It's a pretty big country, it's probably wrong to generalize like that.
But then in europe people would ask me "Aren't you worried about getting shot in America?"
And I'd say no, not really. But I guess now I understand how many of the South Koreans deal with it, they just don't think about it. Gun violence is really quite high in every state and every major city in the US. Mostly we don't think about it.
> I always wondered how people in Seoul could deal with living so close to North Korea, with artillery pointed at the city perpetually.
Israel is a whole military state though, led by hardliners with a clear militaristic perspective on things. Everyone does military service. The whole country is modern and tech-heavy but this idea of constant war and the fear of the Palestinians fighting back against Israeli oppression and land theft (or if you believe the right-wing narrative of just defense) is shaping the entire narrative. They could have chosen peace a few times..
The key difference is still that this is perceived as an external threat. You are not scared of an average Israeli/Palestinian walking by, you are scared of 'the other'. In the US you can get shot by someone with road rage.
That really isn’t true though. There is huge variation between states and cities in the USA; eg California has much less gun violence than Wyoming, and LA is a lot more safer than St. Louis.
Massachusetts - 3.4 deaths per 100,000, that’s the lowest state.
Austrailia is 0.88, France 2.33, Germany 1.04, U.K. 0.20, Switzerland 2.64, Canada 1.94
So MA gun deaths are about 50% higher than the worst western countries.
In some states, like Wyoming, almost all of the deaths are suicides, so you are unlikely to be victimized by gun violence by someone else (the same is probably true with Switzerland, suicides were a big problem when I lived there). So feel free to visit Yellowstone, but maybe avoid that vacation to Alabama you’ve been dreaming about.
You said it’s not true. Facts point the other way. Just because bezos is richer than gates, it doesn’t mean it’s not true to say “gates is rich”
There is an order of magnitude difference between 3 and 30. And even at 30 you are unlikely to experience gun violence first hand, which is often situational anyways (people looking for trouble find trouble).
If you move to the states, choose a good state and a good city, and you and your family will be ok. The USA is not homogenous with respect to violence, it’s actually a very large country in that respect.
So If anything, you're doing your family and loved ones a disservice by owning a gun. It's just such a cowboy wild west idea that you'd "defend" your family with a gun. Maybe you would. But most people would just completely lose their shit if they were confronted with a criminal, who - in US - is also statistically far more likely to own a gun.
It's like.....in principle, I love the idea. I really like the idea as you are saying - that by owning a gun, I can protect my loved ones from harm. Who wouldn't want that? It's great.
But, statistics are ruthless - gun ownership is strongly linked with your family being a victim of gun violence, and singular examples of people defending themselves from robbers and kidnappers are not enough to make the trade off worth it.
Also - obviously looking at gun deaths is not enough. There are gun injuries. There are psychological problems where people are afraid to go to places or do certain things because they might get shot. Kids learning to live in a society where having policemen and metal detectors at schools is completely normal because there might be a shooting. Whether that fear is justified is another question entirely, but it's a thing. What kind of damage does that do to society?
Or maybe differently - if US was anywhere between 2 and 10 times worse in car accidents than the nearest 1st world country(and it actually is, but that's beside the point) , would it be a "good trade off for freedom(to travel and move)"? Or a sign that maybe the American system of driver training and car ownership is flawed if it consistently kills more people than anywhere else?
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/murder-rate...
...and by country...
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/murder-ra...
It's down to the news and media we get across the pond; school shootings seem to be common, films and TV shows depict that gunfights are common, etc.
I mean the US could choose to go for a better world image, but they like the image that everybody has a gun and they have the Greatest army and all that.
Joke's on them though, China has a lot of influence on some US made films nowadays, so Hollywood blockbusters is not only American but now also Chinese propaganda.
Meanwhile in Europe we get err. idk. Scandi crime dramas?
I feel very safe in my home state. Like you, I didn't feel safe at all in SF. It's the least safe I've ever felt in the US.
I felt even less safe in San Jose, but nothing bad happened to me in either place.
"Nordic Noir". Love it when occasionally behind it all there isn't Russian or East-European mafia but some homegrown extremists.
I don't get that feeling from most other 1st world countries. hell, I've been through a few south American countries like Argentina and Ecuador without any real concerns.
America as a whole seems to have values that just dont sit comfortably with me. Understand the issue about generalizing. Doesn't change my gut feels though.
If you had tried to talk to me about it before I had lived here I would have told you that you were crazy and that the US is really safe. And in a lot of ways it is safe, but the emotional reaction is legitimate and completely understandable.
The first time we took our kids back, one night we were out front of the house we were staying in. A truck drove by on the street and the girls kind of huddled together. I said, "What's wrong?" They said, "We don't want to get shot."
When you live in an environment where the idea of just any random person having and using a gun is close to unthinkable, shifting to an environment where anyone could have and use a gun at any time is stressful.
“ “We are selling five times as much as in a normal March,” said Gabor Vass, who runs three gun shops in the Hungarian capital, including the one where Rostas bought his gas pistol.”
1) Even 5x as normal is probably what your average Walmart sells in a day? (I'm paraphrasing, no idea how many guns walmarts actually sell)
2) I don't know about Hungarian gun laws, but I imagine you can't just go in and buy a guy without a permit? Also, are handguns permitted? Gas pistol implies like a CO2 powered air gun?
Yes, you need a permit, though illegal gun ownership is somewhat of an issue. Getting a permit isn't easy, from what I hear.
> Also, are handguns permitted?
Yes.
> Gas pistol implies like a CO2 powered air gun?
No, they're guns that shoot tear gas and the like, and can often also be used for launching small pyrotechnics. The barrel is usually obstructed to make sure they can't be used to shoot projectiles. Theoretically, they could be manipulated to fire projectiles, but it's complicated, difficult, illegal, and probably easier and cheaper to just buy the real thing.
In 2019 the rate of gun deaths per 100000 people in Hungary was 0.61 and in the USA it was 3.96
There are things I worry about but mass shootings like those that happen in the US on a regular basis are not one of them. Violent crime in general is very low here.
>Gun dealers in Hungary's capital can sell gas pistols, like this Ekol Firat Magnum, to people without a weapons licence
Oh, the horror...
I’ve lived in the west and south all my 50 plus years, with a couple years spent overseas, and I’ve never seen a gun drawn or shot in anger.
I spend zero time worrying about gun violence because there is no rational reason to.
Now, I’ve lived in suburbs (no gated communities, just straight middle class) instead of large metros, though I’ve worked in plenty of the same. I’ve felt unsafe in those metros, but it had little to no relationship to guns, just people who acted out in the train or bus or aggressive in their panhandling.
I’m no gun fanatic- been to a few events hosted by friends where I shot their guns at targets, but never have owned one. But unless you live in Baltimore or similar environments, the US is absolutely safe, statistically, for one to work/play/live in without spending any thought to protecting yourself from gun violence.
Your mileage may vary:
My high school, in a nice safe San Diego suburb, had a mass shooting a few years after I graduated. One of my favorite teachers retired that year because he couldn’t go back to the place where a student had bled out in his arms while he was trying to tourniquet him.
I met the Aurora, CO movie theater killer when he was a UCSD student working on our lab cluster. Good thing I never WONTFIX-ed his support tickets… In what is possibly the most American game of small world, a now-coworker used to go to the late show at that theater often but not that night.
A friend of ours had a close call and lockdown due to a disgruntled employee bringing a gun to his office (past armed guards!), a mile from where I work.
My wife’s school had a full hostage negotiation one afternoon when a student made a threat. They talked him out of it but … it’s not exactly hard to imagine that it could have gone the other way.
Nobody I’ve met from outside of the U.S. has even one story like that, even the ones from countries we look down on.