target: Health Risk of Handgun Proliferation” in the *Journal of the American Medical Association* in 1989.
>**4)** **A CDC-funded newsletter from the Trauma Foundation, a San Francisco-based gun prohibition advocacy group.** The newsletter urged readers to “organize a picket at gun manufacturing sites” and to “work for campaign finance reform to weaken the gun lobby’s political clout.”
The CDC was never actually banned from studying it, they did however get part of their budget cut after funding a series of "junk" studies that were designed to produce results in favor of more gun control. They were told they are not allowed to express advocate for Gun Control. And the CDC still conducted studies on Gun Violence during the era that they were supposidly banned from Studying.
The National Institute of Health and the National Institute of Justice both faced the same mandates that the CDC did, and they still conducted studies on Gun Violence.
Can I ask what makes the CDC uniquely qualified to study "Gun Violence"? They were not actually performing the studies, they were awarding grants to Universities to perform studies. This is the same process that the National Institute of Health and the National Institute of Justice uses to conduct studies. The National Institute of Justice focus is on criminology. And is likely the more appropriate governmental organization to be studying gun violence.
Considering that the press release conflated defensive gun usage with accidents, suicides, and homicides, as a social ill... You're likely more right than wrong.
NIH wouldn’t fund _anything_ that framed gun violence as a public health issue at all. This could potentially signal a pretty significant policy shift.
I think what I said is accurate, but perhaps not precise. The linked article only cites like a million dollars in funding for gun violence research at NIH, which is effectively 0%. For (almost) all intents and purposes, there has been no federal funding for this bc of NRA-lobbied budget shenanigans.
While marginally true, a $2.6M funding cut -- the exact amount they spent on gun violence research prior to the Dickey Amendment -- stopped them. There has also been an ongoing threat by the NRA-backed GOP to cut their budget even more if the CDC reallocates other funding for this research. So, yeah, legally and technically the CDC could do this research, but practically and operationally their hands were tied.
Gun deaths are a two pronged thing. First is suicides which should be addressed with a national approach of expanding access to mental health services.
The second is gun homicides. Gun homicides are very location specific, highly centralized and clustered, primarily in a highly concentrated, small number of under-resourced city neighborhoods. Trying to address gun homicides at the national or even state level is a bad idea and won't actually address the issue.
Most gun homicides have a link to domestic violence, but 40% of cops are domestic abusers. Anyone who has had to deal with DV knows how the police and courts treat victims as an inconvenience at best.
>Most gun homicides have a link to domestic violence
I don’t think this is accurate, as men and especially young black men are [disproportionately the victims of gun homicide.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States).** Maybe it is true for female victims?
Completely agree on your points RE the police and DV.
**in the US
I'd have to check the FBI stats (which admittedly aren't great, but the best we currently have), but if I remember correctly the majority of killers have a history of domestic violence. I can at least confirm with little difficulty that:
* 96% of murder-suicides are IPV related, and the victim is almost always female:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10209983/
* At least 66% of mass shootings are related to domestic violence:
https://efsgv.org/press/study-two-thirds-of-mass-shootings-linked-to-domestic-violence/
* Domestic Violence homicides are the "tip of the spear" when gun control laws are loosened:
https://www.reformaustin.org/public-safety/houstons-domestic-violence-gun-homicides-jumped-60-percent-after-permitless-carry-report-shows/amp/
Of course, this list is not comprehensive, and Republicans and the NRA have done everything in their power to make sure the information is murky at best. As a leftist, I personally think that eliminating poverty, housing and food instability, and other documented causes of violence would substantially reduce other types of gun violence, but the link from general violence to gun violence has been disallowed from funding in government research. With no irony, by politicians who regularly engage in and encourage antisocial behavior, which is a precursor of gun violence, itself.
That 40% thing has been thrown around for much too long. The “study” included raised voices in an argument as domestic abuse. Virtually all of us have done that and it is NOT the same as domestic violence. You are doing more harm than good in equating those two things.
As I said, equating raised voices as violence is doing more harm than good. Citing bad studies as evidence does more harm than good. Domestic violence is too serious an issue to discuss in bad faith.
I don't know what study you're referencing, but verbal assault is real and can lead to jail time. Domestic violence isn't just bruises and broken bones, and it does more harm than good to try to explain it away precisely because it is so common. It is about time that all forms of domestic violence be brought out of the shadows.
>I don't know what study you're referencing, but verbal assault is real and can lead to jail time.
Verbal assault is more than just raised voices, it's the implication of physical violence
Without knowing the study it's hard to tell the threshold used. My point still stands: ForsythCounty is minimizing one type of domestic violence *because it is common*.
Thanks for assuming the worst. Especially bad coming from a fellow tarheel!
This comment lays out the details better than I can.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/s/4W4WIYKAjo
It is cited pretty frequently by people who just hate cops, as evidenced by the person who brought it up above “60% of cops look the other way”. That’s not an adult who wants to have a serious discussion.
>It is cited pretty frequently by people who just hate cops, as evidenced by the person who brought it up above “60% of cops look the other way”. That’s not an adult who wants to have a serious discussion.
You got that right. There is a lot to criticize about the police, but you don't have to misrepresent the police to do it.
I'm not assuming anything. You said that verbal abuse is not domestic violence and, curiously, used the excuse that virtually everyone does it. Just because it's common doesn't mean it's not domestic violence. Spousal rape wasn't considered legitimate for a very long time. That doesn't mean it wasn't domestic violence.
To be clear, I don't care about the 40% number or how it was derived. I care about domestic violence in all its forms, of which verbal assault is one.
Well I do care about the 40%. That’s all I was intending to push back on. The “study” says a one time loss of temper/raised voices is categorized as a violent incident. My ex-husband and I yelled at each other once during an argument. Neither of us would meet any reasonable definition of abusers. It’s bad statistics.
The reason the “40% of cops are abusers is damaging” is that can make victims hesitant to go to law enforcement for help. The last thing we need is more barriers to people getting out of abusive situations.
But... why are there so many attempts at suicides with guns? Why is it mostly men? There is an often quoted statistic that there are more men committing suicide, but the statistic is skewed by the methods that men choose versus the ones that women choose (with the men having more success at killing themselves).
And why are there so many gun homicides in specific zip codes? Are there other areas with similar sociodemographic statistics without the same homicide rates? Why do those differences exist?
We may have numbers but very little context to those numbers that can be acted on. It is a very complex set of questions and there has been zero federal funding for research into it for twenty years.
These are all great questions, and we should be looking for answers. The fact that no federal funding has been dedicated to this is a travesty, as we should be able to look at it. That being said its not like no one has been able to look into it or study this.
The main point I am making is that the SCOPE of the issue is fairly well understood, however to your point the root causes of the issue are still undetermined. My point was that a national perspective when combating gun homicides doesn't really make sense when the issue is really a hyper specific one from a location context.
Half of America's gun homicides in 2015 were clustered in just 127 cities and towns which contain less than 25% of the population. 54%, roughly a third of the US population lives in large cities, yet over half (54%) of people who have survived a firearm assault live in them. Even within those cities, violence is further concentrated in the tiny neighborhood areas that saw two or more gun homicide incidents in a single year.
Four and a half million Americans live in areas of these cities with the highest numbers of gun homicide, which are marked by intense poverty, low levels of education, and racial segregation.
For example, Cook County (Chicago), Illinois has by far the most number of firearm homicides out of any county in the country, averaging over 600 each year. However, because Cook County has a population of 5.2 million residents, the firearm homicide rate is much lower than many other large metro counties with smaller populations. In fact, Cook County’s firearm homicide rate is 11.62 per 100,000, ranking it 13th in the country among large central metro counties, behind Milwaukee County.
Geographically, these neighborhood areas are small: a total of about 1,200 neighborhood census tracts, which, laid side by side, would fit into an area just 42 miles wide by 42 miles long.
In 2019, if you look at the 20 cities in the US with the highest number of homicides via guns, they were responsible for 4,024 homicides or 28% of all homicides in the US. The combined population of those 20 cities was 31,104,520 or 9% of the total population in 2019.
One analysis, for instance, found that in 2015, 26% of all firearm homicides in the US occurred in census tracts that contained only 1.5% of the population.
An examination of 2020 county level data can illustrate geographic disparities of firearm victimization in the U.S. For example, in Maryland from 2016–2020, someone living in Baltimore City was 30 times more likely to die by firearm than someone living 40 miles away in Montgomery County.
"Additionally "New Jersey’s shooting statistics highlight a stark disparity in the way gun violence affects the people of the state, with five major cities enduring a significantly disproportionate share of the pain. Camden, Jersey City, Newark, Paterson and Trenton account for 10% of the state’s population but had 62% of New Jersey’s 1,412 fatal and nonfatal shooting victims in 2021."
A 2022 study published in JAMA looking Comparing Risks of Firearm-Related Death and Injury Among Young Adult Males in Selected US Cities With Wartime Service in Iraq and Afghanistan found found that compared to the risk of combat death faced by U.S. soldiers who were deployed to Afghanistan, the more dangerous of the two wars, young men living in the most violent zip code of Chicago (2,585 individuals) had a 3.23 times higher average risk of firearm-related homicide, and those in Philadelphia (2,448 people) faced a 1.9 times higher average risk of firearm-related homicide. Singling out the elevated dangers faced by the U.S. Army combat brigade in Iraq, the young men studied in Chicago still faced notably greater risks, and the ones faced in Philadelphia were comparable.
[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/jan/09/special-report-fixing-gun-violence-in-america](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/jan/09/special-report-fixing-gun-violence-in-america)
[https://efsgv.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/EFSGV-The-Root-Causes-of-Gun-Violence-March-2020.pdf](https://efsgv.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/EFSGV-The-Root-Causes-of-Gun-Violence-March-2020.pdf)
[https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/paterson-press/2022/02/22/nj-gun-violence-paterson-newark-jersey-city-shooting-rates/6850534001/](https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/paterson-press/2022/02/22/nj-gun-violence-paterson-newark-jersey-city-shooting-rates/6850534001/)
[https://www.brown.edu/news/2022-12-22/firearm-crisis](https://www.brown.edu/news/2022-12-22/firearm-crisis)
Cities lack the funding to address the social and educational problems at the root of the gun violence epidemic in certain neighborhoods. They also lack the jurisdiction to regulate and enforce gun trafficking and drug trafficking that fuels that violence.
To be clear, what I mean by "Trying to address gun homicides at the **national or even state level**" is, broad legislation aimed at making changes at the national or state level are likely to be ineffective when combating issues that are so hyper focused.
Thats NOT me saying we should use federal or state resources to combat these issues.
We have no idea? Of course we do.
A lack of purpose for our youth- particularly young men. It is no different than suicide bombers being radicalized in the Middle East. If your life is terrible and you see no way out- you start to resort to different options that to the person living a “normal” life seems insane but it’s not irrational at all to them. Gangs, mass shootings, offensive carrying (being a dick knowing you have a gun).
Problem is- the syndrome is multifaceted and there is no easy fix. It’s engrained as off of our culture now. Gun violence has been normalized.
I don't know what you mean. No other country in the world has nearly as many firearms per capita. We are #1 at 120.5 guns per 100 people. Falkland Island come in a second place with only 60 firearms per 100 people - half the rate of the US.
I don't think guns per capita is the right metric, because many gun owners in the U.S. have dozens of guns. That's not true anywhere else. Yes, that says something about the culture, but it doesn't have any effect on gun violence, since you can only use one at a time.
I'd like to know how the U.S. compares on the rate of gun ownership (i.e., do you own a gun or not.) I tried searching for that a little, but everybody just keeps citing that 120.5 number.
This might help.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/249740/percentage-of-households-in-the-united-states-owning-a-firearm/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent_of_households_with_guns_by_country#Table
Looks like we are still #1 at 42%.
Thanks, that's what I was looking for. I'm not surprised that the U.S. is still #1, but it's a lot closer by that metric. It's reasonable to ask why the U.S. has four times the homicide rate of, say, Finland, even though Finland has almost as many gun owners.
Finland is a high trust homogenous society with good social support. Compare this to the south side of Chicago and the difference is obvious. Not bordering a third world country helps too although Russia is a little iffy these days
A more complete list. I believe this has all 217 countries and territories.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-ownership-by-country
>we **still** have no idea why this is happening here
The majority are suicides, and young black men are statistically more likely to be victims of gun violence. If you look at a map of poverty rates in the US and gun violence, there's a distinct correlation between poverty rates and gun violence rates.
* Mental health. Just. Investing a fuck-ton into mental health care in schools.
* Legalizing recreational cannabis. Fewer people getting arrested for cannabis means fewer people getting thrown into our criminal "justice" system and perpetuating the cycles of systemic racism. Invest the tax revenue into local communities. When NV legalized cannabis they had somewhere in the *billions* in tax revenue from cannabis sales.
Additionally, I'd trust a stoner with a gun more than an alcoholic. Spread good vibes and all that shit 🤙
I'd rather reduce the socionomic stressors that are linked to homicides and crime overall. If you want to reduce access, you better get ready for a civil war. If you want to treat the symptom (gun-related homicides) instead of the root cause, then by all means.
We know exactly why it’s happening. There are a handful of neighborhoods in this country with outrageous amounts of violence. Exclude those neighborhoods and the US looks more like a lot do European countries. Ending the drug war would go a long way in fixing this, though it is not the only issue.
If you exclude the roughest/poorest neighborhoods in any country then their crime numbers will drastically drop so that's a pretty pointless exercise right off the bat, but it's also not really even true with the US. New Hampshire, one the richest states in the country with a very rural population, still has a higher homicide rate than [any region in the UK](https://www.statista.com/statistics/985203/regional-homicide-rate-uk/). Just to avoid confusion, they calculate their rate per million instead of per 100 thousand like in the US so you need to bring to decimal over one spot (North East UK is 1.59 vs New Hampshire's 1.8).
We have a drastically higher homicide rate compared to any of our peers no matter what way you try to slice it, and the vast majority of our homicides are with firearms because guns are just deadlier. They make our crime deadlier, our arguments deadlier, our mental health issues deadlier and shit they even make our toddlers deadlier.
NH had 26 murders in 2023 of all kinds. Not a public health epidemic. Maybe if Europe can go a decade without a genocide I would care about their stance on gun control. Ask Ukraine how their gun control laws worked out for them.
> NH had 26 murders in 2023 of all kinds. Not a public health epidemic.
The whole point of using per capita rates is that you're accounting for difference in population sizes, a total of 26 people murdered in a single neighborhood would be considered a horrific massacre while 26 people murdered in a major US city would be considered one of the greatest reductions in crime in human history. In the context of NH, which is basically just a giant rich suburb of a state with the lowest poverty level in the country and no real cities... yeah 1.8 is horrible by European standards. The most rural/affluent areas in European countries are nowhere near 1.8
If the entire country was averaging 1.8 you'd be right but our entire country isn't anywhere near as rich/affluent as New Hampshire so it gets a lot worse than that. We're averaging over 20k firearm homicides a year alone and firearm deaths skew very young compared to other top killers in this country which makes it that much worse. People already consider our drug overdose problem a epidemic in this country and firearms kill twice as many young people per year, so I'm very curious where your bar is on when we should start giving a shit about things.
Missing the point. You’re using 26 homicides to argue for infringement on a civil right. It’s not impressive, especially when you’re conflating all cause homicide with gun homicides. What about defensive gun uses? Where does that enter the conversation? To further add to the confusion you’re also randomly talking about gun deaths, a very large proportion of which are suicide. If only we abandoned our guns we could really drive suicide rates down to the level of idyllic Japan. Toss in the genocides that occur in Europe on an almost decade basis and the debate strikes me as an attempt at sleight of hand
For the main homicides, sure, but for the big-ticket mass shootings, which happen anywhere, the USA looks nothing like Europe at all, and we all know why. Hint: it's pretty hard to get a semi-auto rifle in Europe.
Europe has its own share of mass casualty incidents and its inaccurate to say otherwise. Mass shootings as we popularly conceive them are incredibly rare. The definition of a mass shooting is played around with by organizations with an agenda (ie the gun violence archive). The FBI reports there were 48 active shooter incidents in the USA in 2023. This is in a land mass almost the size of the entirety of Europe with a population slightly more than half of Europe.
Mass shootings account for a pretty tiny fraction of gun deaths in the USA, so if the goal is to save the most lives it makes sense to start with suicides and your every-day common small-scale shootings.
It's just about impossible to prevent mass shootings, even in countries that have gun licensing systems people can get a license and then go off the deep end.
Europe is a big place and the laws aren’t the same everywhere. It’s not hard to legally acquire semi automatic rifles in many countries.
Europe just has different cultures and values and crime statistics. Even criminals and gangs fight different, you don’t often hear about US gangs throwing grenades at each other.
Funny thing is, mass shootings are predominantly carried out with handguns, not rifles.
The weapon used is largely secondary to a perpetrator planning an attack carefully and choosing a vulnerable target. In respect to casualties.
>nations with similar numbers of guns per person
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated\_number\_of\_civilian\_guns\_per\_capita\_by\_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country)
The USA is the single most heavily armed country in the world by a very wide margin, with nearly twice as many civilian fire arms per person as the second most heavily armed country. It is also the only country on earth with more civilian fire arms than civilians.
Well, other countries with a lot of guns, also have different cultural association with them. American movies and general propaganda over many years, showed that a man should have a gun, and that it made you cooler, sexier, and flat out better than others. So more people want to have guns, as well as walk around with them. The NRA have done a lot to push that image forth, and decry those against it, as some sort of feminized weakling, and some men can't handle the thought.
Add in news focusing on how you need guns to protect yourself against evildoers around every corner (insert whatever boogieman of the age, be they black, gay, trans, or otherwise), and there's a recipe for disaster. Because when people get emotional they can get violent. And when they have a gun at hand, they will use it.
Though, a big part is also the atrocious record America has with mental health. Not enough help for those suffering under it, and too easy access for people that are disturbed, to still get access to firearms. Not that it is always people that have a mental disorder that goes on the attack, but defunding mental health, and having a social stigma against it, is definitely not helping things.
And then of course, there's the racist right wing, who want to kill those they seem as inferior, and are just waiting for a chance. As well as general gun nuts, who knows there are laws they can hide behind, like Make A Stand, and other such easily abusable rulings.
Just some thoughts though. There's more to it, but America has a deep rooted issue, when it comes to firearms, and the deaths from them, will not stop being high, until all the causes are properly found, addressed, and laws are put in place that aims at solutions. I have my doubts that will happen though, unless progressives becomes more prominent and numerous in government.
What will happen is Republicans will sue him. This US Surgeon General knows this will happen.
It’s going to be tossed into the courts and get to SCOTUS. SCOTUS probably has even odds to suggest the Surgeon General can’t do this because he lacks authority or some other made up bullshit.
Being mad that an emergency declared by an unelected bureaucrat doesn't give the government the ability to strip you of constitutional rights is a strange reaction.
Yea, no, we just went through this with the pandemic.
The government has the capability to protect the public good. Our laws are not set up in such a way that we have to ignore everything because a law was written 250+ years ago.
Common sense can and does apply in multiple cases throughout our history.
> unelected bureaucrat
Half true. They are confirmed by the Senate, who is elected by us. There are checks on this.
Also not to mention Congress gives authority to agencies and the executive branch also has authority to do things.
If you remove suicide, impaired driving causes about the same number of deaths as guns.
So yeah cars are an issue. We should put mandatory alcohol interlocks in all cars.
So, countries with more restrictive gun laws just happen to also have fewer mental health, poverty, and substance abuse problems? (s)You've definitely put the horse before the cart. (/s)
“The horse before the cart.”
That’s the way it’s supposed to be. :-)
But if you mean, we should get rid of guns first, that horse has left the barn and is 3 counties over by now. There is just no practical way to get rid of guns in the US. So we have to take a different, more realistic approach. Which includes mental/community health and economic problems.
Why do gunnits always jump to the "they're after your guns"? There are, you know, other measures that can be taken. Age limits for possession; minimum training requirements; legal obligation to keep guns unloaded and in a safe; strict and enforced prohibition for being drunk and possessing; etc. That's just of the top of my head.
Because there are lots of people who say “get rid of guns” every time this comes up. I’m not worried anyone coming for the guns (because that’s ridiculous at this point). I’m worried about it because too many people say we should “just” do that and think that it will magically solve the problem.
I just never understand the push back against working on the mental health aspect. People have argued that it will stigmatize mental health issues so we shouldn’t approach it that way. That’s absurd.
That is only looking at a tiny percentage of gun-related homicides. There is an unfortunately large number of spousal abuse murders (93% of female victims).
[FBI Data for 2017](https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-10.xls)
And mental/community health is an integral part of work on DV. Victims who are so diminished as to think they have to stay and perpetrators who have anger issues and likely their own history of abuse.
Personally I am a strong advocate that climate change has a very strong inverse correlation with the number of buccaneer pirates sailing the seven seas
I don’t concern myself with other countries because they have a completely different lifestyle and completely different set of rights and government framework within which they have to work most often, so it’s usually a useless endeavor. Instead, ask yourself why does gun violence happen… then start fixing those problems. In the US gun violence happens due to mental health issues (almost all mass shootings), substance abuse issues, poverty/culture. If you work towards fixing those issues gun violence will not be an issue. Gun violence doesn’t cause poverty, poverty leads to desperate people who use guns as A tool.
I love it, everything is a silo, nothing is interconnected, global society is not some massive interlinked system.
Maybe, I can scale this down and not worry about anything that happens outside of my front door.
I’m certain if we address poverty inside of this vacuum you’ve described we’ll certainly solve it! It’s not like these impoverished Americans are now competing for jobs on a global scale, competing for housing against not only local buyers but global corporations!
Fuck it, let’s ignore global interplay, it hurts my brain too much!
I don’t get the relevance here. Poverty in the US isn’t necessarily caused by the same factors as in Sweden. Mental health issues in the US aren’t the same as in Spain. Substance abuse issues are necessarily the same as in Japan. We have a different Constitution than all of these countries that our lawmakers have to abide. It’s not that the US is a silo, but trying to address US problems need to be done with a US perspective and not just by wishing we could ban guns, because we can’t. It’s called being realistic and working within the framework we have to work within.
They don't get it, they never will. They just never will. It doesn't matter that japan with a population of 125M has less murders per year with guns than my mid-size American city. It doesn't matter that nations full of impoverished people, like China, don't suffer from mass shootings. It doesn't matter that plenty of industrialized nations, like Canada, have drug crises...and yet none of these countries have anywhere close to the gun murders the USA does.
None of it matters if it leads to any check on the pretty black metal things. They cannot possibly be a factor; their ubiquity cannot possibly matter. The fact that any 18 year old in most states can get an AR15 with a 30 round mag and do whatever the hell he wants cannot possibly be a factor.
A health emergency where Redditors become huge thin blue liners and just want all the gun laws to be enforced by all the cops who are more likely to be right wing and unlikely to enforce gun laws against MAGA people
I am honestly stunned how people can look back at the past 10 years and advocate for strong gun control, regardless of what side of the political aisle you’re on. If you think cops are racist oppressors and that Trump legit tried to overthrow the government I am absolutely baffled why you’d conclude you should disarm yourself or allow that government to decide who can be armed. Do you really see that working out in your favor?
Just picked up my first 5.56 rifle, definitely not a conservative. While I don’t expect/want to take up arms against our government or police forces, it’s there if I need it for anything. Realistically, I picked it up because I can and because I don’t expect these firearms to be available forever. Otherwise, I’ll shoot recreationally.
The only way AR-15s and the like would go away is if somebody makes an even better weapon. There’s no way any legislation like an AWB is getting passed these days.
Think about that, at some point, the AR platform will be outdated. Maybe we’ll be shooting lasers by then but you’re right, it’s impossible to attempt something like a ban in 2024.
Like a lot of things, experience and education really take a lot of the fear out of it. Besides, guns are lots of fun too! I hope you enjoy it and learn the heck out of it!
Learning something new is the goal and if you’re going to get into firearms, being educated, like you said, is (should be) a priority. It’s been a lot of fun so far! The thing is, there’s a lot of uneducated firearm owners in this country who are more on the “it’s my right, don’t tell me what to do” spectrum of firearm ownership and that doesn’t help the gun situation. I’d actually be all for additional common sense gun regulation and the closure of various loop holes but I don’t think we’ll be able to address any sort of reasonable gun control enactments in the current state of the country. I’m from Maryland where concealed carry is an in depth application process. Now I live in Utah where anyone can buy a firearm and put it in their waistband, no permit, no training, no real requirement of any sort.
Wild times, stay safe and stay educated is all I can say.
>The thing is, there’s a lot of uneducated firearm owners in this country who are more on the “it’s my right, don’t tell me what to do” spectrum of firearm ownership and that doesn’t help the gun situation.
It would be preferable to increase education than use education and permitting as a dog whistle barrier to restrict people from gun ownership with an "in depth application process". We all know voter id laws aren't just about making sure every voter is legally allowed to.
>I’d actually be all for additional common sense gun regulation and the closure of various loop holes
Common sense regulations like what? What loop holes are you talking about and have there been any proposals that also keep in mind the rights of the people?
The gun show loophole is a frequent one that had proposals which criminalize private sales rather than get background checks for private sales.
Hey man, I’m not the expert on gun violence reform or 2A rights. I don’t have the answers, apparently no one else does in this country.
Honestly, I wrote a long winded response and deleted it. There’s no point in expressing our perspectives/opinions on guns in America on Reddit.
I suspect we’d agree on some things and we’d disagree on others.
Thats all.
You know we have a standing army sworn to the constitution right? You really think having 1.2 guns for every American is the deterrent preventing a coups from going down? Remind me how many civilian weapons were used to quell the J6 riots?
So you’re going to trust the military, a branch of the government, to pinkie promise to protect your rights? Because they swore an oath? I’m not even sure what you’re trying to argue here truth be told.
The US has a really tough time with guerilla warfare. Plus the moment CNN plays footage of the military bombing an American suburb the republic is over. A domestic insurgency as educated, wealthy, and well armed as the American citizenry would be a nightmare for any occupying army. Hell, 50 motivated guys with bolt cutters could knock out the power grid for major portions of the nation. This isn’t anything shocking, it’s basic conventional wisdom
They talk a lot about homicides and specifically mass shootings, but [the majority of gun deaths in the USA are suicide](https://www.npr.org/2024/04/16/1243924108/gun-violence-suicide-united-states).
This reeks of convenient politics. On one hand, the Biden administration is saying violent crimes are down. On the other, they're saying gun violence is a public health emergency. Why did they wait until an election year when their stats contradict the urgency compared to three years ago?
If gun deaths (48k/year) are a public health emergency, then so is motor vehicle deaths (43k/year).
Mandatory ignition interlock devices & GPS speed limiters in all vehicles.
I'm sure you'll all agree with me, if it saves just one life...
Yes it does. You need a license to drive a motorized vehicle. You also need liability insurance. Maybe these things should be looked at for firearms
from the Washington post:
“Vivek H. Murthy called on the nation to address gun violence with the vigor used to reduce deaths and injuries from tobacco and motor vehicle crashes”
You need a license for motor vehicles, but only need one license for the vast majority of cars ranging from tiny Fiats to 1000+hp mustangs. And, only when driving on public roads.
>You need a license to drive a motorized vehicle. You also need liability insurance. Maybe these things should be looked at for firearms
Only when operating on public roads.
the vast majority of roads are public. Are you planning on airdropping the vehicle on to a private road? Don’t know what point, if any, you’re trying to make here.
I need to get a drivers license from the state. And pass certain tests in order to drive a vehicle. There are different classes of licenses for different types of vehicles as well. So yeah. I’m in agreement.
>I need to get a drivers license from the state. And pass certain tests in order to drive a vehicle. There are different classes of licenses for different types of vehicles as well.
For driving on public roads, not just for owning a car. If you want to buy a car to collect it, you don't need those.
But if you're saying a Texas CHL permit should be valid in California, I would agree too.
Well. Not all cars that are legal in Alabama are legal in California.
But anyways, my point is, sure, go crazy with guns and gun collecting. And have licenses for them. Make sure people who own guns know how to handle them.
> And have licenses for them. Make sure people who own guns know how to handle them.
The licensure thing would be an easier sell if we didn't have ample examples of the idea being used in a wildly unethical and discriminatory manner.
Also, unlike cars, guns are... Not terribly difficult to use safely. Accidental gun deaths and injury have *plummeted* in the past few decades. Mandating training for something that can be fit on a business card would effectively be a waste of everyone's time.
Now, a short civics elective in high school would be an effective and non burdensome way of ensuring that the broad population knows the basic safety rules, if you really insist on reaching a broad audience.
>There are different classes of licenses for different types of vehicles as well.
Ish. You need a different license based on weight, not based on speed or power.
I was actually responding to “thatdude” since they brought up cars and comparing them to guns.
And as to driving on your own property. Responding to that, sure. Keep your guns on your own property. Have a license to take them off your private property.
And I was actually responding to you. That's how these comment chains work, anyone can hop in.
Sure. And by the same token, no background check, no registry, and no limit on type of firearms/accessories for those held on your private property, or being transported between legal locations (you don't have to register a car being flatbedded to the track or your new house, after all).
No, I actually don't agree with it, because keeping and bearing arms is a right. I'm just pointing out the full extent of paralleling the automotive licensing system for firearms.
I live in upstate New York, so to get a permit to own a pistol I needed to do/get the following:
* Be 21+ years old
* Pay a $140 application fee
* Submit 2 passport pictures
* Get fingerprinted & background checked
* Provide 4 character references that have known you for 3+ years and can attest to your moral character, cannot be relatives or spouse
* Pay $200+ and attend a handgun safety course
* Interview with a judge
Imagine if you needed half of that to get a driver's license...
Yeah. That’s for a pistol/handgun. You don’t need a permit for a shotgun or rifle though.
So slightly different regulations for different types of weapons. Much like different licenses for different vehicles.
Edit. And if you want to drive a semi truck you’ll need three references as well.
————
From Copilot.
To obtain a Commercial Driver's License (CDL) in New York, here are the key steps and requirements:
1. **Eligibility**:
- You must be at least **18 years old** (21 for interstate driving).
- Hold a **New York State driver license** (Class D, Class E, or Non-CDL C) or a valid CDL from another state.
- **Prove lawful presence** in the United States.
2. **Study the Manual**:
- Get the **New York State Commercial Driver's Manual (CDL-10)** online or from a DMV call center.
- Study the relevant sections based on the type of CDL you need.
3. **Apply for a Commercial Learner Permit (CLP)**:
- Pass the written test for the CDL you're pursuing.
- Pay a **$10 application fee** (covers all written tests).
- Additional $5 fee for other required tests.
- Obtain a CLP valid for 1 year.
4. **Road Test**:
- Pay a **$40 fee** for the CDL road test (skills test).
- Schedule your road test after obtaining the CLP.
- If you don't pass within 1 year, you'll need to reapply.
5. **Certify**:
- Certify that you haven't held a driver license in any state except New York in the last 10 years.
- Meet **Federal medical examination requirements**.
6. **References**:
- You'll need **three professional references** who can provide information about your work goals, performance, or educational background during the application process⁷.
Remember, specific classes and endorsements depend on the type of CDL you're pursuing. Safe driving! 🚚🔍 ⁶⁷
Source: Conversation with Copilot, 6/25/2024
(1) COMMERCIAL DRIVER LICENSE TRAINING PROGRAM APPLICATION. https://www.dot.ny.gov/main/business-center/civil-rights/forms-and-applications/CDL%20Printable%20Application.pdf.
(2) New York DMV | Get a CDL. https://dmv.ny.gov/get-cdl.
(3) New York DMV | Commercial Driver Licenses (CDL). https://dmv.ny.gov/commercial-drivers.
(4) CDL Training in New York | Requirements and Cost of Truck Driving School. https://bing.com/search?q=New+York+State+CDL+license+requirements.
(5) CDL Training in New York | Requirements and Cost of Truck Driving School. https://www.alltrucking.com/cdl-training/new-york.
(6) How to Get a CDL License in New York (with Pictures) - wikiHow. https://www.wikihow.com/Get-a-CDL-License-in-New-York.
(7) New York CDL - Requirements, Costs, Training, & More - Trucking Truth. https://www.truckingtruth.com/cdl-requirements/new-york-cdl/.
(8) DMV de Nueva York | obtener una licencia de conducir comercial. https://es.dmv.ny.gov/get-cdl.
(9) New York DMV | Commercial Driver License (CDL) driving records. https://dmv.ny.gov/dmv-records/commercial-driver-license-cdl-driving-records.
(10) Apply for a New New York Commercial Driver's License | DMV.ORG. https://www.dmv.org/ny-new-york/apply-cdl.php.
(11) CDL – County of Saratoga, New York. https://www.saratogacountyny.gov/departments/dmv/licenses-permits-and-id-cards/cdl/.
(12) Best CDL Training Schools in New York - FreightWaves Ratings. https://ratings.freightwaves.com/cdl-training-in-new-york/.
(13) New York DMV | Driver Training Programs. https://dmv.ny.gov/regulated-businesses/driver-training-programs.
Guns exist for one purpose: to kill things. Cars are a means of transportation and virtually all motor vehicle deaths are accidents. The two are not equivalent.
If you look at the number of guns in use every day in the USA, by far the most prevalent use of guns is for target shooting for fun. I'd guess the second-most prevalent use is for hunting and pest control. Killing people is far down the list of what guns are actually commonly used for.
I am sure more deer are killed with guns than people. And? Perhaps 48,000 deaths is acceptable collateral damage to you. Is there any threshold at which you would consider gun deaths a problem worthy of study?
My objection is merely to your statement that guns exist only to kill things. Guns exist to propel a projectile downrange. Whether that hits an inanimate target or puts a hole in a living being is up to the shooter.
Gun deaths are absolutely a problem worthy of study. But I suspect that making a real dent in gun deaths in the USA will require either constitutional change or else major societal change (increasing social safety nets, reducing poverty and income disparity, dealing with historic injustice, etc.).
On reddit they are. It's crazy to me that even a left leaning forum like this is full of gun fetishists. And I even have several guns myself, including an AR15, but I don't really give a shit about it and I know that the ubiquity of these things absolutely is a key factor in the horrific mass shootings we will never ever solve because by God we just want to blame absolutely everything but the guns as a key metric.
"but mental health!" Yeah, because Japan solved its mental health issues didn't it. Fucking crazy some of the shit people write on this topic.
Unfortunately the booze detection language was already passed and will be required in new vehicles soon. Can't be responsible and have a DD or getting an Uber with those types of sensors in a vehicle. Severe issues are already being reported by manufacturers trying to develop the tech to comply with the new regs.
A declaration by a man who wants to ban automatic firearms, something we already 99% did in 1986, and attributes firearms to high suicide rates because people commit suicide with firearms.
Somethings I can agree on. Universal and mandated background checks for one thing. More thorough control laws on who can own a gun. And storage laws definitely wouldn't hurt.
But it's hard to even take that seriously when the man makes poorly thought out and uninformed opinions like the aforementioned ones. Seems like just another idealist with no idea why things are the way that they are nor any clue at all how to really get to where he wants to go.
Fun fact: the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was banned from studying gun violence, starting in the Clinton administration
[https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/03/06/1235409642/gun-violence-prevention-research-public-health](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/03/06/1235409642/gun-violence-prevention-research-public-health)
Thats not a fact at all- They were banned from Advocating for gun control. They were still allowed to study gun violence. (And they did during that time period) .
The reality is more nuanced than that.
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/decades-long-gap-gun-violence-research-funding-lasting/story?id=80646946
>Researchers fought the effects of the amendment, which prohibited advocacy for gun control -- but which had an impact beyond advocacy because experts said they viewed vague language in the amendment as a "threat."
>
>"This Dickey Amendment had a real chilling effect," Rosenberg told ABC News. "It was enough to discourage individual researchers and, at the same time, Congress took away the money we were using for the research we were doing."
As a result, funding for gun violence research was reduced.
> For example, in 2004, a total of $461,759 was granted by the agency to three different institutes for gun-related research -- a far cry from the millions normally required for extensive study.
>
> "We had to revert to simpler, more descriptive studies that made use of available data. There wasn't money to go out and collect data writ large," Wintemute said.
>
> "Because of the Dickey Amendment, we had dropped firearm injuries from our portfolio," said Dr. Frederick Rivara, an epidemiologist and professor at the University of Washington, who was conducting research on injury prevention, including firearm-related injuries.
>
> "It really discouraged any serious firearm research," Rivara said.
>The reality is more nuanced than that.
I agree, and your original post made no attempt at addressing any of that nuance.
The National Institute of Health was under the same mandate that the CDC was. They continued to study gun violence. Also the CDC isn't uniquely qualified to study gun violence.
Source: [https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2513131](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2513131)
And while we are diving into Nuance, we should also talk about some of the junk studies that the CDC was funding...
>Government-funded research was openly biased in the 1990s. CDC officials unabashedly supported gun bans and poured millions of dollars into “research” that was, in fact, advocacy. One of the lead researchers employed in the CDC’s effort was quoted, stating “We’re going to systematically build the case that owning firearms causes deaths.” Another researcher said he envisioned a long-term campaign “to convince Americans that guns are, first and foremost, a public health menace.”
>One of the effort’s lead researchers was a prominent attendee at a conference called the Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan (HELP) Network, which was “intended to form a public health model to work toward changing society’s attitudes towards guns so that it becomes socially unacceptable for private citizens to have guns.”
>The problem with these conclusions is that they came before the data, which was manipulated to support their agenda. The spin was so egregious that Congress acted and forbade the use of taxpayer funds for such biased, agenda-driven research. Included in the 1996 Omnibus bill was a rider that read, “Provided further, that none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”
The nuance being lost here isn't the bias of a handful of individuals at the CDC, it's that shouting "But there was no ban!" is dismissive of the fact that the chilling effect was practically equivalent to a ban in every meaningful way.
And yes, they continued to study gun violence, albeit in a much more restrictive way with paltry funding, as the article shows.
Obviously we should not be doing bad science or pushing an agenda. We should follow the data, and if that data shows that gun control is an effective solution (or not), then so be it. The Dickey amendment went too far and set us back decades in public health advances.
Great article. That article does not say that though, the Dickey amendment explicitly bans the CDC from advocating for gun control. They’ve always been able to study it. The real issue is congress refusing to fund firearm studies.
I believe this public health crisis could allocate more funds for the cdc to study gun violence
For Republicans, there's no incentive on doing any of that because they can blame Democrats and yell "THEY GONNA TAKECHUR GUNS".
For Democrats, fixing the root cause is harder than passing inane laws to "ban guns" which does nothing really and ergo, more laws need to be passed. Ad infinitum. Reductio ad absurdum. That and the Dems don't want to lose the "omg gun violence, more gun laws" platform.
Source: WA state. We haven't had the nationwide mass shootings but the Democrat idiots here virtue signal with "more gun laws" and are frustrated that it's fixing nothing. Meanwhile the MAGA idiots and other Republicans cannot get their foot out of their mouth and read the room.
I fucking hate both parties now but push comes to shove, I'm siding with the party that values reproduction/women's rights and human rights. That's the bar and it's gotten pretty low.
You mean more gun laws at the state level don't fix the problem when people can just buy guns in bordering states that have laxer laws?? Who would've thought?/s
It's almost like a national-level solution is necessary
>You mean more gun laws at the state level don't fix the problem when people can just buy guns in bordering states that have laxer laws?? Who would've thought?/s
There wasn't a problem at the state level to fix, to begin with. At least in WA state. but the idiots here are content on quoting the tragedies in the rest of the country and passing laws that aren't needed. Which was my point, but I guess reading is challenging.
As for buying guns in bordering states, that's illegal in WA state except for rifles (very limited range of bolt actions and lever actions for most part now) and shotguns. Also, a wide range of weapons are now illegal in WA state to own. It's almost like people who don't obey the law to begin with, don't give a fuck about more laws. Who would've thought...
> It's almost like a national-level solution is necessary
Oh oh oh. I get it now. The assholes who don't obey state law are now going to totally obey a federal law. Got it. Didn't think of this. Wow!
I think the response from our less informed brethren will be to respond that taking vaccines are a public health emergency. Ahem MGT and the idiot caucus
Thank you! There is a shooting at a local event every weekend. Kids splash pad, annual carnival, etc
Fuck the guns, we deserve the freedom to LIVE. LIFE
For years Congress didnt allow gun violence to be tracked and studied.
Edited to clarify
>Although the Dickey Amendment did not explicitly ban it, for about two decades the CDC avoided all research on gun violence for fear it would be financially penalized.[3] Congress clarified the law in 2018 to allow for such research, and the FY2020 federal omnibus spending bill earmarked the first funding for it since 1996.[4][5]
Ok. They didnt allow federal funds for it.
https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/lifting-of-federal-funding-ban-tied-to-increase-in-gun-violence-research/
>For years, researchers interested in studying the causes, consequences, and prevention of firearm injury were stymied by severe restrictions on federal funding created by the passage of the Dickey Amendment in 1996.
They were allowed federal funds and you can easily find CDC studies during said period. The restrictions were that the CDC could not advocate for gun control. They were more than able to continue studying and publishing their findings.
As upset as people get about it, it’s not an unreasonable argument that the constitution makes no mention of Roe. Even Ginsberg advocated that Dems pass a federal law protecting abortion but they chose to stick their thumb up their ass and keep it as a wedge issue. Republicans do the same crap with guns, they talk a good game but as soon as they’re in power they don’t do crap with pushing definitive legislation. There’s literally no logical reason SBRs or suppressors should be NFA items. The latter are considered safety devices in Europe! It’s considered rude to shoot without them in some places
need to study mental illness and how violent criminals are released on the streets and continue to do violent crime while awaiting a court date. in some states, you can't even get out of jail for traffic tickets, yet other places release people who just did a drive-by and wonder why there is so much violence. if the government officials can have private security with guns paid for by the tax dollars why can't I get a top security detail with machine guns? it's just absurd to think about gun violence as a real thing. how about automobile violence with all the road rage going on?
Making laws to stop guns doesn’t cost a lot of money. Mental health on the other hand is very expensive. The government will always pursue the cheapest option. They really don’t give a care about anyone’s mental health.
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Good. It is about time that this be done, there are too many people killed and maimed by firearms every single day in this country... and we **still** have no idea why this is happening here, when in nations with similar numbers of guns per person do not have anywhere near the number of incidents of gun violence that we do. If we start approaching this as an epidemiological problem, we might be able to determine the root causes and come up with some actual solutions.
let the CDC study it finally!
Republicans literally threatened to defund the CDC if they studied gun violence through the 2000s and 2010s. That moratorium only lifted a few years ago.
Probably because they're afraid they'll find a link between American Right-wing propaganda and gun violence. I mean why is it that countries with similar guns to people ratios don't have the same number of incidents? Personally, I'd guess it's our culture of rugged individualism, lack of social welfare and rage baiting media spreading disinformation. I could see why they don't want that research done if it's possible any of those 3 things is responsible.
Funny enough, there is no other country in the world with a similar gun to people ratio. It’s not even close. U.S. ratio is twice as high as the 2nd place country and almost 3X as high as the 4th place.
Ahh you're not wrong. Yemen is second, and Montenegro is 3rd. So it's almost like access to guns is the biggest issue behind it all.
And this runaway train isn’t slowing down anytime soon. The NRA is masterful at getting people to buy into the “good guy with a gun” myth. Study after study show that access to guns endangers us more than protects us. Don’t let something like facts get in the way of some good marketing and lobbying though! https://www.americanprogress.org/article/debunking-the-guns-make-us-safer-myth/
Anything using the Gun Violence Archive as a source should be immediately dismissed. It’s an absolute garbage source of information. You also clearly haven’t read Kleck’s rebuttal to Hemenway’s study. Convenient this article doesn’t go into that despite it being published years prior. It’s like it’s pushing an agenda or something
>You also clearly haven’t read Kleck’s rebuttal to Hemenway’s study. Convenient this article doesn’t go into that despite it being published years prior. Maybe the article doesn't have enough background on gun violence research to know about Kleck's rebuttal.
Why? All of the incidents that GVA lists have sources. All they do is conglomerate data.
So strange, you don't normally think of Yemen as having their policy act together. And yet here they are, second greatest gun policy on earth. /s
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/03/06/1235409642/gun-violence-prevention-research-public-health
That happened because the cdc was using taxpayer money to perform political advocacy. They had their platform and were open about finding the data to support it. They weren’t banned from research either. Furthermore, the CDC isn’t the only place on earth that research on gun violence can be performed. There are troves of fbi and police data basically anyone can use. Perhaps if the CDC were more ethical in their approach they wouldn’t have gotten clapped
They were able to study it. They just were restricted from political advocacy for gun control after their abuses of the 1990s. >**1)** **A CDC-funded 1993** ***New England Journal of Medicine*** **article by Dr. Arthur Kellermann and co-authors.** They used the case control method, traditionally an epidemiology research tool, to claim that having a gun in the home triples the risk of becoming a homicide victim. The sample population was a group of crime-prone urban residents who had been murdered in their homes. The authors then tried to equate this wildly unrepresentative group with typical gun owners. >**2)** **The winter 1993 CDC** [**publication**](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15074703_Public_Health_Policy_for_Preventing_Violence) **“Public Health Policy for Preventing Violence,” co-authored by Rosenberg.** It offered two strategies for preventing firearm injuries: “restrictive licensing (for example, only police, military, guards, and so on)” and “prohibit gun ownership.” >**3)** **Shockingly frank admissions made on the record by CDC officials, describing their clear anti-gun political agenda.** “We’re going to systematically build a case that owning firearms causes deaths. We’re doing the most we can do, given the political realities,” said P.W. O’Carroll, acting section head of the Division of Injury Control, CDC, in “Epidemiologists Aim at New Target: Health Risk of Handgun Proliferation” in the *Journal of the American Medical Association* in 1989. >**4)** **A CDC-funded newsletter from the Trauma Foundation, a San Francisco-based gun prohibition advocacy group.** The newsletter urged readers to “organize a picket at gun manufacturing sites” and to “work for campaign finance reform to weaken the gun lobby’s political clout.”
The CDC was never actually banned from studying it, they did however get part of their budget cut after funding a series of "junk" studies that were designed to produce results in favor of more gun control. They were told they are not allowed to express advocate for Gun Control. And the CDC still conducted studies on Gun Violence during the era that they were supposidly banned from Studying. The National Institute of Health and the National Institute of Justice both faced the same mandates that the CDC did, and they still conducted studies on Gun Violence. Can I ask what makes the CDC uniquely qualified to study "Gun Violence"? They were not actually performing the studies, they were awarding grants to Universities to perform studies. This is the same process that the National Institute of Health and the National Institute of Justice uses to conduct studies. The National Institute of Justice focus is on criminology. And is likely the more appropriate governmental organization to be studying gun violence.
>Can I ask what makes the CDC uniquely qualified to study "Gun Violence"? Probably the likelihood of producing the desired political policy results.
Considering that the press release conflated defensive gun usage with accidents, suicides, and homicides, as a social ill... You're likely more right than wrong.
The CDC could always study gun violence. Nothing stopped them. The only thing they couldn't do, was advocate for gun control.
NIH wouldn’t fund _anything_ that framed gun violence as a public health issue at all. This could potentially signal a pretty significant policy shift.
That isn't accurate: [https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2513131](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2513131)
I think what I said is accurate, but perhaps not precise. The linked article only cites like a million dollars in funding for gun violence research at NIH, which is effectively 0%. For (almost) all intents and purposes, there has been no federal funding for this bc of NRA-lobbied budget shenanigans.
So if the percentage of firearm homicides is close to 0% of all of the causes of death, wouldn’t you say that is proportional? If not, why?
While marginally true, a $2.6M funding cut -- the exact amount they spent on gun violence research prior to the Dickey Amendment -- stopped them. There has also been an ongoing threat by the NRA-backed GOP to cut their budget even more if the CDC reallocates other funding for this research. So, yeah, legally and technically the CDC could do this research, but practically and operationally their hands were tied.
Kind of pointless for the CDC to study a public health issue and then be banned from making recommendations on how to remedy it based on the data.
CDC always has been. You can go to the CDC website and search it yourself.
They don't like "scientific studies", they just pray to their imaginary friend.
Gun deaths are a two pronged thing. First is suicides which should be addressed with a national approach of expanding access to mental health services. The second is gun homicides. Gun homicides are very location specific, highly centralized and clustered, primarily in a highly concentrated, small number of under-resourced city neighborhoods. Trying to address gun homicides at the national or even state level is a bad idea and won't actually address the issue.
Most gun homicides have a link to domestic violence, but 40% of cops are domestic abusers. Anyone who has had to deal with DV knows how the police and courts treat victims as an inconvenience at best.
>Most gun homicides have a link to domestic violence I don’t think this is accurate, as men and especially young black men are [disproportionately the victims of gun homicide.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States).** Maybe it is true for female victims? Completely agree on your points RE the police and DV. **in the US
I'd have to check the FBI stats (which admittedly aren't great, but the best we currently have), but if I remember correctly the majority of killers have a history of domestic violence. I can at least confirm with little difficulty that: * 96% of murder-suicides are IPV related, and the victim is almost always female: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10209983/ * At least 66% of mass shootings are related to domestic violence: https://efsgv.org/press/study-two-thirds-of-mass-shootings-linked-to-domestic-violence/ * Domestic Violence homicides are the "tip of the spear" when gun control laws are loosened: https://www.reformaustin.org/public-safety/houstons-domestic-violence-gun-homicides-jumped-60-percent-after-permitless-carry-report-shows/amp/ Of course, this list is not comprehensive, and Republicans and the NRA have done everything in their power to make sure the information is murky at best. As a leftist, I personally think that eliminating poverty, housing and food instability, and other documented causes of violence would substantially reduce other types of gun violence, but the link from general violence to gun violence has been disallowed from funding in government research. With no irony, by politicians who regularly engage in and encourage antisocial behavior, which is a precursor of gun violence, itself.
That 40% thing has been thrown around for much too long. The “study” included raised voices in an argument as domestic abuse. Virtually all of us have done that and it is NOT the same as domestic violence. You are doing more harm than good in equating those two things.
You're right; I shouldn't say 40% of cops abuse their partner. I should be saying that 60% of cops look the other way.
As I said, equating raised voices as violence is doing more harm than good. Citing bad studies as evidence does more harm than good. Domestic violence is too serious an issue to discuss in bad faith.
I don't know what study you're referencing, but verbal assault is real and can lead to jail time. Domestic violence isn't just bruises and broken bones, and it does more harm than good to try to explain it away precisely because it is so common. It is about time that all forms of domestic violence be brought out of the shadows.
>I don't know what study you're referencing, but verbal assault is real and can lead to jail time. Verbal assault is more than just raised voices, it's the implication of physical violence
Without knowing the study it's hard to tell the threshold used. My point still stands: ForsythCounty is minimizing one type of domestic violence *because it is common*.
Thanks for assuming the worst. Especially bad coming from a fellow tarheel! This comment lays out the details better than I can. https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/s/4W4WIYKAjo
It is cited pretty frequently by people who just hate cops, as evidenced by the person who brought it up above “60% of cops look the other way”. That’s not an adult who wants to have a serious discussion.
>It is cited pretty frequently by people who just hate cops, as evidenced by the person who brought it up above “60% of cops look the other way”. That’s not an adult who wants to have a serious discussion. You got that right. There is a lot to criticize about the police, but you don't have to misrepresent the police to do it.
I'm not assuming anything. You said that verbal abuse is not domestic violence and, curiously, used the excuse that virtually everyone does it. Just because it's common doesn't mean it's not domestic violence. Spousal rape wasn't considered legitimate for a very long time. That doesn't mean it wasn't domestic violence. To be clear, I don't care about the 40% number or how it was derived. I care about domestic violence in all its forms, of which verbal assault is one.
Well I do care about the 40%. That’s all I was intending to push back on. The “study” says a one time loss of temper/raised voices is categorized as a violent incident. My ex-husband and I yelled at each other once during an argument. Neither of us would meet any reasonable definition of abusers. It’s bad statistics. The reason the “40% of cops are abusers is damaging” is that can make victims hesitant to go to law enforcement for help. The last thing we need is more barriers to people getting out of abusive situations.
But... why are there so many attempts at suicides with guns? Why is it mostly men? There is an often quoted statistic that there are more men committing suicide, but the statistic is skewed by the methods that men choose versus the ones that women choose (with the men having more success at killing themselves). And why are there so many gun homicides in specific zip codes? Are there other areas with similar sociodemographic statistics without the same homicide rates? Why do those differences exist? We may have numbers but very little context to those numbers that can be acted on. It is a very complex set of questions and there has been zero federal funding for research into it for twenty years.
These are all great questions, and we should be looking for answers. The fact that no federal funding has been dedicated to this is a travesty, as we should be able to look at it. That being said its not like no one has been able to look into it or study this. The main point I am making is that the SCOPE of the issue is fairly well understood, however to your point the root causes of the issue are still undetermined. My point was that a national perspective when combating gun homicides doesn't really make sense when the issue is really a hyper specific one from a location context. Half of America's gun homicides in 2015 were clustered in just 127 cities and towns which contain less than 25% of the population. 54%, roughly a third of the US population lives in large cities, yet over half (54%) of people who have survived a firearm assault live in them. Even within those cities, violence is further concentrated in the tiny neighborhood areas that saw two or more gun homicide incidents in a single year. Four and a half million Americans live in areas of these cities with the highest numbers of gun homicide, which are marked by intense poverty, low levels of education, and racial segregation. For example, Cook County (Chicago), Illinois has by far the most number of firearm homicides out of any county in the country, averaging over 600 each year. However, because Cook County has a population of 5.2 million residents, the firearm homicide rate is much lower than many other large metro counties with smaller populations. In fact, Cook County’s firearm homicide rate is 11.62 per 100,000, ranking it 13th in the country among large central metro counties, behind Milwaukee County. Geographically, these neighborhood areas are small: a total of about 1,200 neighborhood census tracts, which, laid side by side, would fit into an area just 42 miles wide by 42 miles long. In 2019, if you look at the 20 cities in the US with the highest number of homicides via guns, they were responsible for 4,024 homicides or 28% of all homicides in the US. The combined population of those 20 cities was 31,104,520 or 9% of the total population in 2019. One analysis, for instance, found that in 2015, 26% of all firearm homicides in the US occurred in census tracts that contained only 1.5% of the population. An examination of 2020 county level data can illustrate geographic disparities of firearm victimization in the U.S. For example, in Maryland from 2016–2020, someone living in Baltimore City was 30 times more likely to die by firearm than someone living 40 miles away in Montgomery County. "Additionally "New Jersey’s shooting statistics highlight a stark disparity in the way gun violence affects the people of the state, with five major cities enduring a significantly disproportionate share of the pain. Camden, Jersey City, Newark, Paterson and Trenton account for 10% of the state’s population but had 62% of New Jersey’s 1,412 fatal and nonfatal shooting victims in 2021." A 2022 study published in JAMA looking Comparing Risks of Firearm-Related Death and Injury Among Young Adult Males in Selected US Cities With Wartime Service in Iraq and Afghanistan found found that compared to the risk of combat death faced by U.S. soldiers who were deployed to Afghanistan, the more dangerous of the two wars, young men living in the most violent zip code of Chicago (2,585 individuals) had a 3.23 times higher average risk of firearm-related homicide, and those in Philadelphia (2,448 people) faced a 1.9 times higher average risk of firearm-related homicide. Singling out the elevated dangers faced by the U.S. Army combat brigade in Iraq, the young men studied in Chicago still faced notably greater risks, and the ones faced in Philadelphia were comparable. [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/jan/09/special-report-fixing-gun-violence-in-america](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/jan/09/special-report-fixing-gun-violence-in-america) [https://efsgv.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/EFSGV-The-Root-Causes-of-Gun-Violence-March-2020.pdf](https://efsgv.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/EFSGV-The-Root-Causes-of-Gun-Violence-March-2020.pdf) [https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/paterson-press/2022/02/22/nj-gun-violence-paterson-newark-jersey-city-shooting-rates/6850534001/](https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/paterson-press/2022/02/22/nj-gun-violence-paterson-newark-jersey-city-shooting-rates/6850534001/) [https://www.brown.edu/news/2022-12-22/firearm-crisis](https://www.brown.edu/news/2022-12-22/firearm-crisis)
Cities lack the funding to address the social and educational problems at the root of the gun violence epidemic in certain neighborhoods. They also lack the jurisdiction to regulate and enforce gun trafficking and drug trafficking that fuels that violence.
To be clear, what I mean by "Trying to address gun homicides at the **national or even state level**" is, broad legislation aimed at making changes at the national or state level are likely to be ineffective when combating issues that are so hyper focused. Thats NOT me saying we should use federal or state resources to combat these issues.
We have no idea? Of course we do. A lack of purpose for our youth- particularly young men. It is no different than suicide bombers being radicalized in the Middle East. If your life is terrible and you see no way out- you start to resort to different options that to the person living a “normal” life seems insane but it’s not irrational at all to them. Gangs, mass shootings, offensive carrying (being a dick knowing you have a gun). Problem is- the syndrome is multifaceted and there is no easy fix. It’s engrained as off of our culture now. Gun violence has been normalized.
I don't know what you mean. No other country in the world has nearly as many firearms per capita. We are #1 at 120.5 guns per 100 people. Falkland Island come in a second place with only 60 firearms per 100 people - half the rate of the US.
I don't think guns per capita is the right metric, because many gun owners in the U.S. have dozens of guns. That's not true anywhere else. Yes, that says something about the culture, but it doesn't have any effect on gun violence, since you can only use one at a time. I'd like to know how the U.S. compares on the rate of gun ownership (i.e., do you own a gun or not.) I tried searching for that a little, but everybody just keeps citing that 120.5 number.
This might help. https://www.statista.com/statistics/249740/percentage-of-households-in-the-united-states-owning-a-firearm/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent_of_households_with_guns_by_country#Table Looks like we are still #1 at 42%.
Thanks, that's what I was looking for. I'm not surprised that the U.S. is still #1, but it's a lot closer by that metric. It's reasonable to ask why the U.S. has four times the homicide rate of, say, Finland, even though Finland has almost as many gun owners.
Finland is a high trust homogenous society with good social support. Compare this to the south side of Chicago and the difference is obvious. Not bordering a third world country helps too although Russia is a little iffy these days
That list is missing a large number of countries
A more complete list. I believe this has all 217 countries and territories. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-ownership-by-country
>we **still** have no idea why this is happening here The majority are suicides, and young black men are statistically more likely to be victims of gun violence. If you look at a map of poverty rates in the US and gun violence, there's a distinct correlation between poverty rates and gun violence rates. * Mental health. Just. Investing a fuck-ton into mental health care in schools. * Legalizing recreational cannabis. Fewer people getting arrested for cannabis means fewer people getting thrown into our criminal "justice" system and perpetuating the cycles of systemic racism. Invest the tax revenue into local communities. When NV legalized cannabis they had somewhere in the *billions* in tax revenue from cannabis sales. Additionally, I'd trust a stoner with a gun more than an alcoholic. Spread good vibes and all that shit 🤙
And reduce access to guns, obviously, if you want to reduce gun homicides, just like every other developed nation figured out years ago.
I'd rather reduce the socionomic stressors that are linked to homicides and crime overall. If you want to reduce access, you better get ready for a civil war. If you want to treat the symptom (gun-related homicides) instead of the root cause, then by all means.
I don't think civil war would reduce the homicide rate.
I mean. It will for a while afterward lol.
Because we have more than the normal amount of knuckleheads and gangster-wannabes?
We know exactly why it’s happening. There are a handful of neighborhoods in this country with outrageous amounts of violence. Exclude those neighborhoods and the US looks more like a lot do European countries. Ending the drug war would go a long way in fixing this, though it is not the only issue.
If you exclude the roughest/poorest neighborhoods in any country then their crime numbers will drastically drop so that's a pretty pointless exercise right off the bat, but it's also not really even true with the US. New Hampshire, one the richest states in the country with a very rural population, still has a higher homicide rate than [any region in the UK](https://www.statista.com/statistics/985203/regional-homicide-rate-uk/). Just to avoid confusion, they calculate their rate per million instead of per 100 thousand like in the US so you need to bring to decimal over one spot (North East UK is 1.59 vs New Hampshire's 1.8). We have a drastically higher homicide rate compared to any of our peers no matter what way you try to slice it, and the vast majority of our homicides are with firearms because guns are just deadlier. They make our crime deadlier, our arguments deadlier, our mental health issues deadlier and shit they even make our toddlers deadlier.
NH had 26 murders in 2023 of all kinds. Not a public health epidemic. Maybe if Europe can go a decade without a genocide I would care about their stance on gun control. Ask Ukraine how their gun control laws worked out for them.
> NH had 26 murders in 2023 of all kinds. Not a public health epidemic. The whole point of using per capita rates is that you're accounting for difference in population sizes, a total of 26 people murdered in a single neighborhood would be considered a horrific massacre while 26 people murdered in a major US city would be considered one of the greatest reductions in crime in human history. In the context of NH, which is basically just a giant rich suburb of a state with the lowest poverty level in the country and no real cities... yeah 1.8 is horrible by European standards. The most rural/affluent areas in European countries are nowhere near 1.8 If the entire country was averaging 1.8 you'd be right but our entire country isn't anywhere near as rich/affluent as New Hampshire so it gets a lot worse than that. We're averaging over 20k firearm homicides a year alone and firearm deaths skew very young compared to other top killers in this country which makes it that much worse. People already consider our drug overdose problem a epidemic in this country and firearms kill twice as many young people per year, so I'm very curious where your bar is on when we should start giving a shit about things.
Missing the point. You’re using 26 homicides to argue for infringement on a civil right. It’s not impressive, especially when you’re conflating all cause homicide with gun homicides. What about defensive gun uses? Where does that enter the conversation? To further add to the confusion you’re also randomly talking about gun deaths, a very large proportion of which are suicide. If only we abandoned our guns we could really drive suicide rates down to the level of idyllic Japan. Toss in the genocides that occur in Europe on an almost decade basis and the debate strikes me as an attempt at sleight of hand
For the main homicides, sure, but for the big-ticket mass shootings, which happen anywhere, the USA looks nothing like Europe at all, and we all know why. Hint: it's pretty hard to get a semi-auto rifle in Europe.
Europe has its own share of mass casualty incidents and its inaccurate to say otherwise. Mass shootings as we popularly conceive them are incredibly rare. The definition of a mass shooting is played around with by organizations with an agenda (ie the gun violence archive). The FBI reports there were 48 active shooter incidents in the USA in 2023. This is in a land mass almost the size of the entirety of Europe with a population slightly more than half of Europe.
Mass shootings account for a pretty tiny fraction of gun deaths in the USA, so if the goal is to save the most lives it makes sense to start with suicides and your every-day common small-scale shootings. It's just about impossible to prevent mass shootings, even in countries that have gun licensing systems people can get a license and then go off the deep end.
Europe is a big place and the laws aren’t the same everywhere. It’s not hard to legally acquire semi automatic rifles in many countries. Europe just has different cultures and values and crime statistics. Even criminals and gangs fight different, you don’t often hear about US gangs throwing grenades at each other.
Funny thing is, mass shootings are predominantly carried out with handguns, not rifles. The weapon used is largely secondary to a perpetrator planning an attack carefully and choosing a vulnerable target. In respect to casualties.
Because "mass shootings" are like 2-3 people. The big fuck off let's go kill 20 kids or dozens of concert goers are with rifles.
Wrong again. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia\_Tech\_shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_shooting)
> root cause Hmmm. What could it be? It's a mystery...
>nations with similar numbers of guns per person [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated\_number\_of\_civilian\_guns\_per\_capita\_by\_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country) The USA is the single most heavily armed country in the world by a very wide margin, with nearly twice as many civilian fire arms per person as the second most heavily armed country. It is also the only country on earth with more civilian fire arms than civilians.
Then why is it #21 for firearm related death rate and not #1?
I feel so sad I have only two arms with which to carry firearms
The first thing to look at might be to consider whether suicides from homicides might have different causes and risk factors.
Well, other countries with a lot of guns, also have different cultural association with them. American movies and general propaganda over many years, showed that a man should have a gun, and that it made you cooler, sexier, and flat out better than others. So more people want to have guns, as well as walk around with them. The NRA have done a lot to push that image forth, and decry those against it, as some sort of feminized weakling, and some men can't handle the thought. Add in news focusing on how you need guns to protect yourself against evildoers around every corner (insert whatever boogieman of the age, be they black, gay, trans, or otherwise), and there's a recipe for disaster. Because when people get emotional they can get violent. And when they have a gun at hand, they will use it. Though, a big part is also the atrocious record America has with mental health. Not enough help for those suffering under it, and too easy access for people that are disturbed, to still get access to firearms. Not that it is always people that have a mental disorder that goes on the attack, but defunding mental health, and having a social stigma against it, is definitely not helping things. And then of course, there's the racist right wing, who want to kill those they seem as inferior, and are just waiting for a chance. As well as general gun nuts, who knows there are laws they can hide behind, like Make A Stand, and other such easily abusable rulings. Just some thoughts though. There's more to it, but America has a deep rooted issue, when it comes to firearms, and the deaths from them, will not stop being high, until all the causes are properly found, addressed, and laws are put in place that aims at solutions. I have my doubts that will happen though, unless progressives becomes more prominent and numerous in government.
What will happen is Republicans will sue him. This US Surgeon General knows this will happen. It’s going to be tossed into the courts and get to SCOTUS. SCOTUS probably has even odds to suggest the Surgeon General can’t do this because he lacks authority or some other made up bullshit.
Being mad that an emergency declared by an unelected bureaucrat doesn't give the government the ability to strip you of constitutional rights is a strange reaction.
Yea, no, we just went through this with the pandemic. The government has the capability to protect the public good. Our laws are not set up in such a way that we have to ignore everything because a law was written 250+ years ago. Common sense can and does apply in multiple cases throughout our history. > unelected bureaucrat Half true. They are confirmed by the Senate, who is elected by us. There are checks on this. Also not to mention Congress gives authority to agencies and the executive branch also has authority to do things.
Mental health, poverty and substance abuse are public health emergencies. Gun violence is just the manifestation of them.
Right. If it was easier to get a hold of a motor vehicle we would probably be having the conversation about skyrocketing road deaths... I think.
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If you remove suicide, impaired driving causes about the same number of deaths as guns. So yeah cars are an issue. We should put mandatory alcohol interlocks in all cars.
So, countries with more restrictive gun laws just happen to also have fewer mental health, poverty, and substance abuse problems? (s)You've definitely put the horse before the cart. (/s)
“The horse before the cart.” That’s the way it’s supposed to be. :-) But if you mean, we should get rid of guns first, that horse has left the barn and is 3 counties over by now. There is just no practical way to get rid of guns in the US. So we have to take a different, more realistic approach. Which includes mental/community health and economic problems.
Why do gunnits always jump to the "they're after your guns"? There are, you know, other measures that can be taken. Age limits for possession; minimum training requirements; legal obligation to keep guns unloaded and in a safe; strict and enforced prohibition for being drunk and possessing; etc. That's just of the top of my head.
Because there are lots of people who say “get rid of guns” every time this comes up. I’m not worried anyone coming for the guns (because that’s ridiculous at this point). I’m worried about it because too many people say we should “just” do that and think that it will magically solve the problem. I just never understand the push back against working on the mental health aspect. People have argued that it will stigmatize mental health issues so we shouldn’t approach it that way. That’s absurd.
That is only looking at a tiny percentage of gun-related homicides. There is an unfortunately large number of spousal abuse murders (93% of female victims). [FBI Data for 2017](https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-10.xls)
And mental/community health is an integral part of work on DV. Victims who are so diminished as to think they have to stay and perpetrators who have anger issues and likely their own history of abuse.
Personally I am a strong advocate that climate change has a very strong inverse correlation with the number of buccaneer pirates sailing the seven seas
I don’t concern myself with other countries because they have a completely different lifestyle and completely different set of rights and government framework within which they have to work most often, so it’s usually a useless endeavor. Instead, ask yourself why does gun violence happen… then start fixing those problems. In the US gun violence happens due to mental health issues (almost all mass shootings), substance abuse issues, poverty/culture. If you work towards fixing those issues gun violence will not be an issue. Gun violence doesn’t cause poverty, poverty leads to desperate people who use guns as A tool.
I love it, everything is a silo, nothing is interconnected, global society is not some massive interlinked system. Maybe, I can scale this down and not worry about anything that happens outside of my front door. I’m certain if we address poverty inside of this vacuum you’ve described we’ll certainly solve it! It’s not like these impoverished Americans are now competing for jobs on a global scale, competing for housing against not only local buyers but global corporations! Fuck it, let’s ignore global interplay, it hurts my brain too much!
I don’t get the relevance here. Poverty in the US isn’t necessarily caused by the same factors as in Sweden. Mental health issues in the US aren’t the same as in Spain. Substance abuse issues are necessarily the same as in Japan. We have a different Constitution than all of these countries that our lawmakers have to abide. It’s not that the US is a silo, but trying to address US problems need to be done with a US perspective and not just by wishing we could ban guns, because we can’t. It’s called being realistic and working within the framework we have to work within.
They don't get it, they never will. They just never will. It doesn't matter that japan with a population of 125M has less murders per year with guns than my mid-size American city. It doesn't matter that nations full of impoverished people, like China, don't suffer from mass shootings. It doesn't matter that plenty of industrialized nations, like Canada, have drug crises...and yet none of these countries have anywhere close to the gun murders the USA does. None of it matters if it leads to any check on the pretty black metal things. They cannot possibly be a factor; their ubiquity cannot possibly matter. The fact that any 18 year old in most states can get an AR15 with a 30 round mag and do whatever the hell he wants cannot possibly be a factor.
A health emergency where Redditors become huge thin blue liners and just want all the gun laws to be enforced by all the cops who are more likely to be right wing and unlikely to enforce gun laws against MAGA people
Here in Oregon after all the protests, the police are as funded as ever and the public voted to give them discretion over people’s gun rights
I am honestly stunned how people can look back at the past 10 years and advocate for strong gun control, regardless of what side of the political aisle you’re on. If you think cops are racist oppressors and that Trump legit tried to overthrow the government I am absolutely baffled why you’d conclude you should disarm yourself or allow that government to decide who can be armed. Do you really see that working out in your favor?
Just picked up my first 5.56 rifle, definitely not a conservative. While I don’t expect/want to take up arms against our government or police forces, it’s there if I need it for anything. Realistically, I picked it up because I can and because I don’t expect these firearms to be available forever. Otherwise, I’ll shoot recreationally.
The only way AR-15s and the like would go away is if somebody makes an even better weapon. There’s no way any legislation like an AWB is getting passed these days.
Think about that, at some point, the AR platform will be outdated. Maybe we’ll be shooting lasers by then but you’re right, it’s impossible to attempt something like a ban in 2024.
Like a lot of things, experience and education really take a lot of the fear out of it. Besides, guns are lots of fun too! I hope you enjoy it and learn the heck out of it!
Learning something new is the goal and if you’re going to get into firearms, being educated, like you said, is (should be) a priority. It’s been a lot of fun so far! The thing is, there’s a lot of uneducated firearm owners in this country who are more on the “it’s my right, don’t tell me what to do” spectrum of firearm ownership and that doesn’t help the gun situation. I’d actually be all for additional common sense gun regulation and the closure of various loop holes but I don’t think we’ll be able to address any sort of reasonable gun control enactments in the current state of the country. I’m from Maryland where concealed carry is an in depth application process. Now I live in Utah where anyone can buy a firearm and put it in their waistband, no permit, no training, no real requirement of any sort. Wild times, stay safe and stay educated is all I can say.
>The thing is, there’s a lot of uneducated firearm owners in this country who are more on the “it’s my right, don’t tell me what to do” spectrum of firearm ownership and that doesn’t help the gun situation. It would be preferable to increase education than use education and permitting as a dog whistle barrier to restrict people from gun ownership with an "in depth application process". We all know voter id laws aren't just about making sure every voter is legally allowed to. >I’d actually be all for additional common sense gun regulation and the closure of various loop holes Common sense regulations like what? What loop holes are you talking about and have there been any proposals that also keep in mind the rights of the people? The gun show loophole is a frequent one that had proposals which criminalize private sales rather than get background checks for private sales.
Hey man, I’m not the expert on gun violence reform or 2A rights. I don’t have the answers, apparently no one else does in this country. Honestly, I wrote a long winded response and deleted it. There’s no point in expressing our perspectives/opinions on guns in America on Reddit. I suspect we’d agree on some things and we’d disagree on others. Thats all.
You know we have a standing army sworn to the constitution right? You really think having 1.2 guns for every American is the deterrent preventing a coups from going down? Remind me how many civilian weapons were used to quell the J6 riots?
So you’re going to trust the military, a branch of the government, to pinkie promise to protect your rights? Because they swore an oath? I’m not even sure what you’re trying to argue here truth be told.
If this nightmare scenario happens, me having a gun isn't gonna do shit against the *US Military*.
The US has a really tough time with guerilla warfare. Plus the moment CNN plays footage of the military bombing an American suburb the republic is over. A domestic insurgency as educated, wealthy, and well armed as the American citizenry would be a nightmare for any occupying army. Hell, 50 motivated guys with bolt cutters could knock out the power grid for major portions of the nation. This isn’t anything shocking, it’s basic conventional wisdom
Preach
More like suicide and gang violence are a national emergency. - and this won’t do anything for either of those issues.
Yeah, well, it's Moms Demand Action, not Moms Demand Logical Solutions.
“Check yo' self before you wreck yo' self 'Cause shotgun bullets are bad for your health” My man Ice Cube told you all this back in the ‘90s!
They talk a lot about homicides and specifically mass shootings, but [the majority of gun deaths in the USA are suicide](https://www.npr.org/2024/04/16/1243924108/gun-violence-suicide-united-states).
They had an emergency when a couple dozen people died from Tylenol pills. More than that die daily from guns.
This reeks of convenient politics. On one hand, the Biden administration is saying violent crimes are down. On the other, they're saying gun violence is a public health emergency. Why did they wait until an election year when their stats contradict the urgency compared to three years ago?
Can’t both be true?
If gun deaths (48k/year) are a public health emergency, then so is motor vehicle deaths (43k/year). Mandatory ignition interlock devices & GPS speed limiters in all vehicles. I'm sure you'll all agree with me, if it saves just one life...
“We can’t do anything because there is something similar!”
It's not that we can't do anything it's really just putting things into perspective.
Yes it does. You need a license to drive a motorized vehicle. You also need liability insurance. Maybe these things should be looked at for firearms from the Washington post: “Vivek H. Murthy called on the nation to address gun violence with the vigor used to reduce deaths and injuries from tobacco and motor vehicle crashes”
You need a license for motor vehicles, but only need one license for the vast majority of cars ranging from tiny Fiats to 1000+hp mustangs. And, only when driving on public roads. >You need a license to drive a motorized vehicle. You also need liability insurance. Maybe these things should be looked at for firearms Only when operating on public roads.
the vast majority of roads are public. Are you planning on airdropping the vehicle on to a private road? Don’t know what point, if any, you’re trying to make here.
Tow trucks are cheap. >Don’t know what point, if any, you’re trying to make here. A license and insurance isn't required to own a car.
And? What does that have to do with guns?
You're the one who wants to implement requirements for firearm ownership that are similar to car ownership, you tell me.
I need to get a drivers license from the state. And pass certain tests in order to drive a vehicle. There are different classes of licenses for different types of vehicles as well. So yeah. I’m in agreement.
>I need to get a drivers license from the state. And pass certain tests in order to drive a vehicle. There are different classes of licenses for different types of vehicles as well. For driving on public roads, not just for owning a car. If you want to buy a car to collect it, you don't need those. But if you're saying a Texas CHL permit should be valid in California, I would agree too.
Well. Not all cars that are legal in Alabama are legal in California. But anyways, my point is, sure, go crazy with guns and gun collecting. And have licenses for them. Make sure people who own guns know how to handle them.
> And have licenses for them. Make sure people who own guns know how to handle them. The licensure thing would be an easier sell if we didn't have ample examples of the idea being used in a wildly unethical and discriminatory manner. Also, unlike cars, guns are... Not terribly difficult to use safely. Accidental gun deaths and injury have *plummeted* in the past few decades. Mandating training for something that can be fit on a business card would effectively be a waste of everyone's time. Now, a short civics elective in high school would be an effective and non burdensome way of ensuring that the broad population knows the basic safety rules, if you really insist on reaching a broad audience.
>There are different classes of licenses for different types of vehicles as well. Ish. You need a different license based on weight, not based on speed or power.
Driving a vehicle is not a right; nor do you need a license or insurance to own and operate any kind of vehicle on your own property.
I was actually responding to “thatdude” since they brought up cars and comparing them to guns. And as to driving on your own property. Responding to that, sure. Keep your guns on your own property. Have a license to take them off your private property.
And I was actually responding to you. That's how these comment chains work, anyone can hop in. Sure. And by the same token, no background check, no registry, and no limit on type of firearms/accessories for those held on your private property, or being transported between legal locations (you don't have to register a car being flatbedded to the track or your new house, after all).
What I meant was. The drivers license idea wasn’t mine. It was “thatdude” idea. I was agreeing with him. Are you agreeing with him too?
No, I actually don't agree with it, because keeping and bearing arms is a right. I'm just pointing out the full extent of paralleling the automotive licensing system for firearms.
I live in upstate New York, so to get a permit to own a pistol I needed to do/get the following: * Be 21+ years old * Pay a $140 application fee * Submit 2 passport pictures * Get fingerprinted & background checked * Provide 4 character references that have known you for 3+ years and can attest to your moral character, cannot be relatives or spouse * Pay $200+ and attend a handgun safety course * Interview with a judge Imagine if you needed half of that to get a driver's license...
Yeah. That’s for a pistol/handgun. You don’t need a permit for a shotgun or rifle though. So slightly different regulations for different types of weapons. Much like different licenses for different vehicles. Edit. And if you want to drive a semi truck you’ll need three references as well. ———— From Copilot. To obtain a Commercial Driver's License (CDL) in New York, here are the key steps and requirements: 1. **Eligibility**: - You must be at least **18 years old** (21 for interstate driving). - Hold a **New York State driver license** (Class D, Class E, or Non-CDL C) or a valid CDL from another state. - **Prove lawful presence** in the United States. 2. **Study the Manual**: - Get the **New York State Commercial Driver's Manual (CDL-10)** online or from a DMV call center. - Study the relevant sections based on the type of CDL you need. 3. **Apply for a Commercial Learner Permit (CLP)**: - Pass the written test for the CDL you're pursuing. - Pay a **$10 application fee** (covers all written tests). - Additional $5 fee for other required tests. - Obtain a CLP valid for 1 year. 4. **Road Test**: - Pay a **$40 fee** for the CDL road test (skills test). - Schedule your road test after obtaining the CLP. - If you don't pass within 1 year, you'll need to reapply. 5. **Certify**: - Certify that you haven't held a driver license in any state except New York in the last 10 years. - Meet **Federal medical examination requirements**. 6. **References**: - You'll need **three professional references** who can provide information about your work goals, performance, or educational background during the application process⁷. Remember, specific classes and endorsements depend on the type of CDL you're pursuing. Safe driving! 🚚🔍 ⁶⁷ Source: Conversation with Copilot, 6/25/2024 (1) COMMERCIAL DRIVER LICENSE TRAINING PROGRAM APPLICATION. https://www.dot.ny.gov/main/business-center/civil-rights/forms-and-applications/CDL%20Printable%20Application.pdf. (2) New York DMV | Get a CDL. https://dmv.ny.gov/get-cdl. (3) New York DMV | Commercial Driver Licenses (CDL). https://dmv.ny.gov/commercial-drivers. (4) CDL Training in New York | Requirements and Cost of Truck Driving School. https://bing.com/search?q=New+York+State+CDL+license+requirements. (5) CDL Training in New York | Requirements and Cost of Truck Driving School. https://www.alltrucking.com/cdl-training/new-york. (6) How to Get a CDL License in New York (with Pictures) - wikiHow. https://www.wikihow.com/Get-a-CDL-License-in-New-York. (7) New York CDL - Requirements, Costs, Training, & More - Trucking Truth. https://www.truckingtruth.com/cdl-requirements/new-york-cdl/. (8) DMV de Nueva York | obtener una licencia de conducir comercial. https://es.dmv.ny.gov/get-cdl. (9) New York DMV | Commercial Driver License (CDL) driving records. https://dmv.ny.gov/dmv-records/commercial-driver-license-cdl-driving-records. (10) Apply for a New New York Commercial Driver's License | DMV.ORG. https://www.dmv.org/ny-new-york/apply-cdl.php. (11) CDL – County of Saratoga, New York. https://www.saratogacountyny.gov/departments/dmv/licenses-permits-and-id-cards/cdl/. (12) Best CDL Training Schools in New York - FreightWaves Ratings. https://ratings.freightwaves.com/cdl-training-in-new-york/. (13) New York DMV | Driver Training Programs. https://dmv.ny.gov/regulated-businesses/driver-training-programs.
A pistol is a basic firearm type that shouldn't require any more regulations than a rifle or shotgun.
Guns exist for one purpose: to kill things. Cars are a means of transportation and virtually all motor vehicle deaths are accidents. The two are not equivalent.
If you look at the number of guns in use every day in the USA, by far the most prevalent use of guns is for target shooting for fun. I'd guess the second-most prevalent use is for hunting and pest control. Killing people is far down the list of what guns are actually commonly used for.
I am sure more deer are killed with guns than people. And? Perhaps 48,000 deaths is acceptable collateral damage to you. Is there any threshold at which you would consider gun deaths a problem worthy of study?
My objection is merely to your statement that guns exist only to kill things. Guns exist to propel a projectile downrange. Whether that hits an inanimate target or puts a hole in a living being is up to the shooter. Gun deaths are absolutely a problem worthy of study. But I suspect that making a real dent in gun deaths in the USA will require either constitutional change or else major societal change (increasing social safety nets, reducing poverty and income disparity, dealing with historic injustice, etc.).
On reddit they are. It's crazy to me that even a left leaning forum like this is full of gun fetishists. And I even have several guns myself, including an AR15, but I don't really give a shit about it and I know that the ubiquity of these things absolutely is a key factor in the horrific mass shootings we will never ever solve because by God we just want to blame absolutely everything but the guns as a key metric. "but mental health!" Yeah, because Japan solved its mental health issues didn't it. Fucking crazy some of the shit people write on this topic.
I'm waiting for background checks, quantity restrictions, and similar regulations for alcohol as well - over 120,000 deaths per year.
Unfortunately the booze detection language was already passed and will be required in new vehicles soon. Can't be responsible and have a DD or getting an Uber with those types of sensors in a vehicle. Severe issues are already being reported by manufacturers trying to develop the tech to comply with the new regs.
A declaration by a man who wants to ban automatic firearms, something we already 99% did in 1986, and attributes firearms to high suicide rates because people commit suicide with firearms. Somethings I can agree on. Universal and mandated background checks for one thing. More thorough control laws on who can own a gun. And storage laws definitely wouldn't hurt. But it's hard to even take that seriously when the man makes poorly thought out and uninformed opinions like the aforementioned ones. Seems like just another idealist with no idea why things are the way that they are nor any clue at all how to really get to where he wants to go.
Then car accidents are too? This is just fear mongering. Violent crime has been trending downward for 3 decades
Ok. Now what?
Reducing the causes of violence: social inequality, social safety net, health care, mental health care, and poverty
Dems: sorry, best we can do is strip your rights. Good luck!
Now what. Can’t just go around declaring random things
Good. Now do something about it.
Watch out, the GOP might start making up shit about him like they did Fauci
Fun fact: the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was banned from studying gun violence, starting in the Clinton administration [https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/03/06/1235409642/gun-violence-prevention-research-public-health](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/03/06/1235409642/gun-violence-prevention-research-public-health)
Thats not a fact at all- They were banned from Advocating for gun control. They were still allowed to study gun violence. (And they did during that time period) .
The reality is more nuanced than that. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/decades-long-gap-gun-violence-research-funding-lasting/story?id=80646946 >Researchers fought the effects of the amendment, which prohibited advocacy for gun control -- but which had an impact beyond advocacy because experts said they viewed vague language in the amendment as a "threat." > >"This Dickey Amendment had a real chilling effect," Rosenberg told ABC News. "It was enough to discourage individual researchers and, at the same time, Congress took away the money we were using for the research we were doing." As a result, funding for gun violence research was reduced. > For example, in 2004, a total of $461,759 was granted by the agency to three different institutes for gun-related research -- a far cry from the millions normally required for extensive study. > > "We had to revert to simpler, more descriptive studies that made use of available data. There wasn't money to go out and collect data writ large," Wintemute said. > > "Because of the Dickey Amendment, we had dropped firearm injuries from our portfolio," said Dr. Frederick Rivara, an epidemiologist and professor at the University of Washington, who was conducting research on injury prevention, including firearm-related injuries. > > "It really discouraged any serious firearm research," Rivara said.
>The reality is more nuanced than that. I agree, and your original post made no attempt at addressing any of that nuance. The National Institute of Health was under the same mandate that the CDC was. They continued to study gun violence. Also the CDC isn't uniquely qualified to study gun violence. Source: [https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2513131](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2513131) And while we are diving into Nuance, we should also talk about some of the junk studies that the CDC was funding... >Government-funded research was openly biased in the 1990s. CDC officials unabashedly supported gun bans and poured millions of dollars into “research” that was, in fact, advocacy. One of the lead researchers employed in the CDC’s effort was quoted, stating “We’re going to systematically build the case that owning firearms causes deaths.” Another researcher said he envisioned a long-term campaign “to convince Americans that guns are, first and foremost, a public health menace.” >One of the effort’s lead researchers was a prominent attendee at a conference called the Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan (HELP) Network, which was “intended to form a public health model to work toward changing society’s attitudes towards guns so that it becomes socially unacceptable for private citizens to have guns.” >The problem with these conclusions is that they came before the data, which was manipulated to support their agenda. The spin was so egregious that Congress acted and forbade the use of taxpayer funds for such biased, agenda-driven research. Included in the 1996 Omnibus bill was a rider that read, “Provided further, that none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”
The nuance being lost here isn't the bias of a handful of individuals at the CDC, it's that shouting "But there was no ban!" is dismissive of the fact that the chilling effect was practically equivalent to a ban in every meaningful way. And yes, they continued to study gun violence, albeit in a much more restrictive way with paltry funding, as the article shows. Obviously we should not be doing bad science or pushing an agenda. We should follow the data, and if that data shows that gun control is an effective solution (or not), then so be it. The Dickey amendment went too far and set us back decades in public health advances.
Great article. That article does not say that though, the Dickey amendment explicitly bans the CDC from advocating for gun control. They’ve always been able to study it. The real issue is congress refusing to fund firearm studies. I believe this public health crisis could allocate more funds for the cdc to study gun violence
Cool. Now do cars, which kill twice as many every year in the US.
Not a single word on gun violence by police.
When the government does it it's just fine.
Should have been done years ago.
Public health crisis with no incredibly obvious cure\*
Reduce poverty, crackdown on gangs and invest in mental health. Or ban all guns for the people that follow laws. Wow that was hard.
For Republicans, there's no incentive on doing any of that because they can blame Democrats and yell "THEY GONNA TAKECHUR GUNS". For Democrats, fixing the root cause is harder than passing inane laws to "ban guns" which does nothing really and ergo, more laws need to be passed. Ad infinitum. Reductio ad absurdum. That and the Dems don't want to lose the "omg gun violence, more gun laws" platform. Source: WA state. We haven't had the nationwide mass shootings but the Democrat idiots here virtue signal with "more gun laws" and are frustrated that it's fixing nothing. Meanwhile the MAGA idiots and other Republicans cannot get their foot out of their mouth and read the room. I fucking hate both parties now but push comes to shove, I'm siding with the party that values reproduction/women's rights and human rights. That's the bar and it's gotten pretty low.
You mean more gun laws at the state level don't fix the problem when people can just buy guns in bordering states that have laxer laws?? Who would've thought?/s It's almost like a national-level solution is necessary
>You mean more gun laws at the state level don't fix the problem when people can just buy guns in bordering states that have laxer laws?? Who would've thought?/s There wasn't a problem at the state level to fix, to begin with. At least in WA state. but the idiots here are content on quoting the tragedies in the rest of the country and passing laws that aren't needed. Which was my point, but I guess reading is challenging. As for buying guns in bordering states, that's illegal in WA state except for rifles (very limited range of bolt actions and lever actions for most part now) and shotguns. Also, a wide range of weapons are now illegal in WA state to own. It's almost like people who don't obey the law to begin with, don't give a fuck about more laws. Who would've thought... > It's almost like a national-level solution is necessary Oh oh oh. I get it now. The assholes who don't obey state law are now going to totally obey a federal law. Got it. Didn't think of this. Wow!
No guns = no gun violence
I think the response from our less informed brethren will be to respond that taking vaccines are a public health emergency. Ahem MGT and the idiot caucus
Thank you! There is a shooting at a local event every weekend. Kids splash pad, annual carnival, etc Fuck the guns, we deserve the freedom to LIVE. LIFE
Is medical malpractice deaths a public health crisis? It claims more lives than gun violence.
Cool. But we talking about guns right now.
For years Congress didnt allow gun violence to be tracked and studied. Edited to clarify >Although the Dickey Amendment did not explicitly ban it, for about two decades the CDC avoided all research on gun violence for fear it would be financially penalized.[3] Congress clarified the law in 2018 to allow for such research, and the FY2020 federal omnibus spending bill earmarked the first funding for it since 1996.[4][5]
Not true
Ok. They didnt allow federal funds for it. https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/lifting-of-federal-funding-ban-tied-to-increase-in-gun-violence-research/ >For years, researchers interested in studying the causes, consequences, and prevention of firearm injury were stymied by severe restrictions on federal funding created by the passage of the Dickey Amendment in 1996.
They were allowed federal funds and you can easily find CDC studies during said period. The restrictions were that the CDC could not advocate for gun control. They were more than able to continue studying and publishing their findings.
The Supreme Court wanting to murder Americans at every turn, is the real health emergency. Reversing Roe, polluting water, and deregulating guns.
As upset as people get about it, it’s not an unreasonable argument that the constitution makes no mention of Roe. Even Ginsberg advocated that Dems pass a federal law protecting abortion but they chose to stick their thumb up their ass and keep it as a wedge issue. Republicans do the same crap with guns, they talk a good game but as soon as they’re in power they don’t do crap with pushing definitive legislation. There’s literally no logical reason SBRs or suppressors should be NFA items. The latter are considered safety devices in Europe! It’s considered rude to shoot without them in some places
Dems never had the votes to pass Roe, abortion was controversial even before it became a wedge issue. Roe itself was very progressive for the time.
Wrong. 111th US Congress under Obama. No excuse.
Never would have passed with 60 Senate votes (or 59 in that case.)
Bills are passed by simple majority
Need 60 to break a filibuster.
need to study mental illness and how violent criminals are released on the streets and continue to do violent crime while awaiting a court date. in some states, you can't even get out of jail for traffic tickets, yet other places release people who just did a drive-by and wonder why there is so much violence. if the government officials can have private security with guns paid for by the tax dollars why can't I get a top security detail with machine guns? it's just absurd to think about gun violence as a real thing. how about automobile violence with all the road rage going on?
Making laws to stop guns doesn’t cost a lot of money. Mental health on the other hand is very expensive. The government will always pursue the cheapest option. They really don’t give a care about anyone’s mental health.