Neville's Breakfast
Well-known member
I listen to a number of US podcasts at either end of the spectrum politically. Just some points.
1. The New York law relates to handguns. Not ARs or similar, as such unsure how this links into the wider debate involving school shootings etc.
2. Stats are spun by both sides of the debate. A common one is to include suicides where a gun is used.
3. Shootings tend to be prevalent in areas of socio-economic deprivation. In short gang related. Given that the guns aren't going away the only solution is to work on the poverty. Gun crime isn't so much of a problem in more affluent areas.
4. Most gun reform won't prevent mass shootings. You can only legally restrict guns and this can only affect those who get them legally. If I'm planning a heist I'm not bothered by parking restrictions whilst I'm holding up the bank.
We don't get the issue of guns in the US - it's a deep issue which is largely about how the state and the citizen squares off against the federal state. It's also heavily politicised. Gang violence is huge but gun rights are largely argued in the context of school shootings which are less frequent.
The US govt can get the guns back but it can look into the symptoms of these situations where guns kill.
Aren’t several of those points the excuses for inaction that have brought them to where they are ? The school shootings are not necessarily in poorer areas and they are frequent by global standards. A quick Google brought me to this ;
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/school-shootings-by-country
19 Countries with the Most School Shootings (total incidents Jan 2009-May 2018 - CNN):
United States — 288
Mexico — 8
South Africa — 6
India — 5
Nigeria & Pakistan — 4
Afghanistan — 3
Brazil, Canada, France — 2
Azerbaijan, China, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Kenya, Russia, & Turkey — 1
Australia controlled guns in the 1990s after a number of massacres. It hasn’t had an incident since. America is a massive outlier in that table above. The evidence seems overwhelming.