Not to understand resistance to gun control

[Maggiethecat]

I understand that it serves those with financial interests but cannot understand why Joe Bloggs wouldn't want restrictions on eligibility to carry guns. It's not as if guns are being banned and their freedom is being taken away, it's that there should be reasonable checks carried out.

Are Americans not exhausted by the mass shootings and wonder why this is the only country in the world with such a dismal record?

There's no way the Plymouth murderer would have been able to kill as many people if members of the public had been armed, for instance

This isn't true. Mass shootings often occur in open-carry US states, where many citizens are armed because - guess what? - a sidearm isn't much use against a semi-automatic firing 45 rounds a minute.

However, even if we accept that carrying guns could prevent/reduce some mass shooting events, it's a logical fallacy to think that this would make us generally safer. It's like arguing against seat-belts, on the grounds that your neighbour got trapped in his car by one and died in a crash. It is true that seat-belts kill a few individuals, but, overall, they save thousands of lives.

Unsurprisingly, there is a strong correlation between availability of guns and gun deaths. In the UK, 1 person in every 400,000 dies by gun. Three-quarters of those are suicides, so the gun homicide rate is a little over 1 in every 2 million people.

In the US, 49 people per 400,000 die by gun. More than half of those are homicides. The gun homicide rate is 44 times higher than the UK's.

There isn't a perfect correlation between rates of gun ownership and gun homicide - in part because many countries where gun homicide is high do not have good data. But there are no countries with low rates of gun ownership and high rates of gun homicides.

I asked an American once about this and was told ‘so what happens in the UK when your government turn on you? In USA we can protect ourselves from a dictatorship if we want’

The fact that the constitution was brought in at a time when the government didn’t have high powered warheads and could obliterate any citizen whether they had a little pistol or not was completely lost on them.

Exactly. It shows up the paranoid inanity of the whole pro-gun lobby.

If you are a dictator who wants to 'turn on' a country full of people armed with guns, you'll use tanks, bombs and chemical weapons, ffs.

I have spent a long time in the USA, and there is so much to love about the country and it's people, but I am despairing. It is being held hostage by a rabid minority of greedy, amoral opportunists.

@ThereWillBeSnacks The NRA is intimately entwined with the US political system; its influence is enormous. Many millions of Americans (not all of them) think that the answer to gun violence is more guns. Owning a gun is a symbol of your lifestyle, your political leanings, your family background, your culture, your rights as an American. It's way way more complicated than simply saying 'when these kids grow up they'll sort it'.

THIS

The majority of Americans are in favour of gun control (and a woman's right to choose by the way). However, American politics, and more specifically, the money in American politics stymie change.

Current gun situation is only around since the 1970s. Change is possible but campaign finance laws need to change much more than background checks.

The NRA will have the debate defined by Mental Health, Bad People, Arm Teachers, Background Checks and so on as a dsitraction. In reality they have the most expensive Congress that money can buy and unless that is washed away nothing will change.

Do a quick google to see how much this industry is worth.

Pro gun are a minority.

That quote (satistying as it is) from one person is not representative of the 300 or so million people living there!

The USA is a relatively new country, and like all others, is shaped by its history. The independence to start with, followed by the civil war not a million years later, has brought a strong militant culture into the country's subconscious. That, coupled with an inherent distrust of government and any impinging of rights, means giving up guns is almost impossible.

Add to that the fact that the USA is massive, and in many parts of the country guns are just for basic protection from wild humans and wild animal.

I read on an American forum yesterday something along the lines of "Sorry about those kids, but I like my guns and will never vote for gun control".

I think this answers your question, OP. Selfish pricks just don't care about others.

There's no way the Plymouth murderer would have been able to kill as many people if members of the public had been armed, for instance

Having the whole populace armed will definitely reduce gun deaths. I mean it's a no-brainer right?

I wonder if they'd change their mind if their child was killed.

'My gun is more important than my child's life' is a bold statement, even by insane American standards.

I wonder if they'd change their mind if their child was killed.

Doubt it. The children of fervent pro-gun types die all the time. Can't see that changing their minds about their right to be armed.

They are for me - as well some parts of other UK cities.

Have you been to America? It's easy to think 'oh, they are more or less like us' but they're not. They're a totally different people.

Every time I went I went to a game and they will all stand on command and sing their anthem and they take it very seriously. The first time it reminded me of North Korea and the way they behaved in documentaries I'd seen.

They are told they are the "land of the free" and they believe it wholeheartedly, but in reality they are quite totalitarian. For example,

If you choose not to have your baby circumcised they inform child protective services.

They do have much freedom of speech but not against government, they have FBI visits for facebook posts, we would only really send the police round.

The guns represent freedom, individuality, and in the constitution it states they are for protection from a corrupt government.

Now this is where I see where they are coming from. If the guns are said to be there to protect you from government, who is the very last body you would give them up to? Who is the very last body you would listen to around removing that right?

And how far can you dispute this when the government has harmed its own people multiple times?

They can ask for amnesties but even though morally it makes sense you can't refute the argument for them. They will not give them up voluntarily. There's not much the government could do except keep piling on the pressure and guilt.

I'm an American gun owner and (gasp!) NRA member. Why? Just in the last few weeks we've had packs of coyotes in our backyard, a bear in my neighbor's back yard checking out his bbq, and a diamondback rattlesnake crossing the road. My son hikes in the Rockies and always goes heavily armed. And he's a Bernie Sanders socialist. Why? Mountain lions and bears.

If the MN brain trust can figure out a way that he and I and the millions like us who need, yes, NEED personal weapons for protection can have them while the nutters, and only the nutters, who shouldn't have access to such weapons are denied them, then I'm all ears. I'd love to hear your foolproof plan. But the fact is you can't have one without the other.

It's very easy to sit in your tiny, very tame island and natter on about the barbarian Americans and their affinity for guns. To me many of you sound like smug, parochial idiots who have no idea what living in rural parts of the US is like. This while you talk about how few of us have traveled outside the US. Well, I've traveled extensively outside the US, both for vacation and as a former member of the US armed forces, and I've never had as many threats to my life as I have here in the rural US. Life is wonderful here, but it's not for the faint of heart.

Call us gun owners names, whatever, feel virtuous and smug, whatever. You're all invited to wander unarmed in the woods behind my house to your heart's content. Just don't ask me to cover you.

People are generally wary of having something that is a right taken away and are suspicious what will be next.

"If you choose not to have your baby circumcised they inform child protective services."

what every state in America?

It’s a very different attitude in the US to what we have here

if we were told you do not have the right to own property we would see that as an infringement of our way of life

I know very liberal Americans who have guns they are all in support for there to be more checks and stricter licensing laws but many people claim to support this as they do not feel they themselves would be in the bracket of unsuitable to have a gun

the only change is that laws might get tighter

I actually think it's the same mentality as wanting to ban abortions. I am a Big Man and I will do what I want - with my gun, with my penis and nobody else's life or bodily autonomy matters.

Thank you for your post. I'm American too (from the east coast). If I lived where you live I would consider owning a gun too.

What I'm curious about is, why are you against an assault weapons ban? People could still own hand guns and hunting rifles. In fact, we had an assault weapons ban in 90s after Columbine. Do you not remember? Did something happen to your guns during the 90s ban that would make you hesitant to reenact it?

To me many of you sound like smug, parochial idiots who have no idea what living in rural parts of the US is like

Nobody denies that you need them in the rural parts of the US. Similar reasons apply to Finland etc, where gun ownership is also higher due to bears and the like.

That does not mean that they don't need to be controlled and carefully licensed.

I think a lot of people seem to think that because the UK and the US share a language, that they’re culturally the same. They’re not at all.

There is support for gun control, but afaik it isn’t evenly distributed across the country. Gun control would be easier to pass in Connecticut, good fucking luck with Texas.

And good luck challenging the second amendment, even though at the time it was written I doubt Jefferson et al were anticipating assault rifles.

It's all about $$$$$$$$$

A huge start would be getting rid of automatic and semi-automatic. Who bloody needs them.

@LifeExperience - you need a semi-automatic weapon to deal with those issues, do you?

Guess what? Some people in the UK who live in rural areas also own guns. Just stop with the exceptionalism. The problem us that the US has an utterly nonsensical, twisted attitude towards gun control, which you've just exhibited.

It is not 'smug' or 'parochial' to be horrified and baffled by the apparent unwillingness of the powers that be to stop the murder of primary school children because, yknow, bears.

The constitutional right to bear arms was when a pistol was as "semi-automatic" as it got.

Have a hand gun/shotgun/rifle.

Just outlaw the rest.

I don’t know if someone has already posted this, but in 2020 firearm related injuries became the leading cause of death for children in the US (based on CDC mortality data). I can’t get my head around how a country can accept that.

www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761