There are about 30,000 gun related deaths per year by firearms, this number is not disputed.
U.S. population 328 million as of January 2018.
Do the math: 0.00915% of the population dies from gun related actions each year.
What is not insignificant, however, is a breakdown of those 30,000 deaths:
• 22,938 (76%) are by suicide which can't be prevented by gun laws.
• 987 (3%) are by law enforcement, thus not relevant to Gun Control discussion.
• 489 (2%) are accidental.
So "gun violence" isn't 30,000 annually, but 5,577... 0.0017% of the population.
Still too many? Let's look at location:
• 298 (5%) - St Louis, MO
• 327 (6%) - Detroit, MI
• 328 (6%) - Baltimore, MD
• 764 (14%) - Chicago, IL
That's over 30% of all gun crime in just 4 cities.
But what about other deaths each year?
• 70,000+ die from a drug overdose.
• 49,000 people die per year from the flu.
• 37,000 people die per year in traffic fatalities.
• 250,000+ people die each year from preventable medical errors.
You are safer in Chicago than when you are in a hospital!
• 610,000 people die per year from heart disease.
We don't have a gun problem... We have a political agenda and media sensationalism problem.
22,938 (76%) are by suicide which can't be prevented by gun laws.
I beg to differ. Gun laws that reduce the number of firearms in homes, and/or reduce the number of guns sold to those with mental health issues, would almost certainly reduce suicide rates. A gun is a dangerously quick, easy, and effective method that sits in the closets of many Americans.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...
"There were 39,773 gun deaths in 2017, up by more than 1,000 from the year before".[1]
>Do the math: 0.00915% of the population dies from gun related actions each year.
'Deaths per capita' is the more common unit, isn't it?
>22,938 (76%) are by suicide which can't be prevented by gun laws.
As I understand it, suicide-by-gun are more 'successful' than suicide-by-other-means. Each failed attempt is a chance to save that person or for the person to save themselves from trying again in the future. How could gun control laws not potentially impact suicide rate?
>• 987 (3%) are by law enforcement, thus not relevant to Gun Control discussion.
For some narrow definition of gun control, maybe. There has been talk of the increasing militarization of the police over the last decade+, putting more police in schools in response to school shootings, use of force by police officers in situations that seemingly could have easily avoided it. etc. All seems pretty relevant to the discussion.
>Still too many?
Yes. Staggeringly so[2].
>That's over 30% of all gun crime in just 4 cities.
America has gang/drug/poverty problems that fuel violent crimes. No one is denying that. All part of the gun control discussion.
>We don't have a gun problem...
Can you please help me understand that in relation to [2]? Because it sure looks like we have a gun problem.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/gun-deaths.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...
We have a gun problem in certain particular areas; if you remove those areas from the data the rest of the US looks more like Switzerland in terms of gun violence. And all of those areas where there is a gun problem already have gun control laws that are among the toughest in the country. That does not seem like evidence that gun control is the way to solve a gun problem.
> America has gang/drug/poverty problems that fuel violent crimes.
Which is further evidence that the way to solve the gun problem in the areas that have it is to fix the gang/drug/poverty problem, not gun control. Just ending the war on drugs, all by itself, would be a huge win since it would remove the major incentive for violence associated with drugs.
>but somehow it's wrong to consider gun violence preventable or a worthy issue
It's not about believing it's worthy, it's minimizing or completely ignoring the tangible and intangible benefits of minimally restricted gun ownership.
The cost/benefit analysis is treated only as a cost analysis.
I'm genuinely curious about the benefits of minimally restricted gun ownership. In a game theoretic sense, theres only two stable power dynamics. 1. Nobody has weapons 2. Everyone does. Otherwise, the power dynamic is so skewed as to be trivially exploitable.
Firearms are trivially easy to build with any machining experience. Takes a little more chemistry to make gunpowder. That said we've been doing it in far more primitive situations for hundreds of years.
If people want to kill you. Simply put, you are dead. Our focus should be on building a world where we dont want to kill each other.
(also, option 2 is not possible either. What you propose is trending towards 2 has some scaling of benefit, and I believe the opposite: that removing as much as possible the possibility of gun violence will have far reaching de-escalating effects on police, politics, health, etc etc.) I just dont have a clear picture of how proliferation of guns helps to prevent gun violence except perhaps in the limiting, unobtainable case where everyone fears immediate lethal reprisal for any violent act?
I understand that regulation is enormously inconvenient for owners. But making it easy to acquire firearms isnt a benefit of more people owning firearms, its a prerequisite. I want to understand why people should own firearms at the level of scenario 2 above.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/small...
Those suits will stop most commonly-used pistol rounds. If you desire protection against rifle rounds, you can purchase SAPI plates from China for fairly cheap, but them, and their plate carriers, are fairly bulky....worse than wearing an armored motorcycle jacket, for comparison.
Aliexpress example: https://tinyurl.com/quy7edr
And, when the grand-parent says that "some people are in denial" about problems with medical, housing and other costs and problems. Apparently they're not just in conspiracy theory denial but even seek to prevent the merest mentioning of these issues.
Yep, healthcare is garbage.
>transportation infrastructure
This is subjective. Most Americans care more about roads than public transportation.
>housing costs
In all but the most expensive metros, US housing is way cheaper per sq ft than most Western European nations. This is partly due to urban sprawl due to the love affair with cars, but it is cheaper.
>gap between rich and poor
Richer middle class than most other countries. Just because the US is a good place for business and a bad place to be poor says very little about the average experience.
>gun-related deaths
Yep, that comes with gun ownership. Many people are knowingly making that trade-off. You'd want to compare murder/suicide rates with other countries for any meaningful comparisons.
And the roads are garbage. I brought some friends over from Australia and driving on the US interstates they said "wow.. it's like everything is half finished".
> You'd want to compare murder/suicide rates with other countries for any meaningful comparisons.
And it's way, way higher than any other developed country.
For what it's worth, the The US is at or very near the worst among OECD countries in: infant mortality, child poverty, child health and safety, life expectancy at birth, healthy life expectancy, rate of obesity, disability-adjusted life years, doctors per 1000 people, deaths from treatable conditions, rate of mental health disorders, rate of drug abuse, rate of prescription drug use, incarceration rate, rate of assaults, rate of homicides, income inequality, wealth inequality, and economic mobility.
Uh, the U.S. is huge, with 50 semi independently managed states and thousands of semi independently managed cities. Having lived and traveled all over, most places have roads in good shape - which is an achievement because many of these roads are quite remote.
>For what it's worth, the The US is at or very near the worst among OECD countries in: infant mortality, child poverty, child health and safety, life expectancy at birth, healthy life expectancy, rate of obesity, disability-adjusted life years, doctors per 1000 people, deaths from treatable conditions, rate of mental health disorders, rate of drug abuse, rate of prescription drug use, incarceration rate, rate of assaults, rate of homicides, income inequality, wealth inequality, and economic mobility.
Though unpopular, it should really be said that almost every one of these problems is isolated to one or two demographics in this country. That therefore is not indicative of a failure at large. If you remove the same couple groups of people from the various statistics, stats for the U.S. in almost every category are at or near the top for the global average.
Who cares. Why do you want to compare the US to the Central African Republic. At least compare pro teams to other teams on the pro ladder if you want any kind of meaningful comparisons.
America gets a ton of shit online, but the shitty areas that drive averages down are a tiny percentage of total population/land. They're outliers. For example, Houston is rated as one of the most dangerous cities in the country - but only a handful of neighborhoods/areas are actually bad.
I take it you've never been to "random Nordic city" then.
In stark contrast to "random town USA", not a single person is without healthcare without paying directly for it, everyone can have unemployment money if they need it, everyone has had (or can have) free university education, etc. etc.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/study-states-with-the-longes...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti%27s_constant
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/08/commute-time-...
Edit: The metric they use for that may be slightly different as they put US commutes at 48.8 minutes per day. At which point 2 EU countries have worse commutes. Hungary and Romania. If the daily average for the US was 27x2 = 54 minutes that’s worse than very EU country.
It's the same method, the CNBC article is just using the more recent survey, so their number is 10 years newer than the one in that report. This, comparing to the non-US numbers in it is not fair.
> That’s terrible by EU standards or Canadian (24 minutes each way) standards
I don't agree with your definition of "terrible" in the relative sense. Daily, the US number in that report is only 2 minutes higher than the Netherlands, 6 minutes higher than Germany, and 7 minutes higher than Belgium. All three are over 40 minutes per day, so IMO if the US time is "terrible" so are theirs. Ditto the Canadian number, which is only 6 minutes per day less.
Also, 1 minute * 261 work days a year * 40+ working years = 174 hours extra commute time per person. Thus, are talking well past 3,000 hours longer than the best country on this list. Or every walking hour for more than six months for the average working American over the average Portugal worker. So, I am not saying every EU country is doing ok, just by comparison it’s clear the US huge issues in this area.
And our murder rate is pretty bad, likely thanks to our extremely high rate of gun violence.
So, it’s likely a major factor but hardly the root cause.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guns/americans-own-ne...