America's Gun Control

I think background checks before all gun sales (even private ones) and allowing the gun manufacturers to be sued for mass shootings committed with their weapons (from which they have long been exempt) would be a good start. I believe there are moves toward the second. It takes some clever legal work - this did not succeed after the Las Vegas mass shooting - and the payout was from the insurance company, but were the manufacturers to become uninsurable it would change the landscape.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/nyregion/sandy-hook-families-settlement.html

How many US combatants died in Vietnam, 60k or so?
How many have died in the USA in the last 2/3 years from guns? Way more than that.

half of them suicides.

It’s the school children element that people find hard

That dc can end up with a shooter situation

@Wallaw The Sandy Hook parents settled a lawsuit against the gun manufacturer Remington for $75 Million. A nuisance payment for Remington, but there is some potential to be explored in that approach....hopefully.

Yeah, Remington had finagled some type of bankruptcy pre-settlement, and I think broke up and sold different divisions off, so the payment wasn't even from them. I think though if people keep going at that approach it could add up to more than nuisance money - particularly if insurers start dropping their coverage. It's not an answer, but could be a small piece of the puzzle.

@Florenz "Criminals don't care about insurance. It wouldn't put them off having guns."

Diminishing the number of legal guns in circulation might at least reduce suicides and accidental deaths. Or do those not matter?

Agree with this, and there has been at least one study showing that school shooters, in particular, are raging misogynists who are also consumed by self hatred.

Their targets are women and children, and where better to find them - sitting ducks really - than in an elementary school. Female teachers are particularly loathed by these murderers because they represent female authority figures in the shooters' childhood, and killing children is a way of symbolically killing off your own self as a weak or powerless child.

How do people - mainly young men - become so consumed by hatred that they go out and buy a weapon and proceed to carry out such evil?

There are many, many organisations -in the US - suggesting ways for America to exit this particular nightmare. Including those involving g MONEY, INSURANCE and Law suits.
and let’s face it - given how little anyone seems to care about the lives of children in this argument, money and liability may well end up being the reasons that better gun control finally happens. The dollar rules.

@StarmanBobby

Again, since you seem to have very strong feelings, what are you and your family doing to bring about change? Just keyboard warrioring or anything more? I've seen you doing a lot of finger pointing, but not heard much about action.

Trying to imagine any scenario where American children are murdered ( by anyone other than Americans) without the US government going absolutely ballistic-
pun intended

‘How do you tell people who live in Alaska, the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachians, etc., that they can't have a gun for self-defense? In just the past year, I've had a bear on my back deck and packs of coyotes running through my back yard. Copperheads keep trying to take up residence in my driveway culvert, and I've seen a few cats bigger than bob cats about,’

hunting rifle, shot gun - those guns are good for self defence and wild animal control. Same way farmers, hunters, country people, people who have guns for sport in the UK deal with vermin and threats to their livestock.
Unless you’re going at a copper head with a AR15? You sure a hell aren’t hunting anything with an AR15 - not legally anyways.
if you have copperheads, you already know - leave them alone and they’ll leave you an alone for the most part. Same as most snakes.

Guns are the no.1 cause of deaths of children in the US.
Every other civilised country who have had a mass shooting, especially involving children have said "OMG, this can't happen again, what can we do?" And fucking done it.
The US sends out some prayers and thoughts and doubles down on the banning of books, drag shows and statues.
They showed us who they were after Sandy Hook when they decided that (other peoples) dead babies are acceptable collateral damage for their right to own a gun 🤷‍♀️

Where did you get the idea you can't hunt anything legally with an AR15?

I am very much not a fan of liberal gun laws so please don't take this point as a gun-nut trying to deflect.

Whilst these horrific events drive the ongoing pro and anti gun debate, I see little discussion about the possible root causes behind mass shootings besides ready access to weapons. One thing the overwhelming majority of school and other mass shootings have in common is that the shooter clearly intended their own life to end as well. Invariably they shoot themselves, other times they get shot by police and appear to have had no intention of escaping. So why is there so little public discussion about the mental health crisis aspect of these incidents? Then we have to ask why are mass shootings so prolific in the USA specifically? There are countries with higher levels of gun ownership than the US that have significantly lower levels of mass shootings. There are also countries with much higher suicide rates that have far fewer mass killings. So if it's neither gun ownership, nor mental health, nor even a combination of the two, what exactly is going on?

CJsGoldfish
Guns are the no.1 cause of deaths of children in the US.
Every other civilised country who have had a mass shooting, especially involving children have said "OMG, this can't happen again, what can we do?" And fucking done it.

To be fair, Canada has only just finished the enquiry into their one (22 dead in 2020) as far as I could make out from the news this morning, and I am not at all sure what action they have taken as yet apart from blaming the police for all the things they failed to do, such as for instance that the perpetrator had a record of domestic violence which they had failed to address. What the authorities seem to be planning to do in the light of the report is completely refigure the RCMP and provide them with much longer and improved training to try to prevent such a thing from happening again, but that has not yet been actually done.

I watched a documentary a few years ago set in Michigan and a small gun store

Nearly all of the people that came in to buy a gun were doing so because most other people also have a gun

Most were women

There's so many guns in America I don't see how any controls can ever be implemented now

They're out there on the streets in their millions both legally and illegally

Hmmm. To be fair, Canada banned assault weapons after the mass shooting you've referenced because that is what civilised countries do. They take action, they do SOMETHING. They don't wear their AR-15 pins to Congress whilst children are being gunned down daily and send out fake prayers and thoughts 🤷‍♀️
The enquiry was separate and absolutely necessary to examine the actions of the RCMP in what became a manhunt. So it came in ADDITION to measures taken to ensure it doesn't happen again.

Which countries have a higher rate of gun ownership than the US?

There is constant discussion about mental health. Trouble is, the same people who wear their AR-15 pins and resist all efforts to address gun violence are the same people who vote against mental health initiatives and funding. They're usually the same ones who receive funding from the NRA. Go figure 🙄

So, while trying to address root causes, why wouldn't you try and stop the mass shootings while you do so?

Again, what are you and your extended American family doing to bring about change?

Thanks. So it really is the USA that has slid from being fairly sensible about guns (refer to Tom Lehrer, The Hunting Song, 1953) to being obsessive about them and losing any sense of proportion.

I'd suggest that since in living memory the NRA was an association which ran courses for teens on responsible gun ownership and use, but has devolved into a frankly unpleasant association advocating universal gun-ownership even for totally untrained people with a record of violence, and which as well as having obvious links to the arms manufacturers has at one time and another been funded to a greater or lesser extent by Russia (there is plenty of evidence of links), it might be worth looking at where the NRA is now getting its money; it was in the process of going bankrupt at least at one point because of the behaviour of the people at the top of it. And now that it is asserted to be one of the Big Boys in buying up people in politics, which is a very expensive pastime, that question seems more pertinent than ever.

It will never ever change.

There could be a mass shooting in an American school every week and they would still screech it's their right to bear arms.

That right is apparently more important than a child's right to be safe in school.

When I think of those mothers and fathers this week who kissed their kids goodbye that morning and will never hold them again my heart aches.

Please don't ever think I intend to defend American gun laws. My purpose on this thread is purely to explain and offer factual background, so let's look at some data.

https://www.campussafetymagazine.com/safety/k-12-school-shooting-statistics-everyone-should-know/

This does not include the most recent year, but is accurate as far as I can tell>

The school shooting data below includes stats from 1970 to 2021. Partial 2022 data can be found on the CHDS website.

• Related: 7 Times ‘See Something, Say Something’ Stopped Potential Tragedies in 2021There have been 1,924 school shooting incidents since 1970.
• 2021 had the greatest number of incidents, with 249. The next highest year was 2019 with 119.
• Since 1970, 637 people have died in shootings at schools. Additionally, 1,734 were injured and 73 suffered minor injuries.
• 2018 was the year with the highest number of people killed, including the shooter, with 51 killed. This was the year of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting, which claimed 17 lives.
• California, Texas and Florida are the states with the most incidents.
• 1,086 incidents occurred outside on school property and 672 occurred solely inside a school building.
• The most common location for a school shooting is in a parking lot (21.8%), followed by a classroom (10.3%)
• Most school shootings (18.4%) occurred in the morning, followed by at a sporting event (10.2%) or during afternoon classes (10.1%).
• 685 incidents were the result of an escalated dispute (37.1%).
• 515 victims were females and 1,729 were males.
• The most common time of year for a school shooting is in the fall.

See also this map, which tracks the location of these shootings (and records a slightly higher number since it goes to June 2022):

https://www.nationalworld.com/news/world/how-many-school-shootings-america-since-1970s-after-nashville-mass-attack-3708741

While we all recoil in horror at the deaths of these 684 people (some of them adults), and it must be noted that gun deaths have replaced motor vehicles as the leading cause of death for children, the map and numbers show up a couple of important things that probably influence many Americans in a way that is hard for Brits to take in.

Firstly, the highest number of school shootings have taken place in areas with the tightest gun control laws. Supporters of the second amendment point to this as an indication that increasing gun control will not change the incidence of such events.

Secondly, in practice the deaths of 684 people over a fifty year period, most of them nowhere near where you and your family are living, and out of a 333 million population, doesn't influence many people beyond the immediate shock of the report. On the other hand, the threat of having your legal guns removed from you (which as everybody knows will not affect the criminals who will continue to possess them) will certainly affect the owners of the 393 million legally held guns.

According to Gallup, Thirty-two percent of U.S. adults say they personally own a gun, while a larger percentage, 44%, report living in a gun household. Adults living in gun households include those with a gun in their home or anywhere on their property. https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own-guns.aspx

That's all very well, but it remains that assault rifles have no place whatsoever in a civilized society. The people who defend untramelled availability and ownership of these weapons are paranoid, hysterical ideologues who think they'll end up defending their homes and families from (1) black people on the rampage, and (2) the gummint. They'll never admit to (1) but that is what they fear.

Get the guns out of the hands of criminals, and THEN look at restricting gun sales to law-abiding citizens.

‘Get the guns out of the hands of criminals, and THEN look at restricting gun sales to law-abiding citizens.’

ot all has to happen at the same time. And criminals aren’t the ones shooting up schools. Law-abiding citizens are.