General News Higher gun death rates in states

And what? As a person who is genderqueer and who has faced street harassment three times and who has had a scare with a possible multiple attacker situation, I'm not sure what my take away from this is supposed to be.

 

And breaking news, prisoners with shivs more likely to shiv someone than the general population. No offense to the people who went through the trouble to research that, but it's obvious.

 

Okay, so what they did was they took 2011 data on gun deaths and 2005 data on gun ownership rates. So far, so good...

 

No offense intended, but I worry for this thread. Gun philosophy is one of the widest rifts in people's opinions I've ever seen.

The article could very well be cherry-picking and ignoring extraneous variables like gang activity. What about Illinois anyway? Chicago at least has draconian gun laws and some of the worst violent crime rates.

But crime aside, pro-gun people still feel it is our civic duty to keep and be proficient with guns. In the event that the government cannot protect your family, you must take up the reins.

 

One of the biggest reasons I want to leave the United States aside from health care, LGBT rights and religious intolerance is the gun fetish. Because we have wide, unrestricted access to guns in the US, we have over 30,000 gun deaths a year. Whereas there are only 146 gun deaths every year in the UK as well as only 653 murders in 2011 versus 16,000 in the US in 2011 because guns are illegal and instead of going into US-panic mode and vowing, "From my cold, dead hands," people were responsible about it and turned their guns in because it was to better the community.

I want to live somewhere safe, not where anti-government extremists are allowed to stockpile the equivalant of a military arsenal. Simply put, you take away the guns, people are safer.

 

It would have been nice if they could look at factors other than just guns. If you look at the list of the "worst states," including mine, you notice that these are all kind of stereotypically conservative and politically backwards states, compared to the ones in the list of "best states." I think that when your state has less racist, sexist, homophobic people in it, you're going to have lower rates of death no matter what weapons are involved.

Also, because I hate this study so much, here's some fun with numbers. Take their numbers, household gun ownership percent divided by gun death rate per 100,000. Why do this? Well, think about what it means. Let's say state X has a gun death rate of 10 per 100,000 and a gun ownership rate of 20%. What if state Y had the same gun death rate, but a gun ownership rate of 30%. That's more people with guns not being negligent or violent. State Y is doing better than state X, among its gun owners. Even if state Z had a gun death rate of 15 per 100,000, and a gun ownership rate of 50%, it's still doing better than state X, because it has 250% more people with guns, but only accounting for 50% more negligent or purposeful gun deaths. Now, I realize that a mere ratio is an imperfect way to look at this, and the two variables are probably more likely to be logarithmically or logistically related than proportionally related, but you still get the idea.

With this in mind, our "worst" states:
Louisiana 2.4114225278
Mississippi 3.0505617978
Alaska 3.480758185
Wyoming 3.7115839243
Montana 3.6678614098

Our five "best" states:
Rhode Island 4.2356687898
Hawaii 2.7247191011
Massachusetts 3.3333333333
New York 3.542074364
New Jersey 2.0695970696

So, even though the best states have fewer guns, as a proportion of the gun deaths occurring, their gun owners seem to be causing more of it than ours are. Except for Rhode Island, because their gun death rate is so incredibly low.

And for the love of fuck, it's not the guns that's the problem, it's the hate.

It's the racism, the sexism, the homophobia, the transphobia, the anti-Semitism. That's the problem.

 

While I would love to own a gun one day, states need to enforce a mandatory background check, mental health screening, licensing, liability insurance, and registration to make our society much safer. The problem in the U.S regarding gun laws is the lack of regulations to ensure that gun owners will be competent and responsible.

Gun ownership has been seen as a right ever since DC v. Heller when the right-wing dominated SCOTUS changed the legal interpretation from "Well-regulated militia" to "citizens have the right to bear arms." If gun ownership is seen as a privilege, then sensible gun laws would have been enacted, and a safer society will be created.

I believe gun laws won't really do anything to our violent crime rate. Gun control won't work if gun culture is still very alive. The reason why there's a low gun ownership rate (and the lack of illegal guns) in countries like Canada is due to the lack of gun culture. Plus, their gun laws are pretty lenient for a Western country (other than the U.S).

Another example would be East Asian countries, Japan, South Korean, and Taiwan. There's virtually no gun culture over there, which is why gun control works so well. I've asked my Taiwanese relatives why they don't want to own a gun; the answers I've received were "Why should I?" "I'm not a hunter" "I have no interest."

 

I'm honestly scared for my life , if I hear any noise im getting down on the floor even if I'm in a class room I don't want to die I like living .:tears:
Can they make better gun laws please I want to feel safe at school I don't want to be shot up

 

So, regulations. The drugs and medical devices that go inside human body (or during surgeries) are heavily regulated, so why should a gun that can harm people be less regulated with less checks?

Also from watching too many Japanese drama, I know that Japan virtually make it illegal for citizens to own gun, unless you're a cop or military. I don't know about other countries, though knife fighting or drunken brawl don't stop in those countries, heehee.

#99% chance I will forget to check back this thread.
#why am i hashtaging on EC? Im on tumblr too much

 

#BanAllTheGuns #HomophobicViolenceSolved

 

Uh, shocking?

---------- Post added 25th Jun 2014 at 02:12 AM ----------

Ha ha, sadly, many people think that would magically end gun crime even though it wouldn't.

 

In part, I have to say I agree with Pret Allez.

We as a culture are extremely prone to violence. For a lot of reasons. Pret Allez mentions hatred and misunderstanding between communities of people as an issue that need to be solved. YES, that is true. But it's not only hate on an individual level that needs to go before we are all safer.

We also need to have less poverty. We need to have less institutional racism, misogyny, transmisogyny, heterosexism, ableism ETC. We need everyone to have access to health care and we need to get our education system right and we need to make sure that people aren't desperately scrabbling for food and housing and medical care and jobs. That the opportunity to have those things is equally available to all people.

It's not all about guns.
That's true.

However, I don't think it's unreasonable to have stricter regulation on gun ownership. It's actually a very popular idea with people all across the board in our political spectrum, but big gun lobbyists don't want this, obviously, so the bills don't get passed.

It's not just gun violence in our country that's astronomical compared to other nations of comparable wealth and development, it's a ton of other forms of violence as well.

In that, Pret Allez is totally on point. We have to learn how to stop hurting and killing each other before we get the major decrease in gun violence we're looking for. We need to examine why it is that we have so much more violence in our culture, so much so that it is barely even news anymore.

 

I have to agree with you Mike. Gun laws rely on the lack of gun culture in order to work. In California and New York, the gun culture is a lot lower than states like Texas and Louisiana since most people here who own guns or want to own a gun believe that regulations like licensing and background checks are necessary unlike the South.

 

While I'll concede that it wouldn't end gun violence completely, it would significantly reduce it, like we saw in England.

 

We need to put restrictions on the process of becoming a gun owner and who can own guns as well as the type of guns people can buy. No average citizens should be able to buy semi-automatic weapons. The very most people should be able to own is a pistol or a rifle(for hunting purposes)

 

Probably not.

England and America are both completely different circumstances and I'm often dumbfounded when people make the comparison.

America has more guns in circulation than people, so even if guns were completely banned gun crime would not be significantly reduced. Gun crime often occurs when people steal guns, and when people purchase stolen guns on the street. Completely banning guns doesn't end that problem. England, in contrast, has never had as many guns in circulation as America, nor the gun culture that we have.

So yeah, definitely two very different situations and a pretty terrible comparison. It's almost as insane (and somewhat similar logic) as some people believing that since democracy works here it can work everywhere in the world. Circumstances/context matter.

 

While I agree with some of what you are say, there needs to be more restrictions on who can buy guns, for example if one is mentally unstable, then there should be a thing that pops up that says do not sell a gun or ammunition to this person.

However, banning all semi-autos is a different story. Do I think that some should not be owned by regular civilians, yes. However, a lot of hunters use semi-auto. Most guns are actually semi-autos. If a gun can hold more than one shell or bullet and will fire after the trigger is pulled without having to manually reload after each shot, then it is technically a semi-auto.

I am fully in favor of automatics being restricted to the military. Besides, they are not accurate, which makes them even more dangerous for civilians to own.

 

It's worth mentioning that the 2nd Amendment has zero to do with hunting. Granted that huge amounts of people abuse that right and shoot people who don't need shooting, but my opinion is that there are absolutely people who DO need shooting.

What do I mean by that? Let's assume that guns were never imagined and swords, crossbows, etc. rule the day. Aside from being awesome this would mean that only those physically strong and proficient at these weapons stand a reasonable chance of defending themselves if the shit hits the proverbial fan and they're fighting for their life. The young buff warriors could, for the time before the cops show up, do literally whatever they wanted to weaker people with no fear of retribution. Rapes would likely go up because strong guys could overpower women with the certainty that they're not about to get shot. It becomes a society of Darwinist survival of the fittest.

With guns, however, that overt hierarchy is greatly diminished. The 90 year old grandma with an oxygen tank can still have the grip strength to fire a gun into the 30 year old kickboxer and defeat him should he choose to break into her house late at night. It's this equalizing factor that makes guns a cornerstone of a civilized society. Be respectful, because your natural advantages apply a lot less than they used to.

On the other hand I do slightly agree that automatics should be illegal to civilians (which they mostly are already.) Full auto is used for suppressive fire, something that a civvy would be extremely hard-pressed to need unless the military is totally disbanded and we need citizen militias again.

 

Another thing I would like to add, is that without guns, hunting will be a lot more difficult and people will starve. There are programs like Hunters for the Hungry where hunters donate the meat that they shot. Without these programs people will starve because there will be no meat.