Americans may very well be a different species. Countless discussion exists about American exceptualism. 2nd Amendment aside, Americans are an outlier in terms of the combination of individualistic culture and religious faith. It’s also an outlier among developed countries in having a huge number of UNREGISTERED guns already in circulation.
Simply restricting new purchases of guns is too little too late.
“Americans may very well be a different species.”
Just no. We aren’t. And we aren’t exceptional either. Far from it.
“It’s also an outlier among developed countries in having a huge number of UNREGISTERED guns already in circulation.”
Which we have allowed to happen due to the love of guns over all else by a significant proportional of our society and the kowtowing by politicians to the NRA.
It’s not too little too late. It has to start somewhere. Anyone who believes that believes mass shootings are an acceptable price to pay for the unfettered freedom to have a gun. Then they have the gall to express horror every time over these events when they have blood all over their hands.
Huh? Who said the murderer was any less of a murderer?
The murderer is still the murderer whether the victim is armed or not, but we’re seeing rhetoric from NRA board members, in commentary on stories, and in forums like this one is that if you were armed you could have prevented it. I can’t count how many comments I’ve read on articles that quickly point out that had guns been allowed in the church, had Pinckney or someone else in his study group been armed they could have stopped the shooter and prevented some of the murders.
I don’t see how I can’t infer from this kind of talk that the message behind it is that people ought to carry guns, all the time, to the pizza place, to the movie theater, to the Walmart, to church and even to their Bible study groups…just in case.
Well, which is it, people who don’t wish to carry for whatever reason should be respected…or people who don’t wish to carry are cowed and cowardly and want to wallow in victimhood and dependent on the government (police I assume)? Cause you’re talking out of both sides of your mouth here.
On the other thread a poster mentioned how SC gun laws are the worst in the nation and since that isn’t the official gun control laws thread I am posting an overview of the SC laws here.
This is going around the internet:
How many extra guns would you need to protect yourselves down to the level of fatalities of England and Wales?
Let’s saddle all those countries with the 2nd Amendment and a population of 350,000,000 and then talk about it. This comparison with other countries gets so tiresome.
Not only do comparisons to other countries get tiresome, they get threads shut down.
Talking about exceptionalism wasn’t so tiresome, was it?
I don’t remember any discussion on this thread about exceptionalism; just one person mentioning it once and another casting that idea aside.
The point is, that when one talks about guns and gun crime in the US, you have to start with the premise that about 197,000,000 people (the # of residents 21 and older), have a Constitutional right to own guns. No law can take that right away from them (with minor exceptions). None of the other countries must start from that premise, they can simply outlaw gun ownership outright. It is a huge difference.
Many other countries don’t outlaw gun ownership outright, and still avoid the (exceptionally) bizarre slaughter that goes on in the US.
“Let’s saddle all those countries with the 2nd Amendment and a population of 350,000,000 and then talk about it. This comparison with other countries gets so tiresome.”
"Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says the Constitution’s right to bear arms isn’t absolute and could be changed in the future.
Scalia, a card-carrying conservative and stalwart of the Court’s right-leaning majority, told “Fox News Sunday” that the Second Amendment’s language allowing citizens the right to own weapons doesn’t mean they can own any weapon they want.
“There are some limitations that can be imposed,” Scalia said. “What they are will depend on what the society understood were reasonable limitations at the (future) time.”
The future is now.
Stop hiding behind the 2nd; that we can’t do things because of the size of our population and that we are somehow a different species from other humans beings on the planet.
In the multi-national settings I’ve worked, I’ve observed that Americans are definitely different.
There’s an NPR article out there stating that New Hampshires murder rate is lower than Finlands.
“In the multi-national settings I’ve worked, I’ve observed that Americans are definitely different.”
Do these Americans at work whine about not being able to get something accomplished because it’s too hard or that the desired outcome might take time to be realized?
No matter the subject (health care, education, guns, etc.,) it’s always the same excuse - we can’t because of 350 million people, we can’t because we’re not homogenous, blah, blah, blah… so we will just have to accept our sad lot in life because our hands are tied.
The Second Amendment doesn’t absolutely prohibit regulation of guns. There’s actually huge state-to-state variation in the strictness of gun regulations, percentage of households owning guns, and rates of gun deaths per 100,000 population. Generally speaking, the states with the strictest gun regulations tend to have the fewest guns. And not surprisingly, more guns correlate extremely closely with more gun deaths, and fewer guns with fewer gun deaths. Alaska, where about 60% of households have guns, has nearly 8 times as many gun deaths per 100,000 population (19.8 annually) as Hawaii, where only 6.7% of households have guns (2.6 gun deaths per 100,000). .It’s not just variation in gun control laws, however; there are also cultural factors at play. And note that “gun deaths” in this context includes not just homicides but also suicides and accidental gun deaths, including all those tragedies where young children play with their parents’ guns and accidentally kill themselves, a sibling, a playmate, another family member, or an innocent passer-by…
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/charleston-and-the-next-time
An interesting article from the New Yorker.
Yes. It peaked in the 80s and has been decreasing since.
In my opinion it’s fine for the church itself to disallow firearms on the premises, just not the law.
There’ve been plenty where the weapon was a bomb (a bomb made by store bought materials) or a fire.
Civilians cannot own fully automatic weapons. If you go to any store that sells firearms they won’t have any fully automatic weapons.
Which countries?
No. Plot the data:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state
There’s pretty much no correlation with either murder rate or gun murder rate. I could give you several other criteria that correlate much more strongly.
“There’ve been plenty where the weapon was a bomb (a bomb made by store bought materials) or a fire.”
Deflection noted.
“Many other countries don’t outlaw gun ownership outright, and still avoid the (exceptionally) bizarre slaughter that goes on in the US.”
Switzerland, Finland, Canada to name a few.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zug_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jokela_school_shooting
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/12/30/10_of_the_worst_mass_murders_in_canada.html
You see fewer in these countries because Switzerland has a population less than Virginia. Finland less than Minnesota. Canada less than California.