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submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

President says ‘epidemic of gun violence is tearing our communities apart’ after mass shootings in Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Baltimore and Chicago

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[-] k0mprssd@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago

keep talking and not doing anything i love it and ive loved every other time a shooting occurs and this same shit happens

[-] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Americans keep voting for Republicans. They want the death.

[-] ReallyGoodAtThings@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

~~Americans~~ pro-gun voters keep voting for Republicans. They want the death.

The problem is pro-gun people just happen to be overwhelmingly Republican.

[-] RGB3x3@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I used to be "sensibly" pro gun. As in, "it's important to give people that right, but with proper controls in place."

Increasingly, I want our country to have nothing to do with guns. The actual sensible position is very strict gun control. There's very little reason a person should own any firearm outside of a hunting rifle in extremely controlled circumstances with extensive checks and records.

The US has 120 guns per 100 people, the highest in the world. The next highest? Yemen at ~53.

The onion said it best (every time there's a new mass shooting), "No way to prevent this, says only nation where this regularly happens." We can't lie to ourselves that it's not the lack of gun control that allows all of these shootings.

[-] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

If I could snap my fingers today and make all the guns in the US vanish, tomorrow we'd be talking about IED's. I think the root problem is that americans have been squeezed to the brink and are losing their fuckin minds.

[-] GrimSheeper@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks to gerrymandering, Republicans don't even need people to vote for them in order to win elections. Hurray for democracy!

[-] iamtrashman1312@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

According to the Gun Violence Archive, 21,782 Americans have been killed in shootings halfway through 2023.

I know that's not 100% mass shootings, but that's still a stunningly bleak number. Rounding up from the .97 that's five human lives every hour of 2023 up to July.

[-] TheSpaceEngineer@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 year ago

It's bad, but after watching over a million Americans die of COVID while (seemingly) half or more of the country refused to take - or often even acknowledge - the most basic of preventative measures... Well, I just don't know any longer.

Shootings are far less deadly, and that's a much more murky subject as there are plenty of justifiable reasons to own a gun. You also have to wonder how many deaths are Darwin Awards, or justified self defense... It's just an incredibly complicated subject compared to "hey guys, let's wear masks."

[-] jimbolauski@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

Those numbers are intentionally misleading, they are using people that killed themselves to prop up the numbers. It's disgusting.

[-] Rhoeri@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Explain why they don’t count as gun deaths please.

[-] Strangle@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Gun deaths aren’t the number that’s important. Homicides are

[-] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

If one of my family or friends shot themself or was shot due to the negligence of a "responsible gun owner", I would consider that important.

[-] Strangle@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Accidents are different than intentional suicide.

Does it matter that Kurt contain shot himself in the head any more than layne Staley OD’d on heroin? No, it doesn’t.

Take the shotgun away and contain would just find another way to kill himself

[-] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I'd say that the immediate effectiveness of a shotgun blast to the head means that suicide by firearm is harder to save someone from than from an overdose. Narcan is ineffective against buckshot.

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[-] Rhoeri@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

What’s important isn’t up to you to decide. A gun death is a gun death. They ALL count.

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[-] Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

Suicide is not what first comes to mind when someone talks about gun violence or shootings. Nobody said they don't count - just that it's misleading.

[-] Rhoeri@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

It isn’t misleading at all. A gun death is a gun death to anyone who doesn’t have a bias.

[-] Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

Bias? The point is that you're not as likely to just be randomly shot at the street as those statistics might make it to seem.

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[-] lunar_parking@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

And those shouldn't count? Do you have any idea how much easy access to guns increases suicides? Many, many suicidal people would still be alive without the easy access to guns in the US. It's one of the easiest and painless ways to kill yourself.

[-] borkcorkedforks@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Things like suicide are far more related to a lack mental healthcare and the stigma around getting help than weather or not people are allowed to own firearms. Not everyone has those kinds of problems. An assault weapons ban is certainly unrelated to those seeking self-harm and most crime.

[-] Mayoman68@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Why do pro gun Republicans always use mental health as an alternative reason for excessive firearm suicide rates, and then are nowhere to be heard from when someone proposes universal mental health access.

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[-] ch00f@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Look at suicide rates in England when they switched from coal gas to natural gas. “Sticking your head in the oven” was an incredibly accessible and effective way to kill yourself.

When coal gas was taken away, all suicides dropped.

Over time, as the carbon monoxide in gas decreased, suicides also decreased (Kreitman 1976). Suicides by carbon monoxide decreased dramatically, while suicides by other methods increased a small amount, resulting in a net decrease in overall suicides, particularly among females.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/saves-lives/

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[-] sombrero@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

a gun makes it incredibly easy to end someone, including yourself. It takes the killing out of killing and I can promise you that makes a massive difference to the number of both killings and suicides.

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[-] sorghum@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

How much of that is suicide?

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[-] electriccars@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

That's the price we pay for freedom.

/s

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[-] people_are_cute@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 1 year ago

Just a random thought, what if instead of going after guns, the administration came down on high-caliber ammo instead?

Like, just put heavy barriers on the production of 9mm and higher-sized ammunition to the extent the only bullets available in the market for the general public are .22 LR and below, which are less lethal in general. If not anything else it would bring down gun deaths at least.

Their main argument is that there are more than enough guns in circulation already and a ban on them would only affect the "good guys" while the bad guys will get their guns illegally. Well, those guns are useless without their cartridges, and at some point the country will run out of them if no new ones are produced.

As a bonus, choking out the lethal-ammo supply chain won't even violate anyone's 2A rights.

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[-] cloaker@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

Obviously nothing can be done to change this. There is zero things the government can do to stop gun violence. It must just be an inherent part of life

[-] oaklandnative@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago
[-] dub@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I'm actually I'll have you know that there was a mass shooting in France one time the last 25 years and therefore that shows that gun churches don't help, according to my conservative cousins

[-] AncientFutureNow@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

That Philly shooting - you know it was a white shooter cause the police didn't discharge a single shot.

[-] ArchmagosHeadass@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

We all know that if and that's a big IF democrats passed a gun control bill there will be instant lawsuits and eventually thrown out for being unconstitutional. Which for many in the US it is. Its pointless at this point.

[-] Helpful_Cat@lemmy.fmhy.ml 2 points 1 year ago
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this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
69 points (100.0% liked)

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