Does the US obsession with guns reflect the same type of thinking for trans

[2021x]

After the awful shooting in Minneapolis, a lot of the ultra-right have said the reason for this shooting is due to widespread Trans-ideology.

This is obviously bollocks as trans people exist everywhere else in the world and don't commit mass murder. I was listening to their talking points and their innability to understand that the volume and laws around guns is actually the reason that there are mass shooting.

Am I unreasonable in thinking the false ideology around having a gun being safer than not having a gun, is the same sort of capture by the gun lobby in the US as the trans-ideology capture of instituions in the UK?

You are being unreasonable: Not linked at all
You are not being unreasonable: Yes its a similar pattern of greed/politics colliding

340 Million population.
500+ Million guns in civilian hands alone!
No common sense!
That's America for you ...

the usa second amendment is the right to bear arms.
there is no usa admendment to present as any sex you choose.
sadly the shooter was a trans individual who wrote in his manifesto that he/she was unhappy.

Every so often there’s some kind of school shooting in the US and yet they never learn. If you allow anyone to buy a gun there are going to consequences.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

i'm of the impression that the courts have said that MEN mean MEN not mankind.
proposed but not enacted
Equal Rights Amendment - Wikipedia

The USA appear to blame anything and everything when they have yet another shooting other then the actual problem their gun laws .

Sigh not this again ...

Whenever the US tries passing gun laws the Supreme Court tosses them out. It's not as simple as not trying. The NRA is powerful, but mainly amongst the Republican Party. The thing is that they have wedded guns to culture & identity. When you see the stats on ownership it's quite striking. Only about 1/3 of American adults own a gun (with some notable regional variation), but in total there's more guns than people. Gun owners own a lot of guns.

A "mass shooting event" is defined as any event where at least 2 people die. The planned ones you hear about on the news are a minority. There's recent research saying that many shootings are impulsive and the problem is when an impulsive person has a gun nearby, people are more likely to die.

The Right in the US is desperate to blame anything but guns. Their usual method is to blame the culprit so trans is just the latest thing. The problem with their argument, of course, is that it's so much easier to kill people with guns. You can't stab 30 people at once and it would be much easier to disarm someone who tried a mass stabbing. Guns don't create the desire (certainly not in the planned-out cases) but they make the consequences far more lethal.

Sigh…it’s not the case that “everyone can buy a gun” here (I’m in the US).

I don’t think it’s reasonable to conflate the two. Gun culture in the US is a very specific, decades-long lobby effort rooted in the 2nd Amendment and industry money. Trans issues in the UK are a completely different discussion about rights, healthcare, and social acceptance. They don’t come from the same place

'No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

I don’t think there’s any relationship at all, unless you’re talking about forms of liberty.

FWIW if I lived in a country where I might easily be several hours’ drive away from a police station, I would probably want to own a gun. Also living in a country where the police are armed. After all, the reason we don’t want to arm the police in the UK is not because we’re nice, it’s because we have a well-founded fear of a police state. Ie we fear tyranny just like the US does, but the results are different because we’re different societies.

Proponents of gun reform in the US need to amend the constitution. As many have said, if Sandy Hook didn’t change anything, then no ‘normal’ laws are going to stick. Though I wonder sometimes why they don’t do more to restrict ammunition sales? Maybe they’ve tried that.

It needs a different description. It’s not the freedom to bear arms, it’s living surrounded by people who bear arms.

As I understand it, gun owning families are the most likely to be hurt so the best defence is still not to own a gun. If that concept could bed in, it might help.

And I think making the trans link is unlikely to be helpful.

Americans value guns more than they do human life, maybe with the exception of unviable pregnancies.

Jim Jefferies got it right on America’s attitude to guns.

I wouldn’t live in America without a gun - it’s the Wild West. Look at the Memphis mother of 3, thank goodness she had a gun.

The reason for the shooting is that in the US mentally ill people often have free access to guns, which makes it easy for them to commit atrocities.

There’s also a cultural factor, committing a school shooting has become ‘a thing’ in the US, suppose as the worst thing you can do targeting vulnerable young people. You can cause the maximum upset. Idolised as a great act by disturbed people wanting to lash out at their communities.

The link to transgender ideology? I don’t think there is a particular link there - other than a high number of people who identify as trans also seem to have mental issues. There is possibly a question that some of these mental health issues are ignored (or even celebrated) as part of some trans communities.

Are the ideologies similar in how organisations are responding to them (adopting trans ideology or thinking guns are important) - I don’t think they’re really comparable. For a start, the gun obsession is part of the fabric of the origins of the USA and deeply ingrained in the population - while trans ideology in UK institutions seems to have emerged from a ‘be kind and inclusive’ mentality which is unrelated and really has emerged in recent years.

The former is also about violence and needing to protect yourself, the latter about being inclusive of marginal communities - so the origins of the debates, the reasons people support them etc are wildly different.

A very sad story in the US - but their being trans a bit of a red herring. They were a mentally ill young person - we can give any number of examples of mentally ill young people committing atrocities against other young people.

That’s the problem I think.

Here in the UK if someone breaks into my house, I have zero concerns about being fatally injured.

In the US a home invader probably is armed with a gun and could kill you.

That is going to change your mindset.

That's flawed thinking (and also you hear about the cases where it worked more often than the ones it didn't). The odds are more likely that a gun will be used inappropriately. People don't like hearing this, because they want to believe they act rationally and not impulsively. But it's true: gun violence rises with public carry, and gun availability is part of why the suicide rate for men is so high. They're far more likely to complete. Suicide isn't necessarily a carefully planned decision.

And that doesn't even get into all the incidents caused because guns are poorly stored and someone, often a child, gets to it. Again, people want to think other gun owners are the irresponsible ones.

I live in the USA and do not own a gun. We're not hunters, we don't target shoot, I don't live in the middle of nowhere and need to shoot coyotes. The data on keeping guns for personal safety is dismal.

A friend of my late DGM, a lady living alone, was raped and battered in her own home by a drug user. She died several days later as a result of the attack - since then I have not been complacent about the level of violence that some UK burglars are willing to use. He is in prison on a long sentence but won’t be in forever, unfortunately.

@knitnerd90appreciate your counter point but I would still want to have a gun in that environment. If someone not in their right mind has a gun you would be totally screwed, I wouldn’t be prepared to be executed in my own home. Responsible gun owners are not the problem. Agree with your points re gun storage and preventable accidents, anyone would agree with that, but I’d rather be armed. People not storing their weapons correctly would not be a reason for me not to want to have a gun. That’s like saying you wouldn’t drive as some people drive recklessly.

The shooter was a trans woman apparently and IIRC there are 5 other recent mass shootings where the shooter has identified as trans. So happy to be corrected but there is perhaps something going on.

Although it may be that the real cause is poor mental health.

Trans is a mental illness. People with mental illness should not be able to purchase guns. Society needs to stop pretending trans is anything other than a sign of very poor mental health.