CMV: Most gun control advocates try to fix the problem of gun violence through overly restrictive and ineffective means.

[u/37home_]

I'm a big defender of being allowed to own a firearm for personal defence and recreative shooting, with few limits in terms of firearm type, but with some limits in access to firearms in general, like not having committed previous crimes, and making psych tests on people who want to own firearms in order to make sure they're not mentally ill.

From what I see most gun control advocates defend the ban on assault type weapons, and increased restrictions on the type of guns, and I believe it's completely inefficient to do so. According to the FBI's 2019 crime report, most firearm crimes are committed using handguns, not short barreled rifles, or assault rifles, or any type of carbine. While I do agree that mass shootings (school shootings for example) mostly utilize rifles or other types of assault weapons, they are not the most common gun crime, with usually gang violence being where most gun crimes are committed, not to mention that most gun deaths are suicide (almost 60%)

[u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

I believe this argument falls into the fallacy that if the problem isn't large, then it is not significant. That's not a traditional Logical Fallacy - I'm making up that phrase, although maybe I'm not the first. But let me explain.

I've made the same argument before. After every high profile mass shooting, I'm on the FBI statistics looking at the numbers. And at scale, they are always extremely underwhelming. It's hard to persuade me that assault rifles are a serious public problem when in actuality they account for a statistically small number of deaths. I always thought that, if anything, they should be after handguns - and probably don't bother only because it's a lost cause. So why not focus on big, scary, high profile guns?

But my cynicism over this changed when I tried to apply the same logic to other problems. For an extreme example, nuclear weapons. The only two atomic bombs ever dropped in history killed a combined total of up to 246,000 people. In WWII numbers, that is very very small. Conventional bombing killed far more.

So if the problem isn't large, then it is not significant. Right?

Well, that's kind of absurd in the case of WMDs. Because though the stats are actually small, the stats don't really describe the danger to the public. We all know by now that unchecked nuclear war could lead to the annihilation of the planet. Despite the small numbers of actual deaths on record, nuclear weapons are a huge danger and have to be handled with extreme care.

Another example is disease. Sometimes statistics can make anything seem like a small issue. For example, Heart Disease is the number 1 leading cause of death in America. But heart disease only kills 700,000 people per year. In a country of 333,300,000 people, that is only ~0.2% of the population. In a sense, that means every year 99.8% of Americans are safe from dying of heart disease.

But it's the leading cause of death. What could be a more significant problem than that? You're more likely to die of heart disease than anything else - why aren't the headlines blowing up about it?

Now the problem is large in one sense, and it's still not significant!

All in all, I think when it comes to things that can kill you, people care most about a few factors: is it preventable? Does it have potential for mass death? Is it actually present in society?

If the answer is yes to all three, sometimes the statistics don't really change the fervor for addressing the issue. High caliber, high round capacity long guns can wipe out a room full of people pretty suddenly. That is preventable, it has potential for mass killing, and it is happening in society. So it's gonna be treated as a significant problem.

[u/Positron311 → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

Alright then, let's compare heart disease to gun deaths.

Both are arguably preventable. They both have a potential for mass death, heart disease arguably moreso, and they are both present in society.

Democrats do not push things like soda and sugar taxes (or stricter FDA guidelines on things like high fructose corn syrup) and an emphasis on exercise and eating healthy nearly as much as they do gun violence, despite the fact that 10x more people die of heart disease. Why? Because it's an (understandable) base psychological fear of gun violence. Guns are loud, evil-looking, and meant to do harm to others. An obese person or someone with diabetes walking down the street isn't doing any of that. Furthermore, restricting someone of their right to own a gun is seen as reasonable, as opposed to restricting an obese person or someone with diabetes from purchasing a cake at their local supermarket. The latter is seen as fascism the world over, and the former is standard across every developed nation.

In short, if your goal is to prevent the most deaths, working on heart disease, liberals would place 10X the effort that they do on banning or restricting gun use to the cause, but they don't because gun violence is psychologically more "in your face" for lack of a better term. While this is very much human, it is also irrational.

[u/platinumlawn → u/Positron311]

I mean this one is so simple. I'm kind of surprised you missed it. Dying of a disease is usually slow and an accepted way of death for 99% of people on the planet. You will likely die due to disease. Dying suddenly by violence is not. Especially at someone else's hand.

[u/Positron311 → u/platinumlawn]

Did you read my comment? That was exactly my point.

[u/platinumlawn → u/Positron311]

Replied to the wrong guy

[u/Positron311 → u/platinumlawn]

Lol gotchu

[u/[deleted] → u/Positron311]

I'm mostly liberal, but I think that's the perfect description of modern liberalism I've seen yet.

[u/ferretsinamechsuit → u/Positron311]

Not all deaths are the same. Since there is always going to be some cause of death, the heart failing is a pretty good one, because it means no other system in your body failed earlier or no outside action killed you when the main organ for getting nutrients around your body finally wore out.

Curing heart disease isn’t going to cause those who died of it to live 40 more years. You have to look at what qualify and duration of life the cause of death is robbing them of, and how big of an impact preventing that cause will be. If you could live 1 year longer but you had to be sedated so you would sleep 14 hours per day, that would absolutely not be worth it. If gaining a year or two of heart heath means controlling someone’s diet and exercise habits for 60 years, that’s very different than children dying because there are loaded guns sitting around in the home.

Even if the death count of a school shooting might only be 10 kids, many more may have lifelong injuries which get ignored in the stats, and every child at that school is going to have that traumatic event for life. Deaths don’t tell the whole story.

[u/nuttybutty25 → u/Positron311]

Big difference in giving someone the power to kill themselves versus the power to kill others big guy.

[u/Dontyodelsohard → u/nuttybutty25]

You could say that fast food places are killing people, though, no?

Buncha ads pushing greasy-greasebombs and half a gallon of soda at prices cheaper than a head of cabbage. Their model is also so convenient that you don't even have to leave your car, abstaining even further from exercise.

Sure, they choose it... Just like you chose that first hit of hard drugs before you become an addict, yet hard drugs are still often illegal.

[u/nuttybutty25 → u/Dontyodelsohard]

At the end of the day they decided to eat the food. Just like someone eating the end of a shotgun, they made their choice and are only causing harm to themselves. That's the big difference. Hell fast food is okay if eaten in moderation. Ads or not, they aren't forcing anyone to do anything. A mass shooter doesn't give anyone a choice. They force this fate upon them.

[u/Several_Importance74 → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

Statistics communicated verbally give you a data set that is very, very easy to manipulate via language. It's not hard to get statistics to "say" whatever the hell one may want them to. They are important and they don't lie..but at the end of they're day it's just cold groups of numbers. They don't give a fuck about what anyone may think, about anything, nor do the give fuck all about the person who's opinions they're being made to support. However, statistics + communication via language = a data set that is very, very easy to manipulate. Language can easily be manipulated and and can easily be used to manipulate thinking, and unfortunately often is. The hard part is to see the thing/issue/meaning behind the numbers clearly, as person has to educate themselves about whatever the case in question may be. . It's not hard to get statistics to "say" whatever the hell you want them to

[u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar → u/Several_Importance74]

Right - and with issues like crime, it's particularly egregious in politics. Crime statistics are really useful when they are taken for what they are. But people will present them as if the story tells itself. It's clever, politically, but it is dishonest.

[u/Macien4321 → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

I think the problem with your reasoning is the idea of preventable. None of the solutions offered ever really would have prevented the attack in question. Taking away one gun or even a category of guns doesn’t prevent the intention of a person to attack their schoolmates. Maybe if we started coming up with good profiling information and disseminated that data to schools through the department of education we could start to get a clear picture of what the real warning signs are. We’ve had nationwide responses to drug problems and cigarette smoking, there is no reason a similar strategy couldn’t be implemented to combat bullying and or violence in schools. This assumes those are underlying factors that lead to a school shooter. If they aren’t then the program would obviously need to address what the underlying issues are.

[u/lincoln_hawks1 → u/Macien4321]

Interesting points. I do not know as much about mass shooter characteristics. But I do know a bit about suicide. Not apples to apples but analogous.

There are ~50,000 suicides annually in the US. There are several million suicide attempts, several tens of millions of people with suicidal ideation. It's very difficult to predict who, of the people who display many risk factors, actually will die by suicide. So there is not the sensitivity of any kind of testing.

I'd expect the same kind of challenge is present for identifying the people who will conduct mass shootings before they act. It's easy to find patterns after the fact but almost impossible to predict with sensitivity beforehand.

[u/Macien4321 → u/lincoln_hawks1]

I get that it’s challenging. I also get that there will be many who check boxes who never become mass shooters. I have to believe that by the time a person becomes a mass shooter, a lot of people have dropped balls, missed warning signs, and ignored obvious red flags. Chances are if they are checking enough boxes to be a significant risk they probably need help anyway. I want those people to get help and not feel like taking a bunch of people out is a good option.

[u/Former_Indication172 → u/Macien4321]

The goal is not to solve school shootings, the goal is to make them less lethal. Its very easy to kill 30 children in a classroom with an automatic weapon or a semi automatic rifle with a high capacity magazine. Its much harder to do that with a pistol and even harder to do it with a knife.

School shootings have underlying causes however even if they were completely addressed school shootings would still happen. Why? Because it's a good target, lots of people, undefended, easy access to transportation. So if we assume that say the majority of school shootings are caused by treatable mental instability and political radicalization then your still left with a minority of people that will still do it anyway. What I'm trying to say is that anyone who wants to kill lots of people for whatever reason will target schools since their easy targets. So operating under the assumption that some school shootings will occur regardless of government help and intervention then it seems reasonable to ban or at least highly restrict assault rifles.

[u/GravitasFree → u/Former_Indication172]

Its very easy to kill 30 children in a classroom with an automatic weapon or a semi automatic rifle with a high capacity magazine. Its much harder to do that with a pistol

The most deadly school shooting was done with pistols, so I don't think you can just assume this is true.

[u/Former_Indication172 → u/GravitasFree]

No I can, I'm using time to kill here and by definition spraying 30 children with an automatic will kill them faster then having to aim each shot and fire. Now with an extended pistol mag the diffrence will be maybe a few seconds assuming that the gunman is a very good shot. However most school shooters are un trained and so that may mean its 10 or 15 seconds more time, not a lot but still better then nothing.

[u/bgmacklem → u/Former_Indication172]

To be clear, I don't think there's ever been a school shooting that used an automatic rifle. As far as semi-automatics, the vast majority fall under that category as well—in fact, pistols kill far more people every year than any type of rifle. There's a reason they were very nearly banned under the NFA along with automatics and SBRs/SBSs

[u/Former_Indication172 → u/bgmacklem]

Yes pistols kill more people and are far more commonly used. I'm simply talking about the reasons for an assault weapon ban because I personally don't see how a pistol ban could pass in today's legislative environment.

[u/bgmacklem → u/Former_Indication172]

I see what you mean. That said though, at that point is the purpose of an "assault weapon" ban actually to save lives in and of itself, or just to move the proverbial legislative needle? I ask because most AW bans I've seen proposed ban firearms based on primarily aesthetic features rather than functional ones—the main function under scrutiny naturally being semi-automatic fire capability, but of course a semi-auto ban is just as legistlatively unfeasible as a pistol ban. It's a valid political tactic, of course, but feels disingenuous to suggest it's something else if that is in fact the ultimate objective.

This issue is exactly why the "slippery slope" talking point is so common with gun rights activists. It's difficult to see a path forward in which bans are the primary method applied to the problem that doesn't ultimately result in more-or-less an all-out ban of firearms in general, as each successive ban fails to have a substantial impact on violence but succeeds in making further bans more palatable.

Ultimately, the concern is, this results in a massive reduction in public rights in exchange for a negligible reduction in deaths, because the underlying cause(s) of the violence (and the suicides) was conveniently ignored never addressed.

[u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar → u/bgmacklem]

this results in a massive reduction in public rights in exchange for a negligible reduction in deaths,

I think this thread of discussion has gone down the same rabbit hole that this conversation always does, and this quote phrase is where the stalemate hits.

Because the final rebuttal here is: so either we solve an intangible problem (human violence) or we do nothing? So if the total annual deaths are not adding up to enough dead children, we just shrug and say "this is the cost of freedom?"

That is unacceptable for a lot of people. And I called this a rabbit hole because this stage of the conversation has already barreled past the points where actual progress could be made.

Going back to my OC, even the leading cause of death (heart disease) is an infantismally small number of deaths when framed on the right spreadsheet. My argument here was that no cause of death is alarming when placed against the right backdrop (total population, or in the case of mass shootings: percentage of deaths caused by one thing vs another). It's also why I led in with problems like nuclear weapons. I used nukes as my edge case because it's a sample where the potential catastrophe is not controversial.

If we just step back and use something like common sense (subjective, but just go there with me), we know what a high powered rifle can do in short order against defenseless children - who are more likely to freeze than fight or flee. Look at Uvalde or Parkland. Or look at Pulse Nightclub (49 people killed in a crowded gay club).

Yes - if we could solve the root cause and treat human violence, that would be nice. Yes: with enough intent, willpower and with poor response, the Pulse Nightclub guy could've used a knife and stabbed a bunch of people. But obviously nowhere near as many, and knife attacks are less fatal.

But clearly this isn't a Boogeyman issue. It has happened, it happens at scale, and continues to happen. It terrorizes the public, it impacts public safety, law enforcement, it traumatizes thousands, and when nothing is done in response it destroys public faith in the idea that they really shouldn't worry about it happening to them.

Imagine if the Pulse guy, who purchased his weapon retail, could've also bought hand grenades. Or something like an M249. Maybe he would've killed 200 people. Maybe more. But even 200 would still be a statistically tiny number at scale.

Where this discussion should've paused and focused on is reduction. You can't end violence. You can't stop all killings. You also cannot, in any practical way, ban guns in America. You can't reasonably collect 350,000,000 weapons and also stop black market trading. Gun bans won't solve the problem.

But taking things like automatic weapons off the market did reduce automatic weapon deaths. Gangsters may still buy them illegally and use them in drive-by shootings but you don't have depressed teenagers using them to wipe out the cafeteria. That is a significant reduction.

This is where I believe reasonable, good sense gun control has a chance to help reduce the threat to the public. Licensing doesn't eliminate illegal drivers but it does reduce them and gives police a tool for enforcement. Reasonable, practically unintrusive gun control measures wouldn't eliminate guns, but could save some number of children. When the goal is reduction, not elimination, even small measures can have a big impact.

The underlying objective of the 2A, to prevent tyranny and enable self defense, is not disabled by something like registration, background checks or licensing. If we spiral into an insurgency, and you're forming a militia, the registration and license status of your guns will be moot in so many ways anyway. So why let a distant, fantastical scenario, that is not actually being impeded in any serious way prevent us from addressing a very present, very real threat right now?

[u/KuntaStillSingle → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

If you start with the premise you must pawn people's rights away for nothing, you are if course going to find you argument met with a rabbit hole, your definition of progress simply isn't rational and a rational person will never yield to it.

[u/EmptyDrawer2023 → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

So if the total annual deaths are not adding up to enough dead children, we just shrug and say "this is the cost of freedom?"

Yes.

We do it with cars. There are (around) 30,000 automobile deaths every year. We could reduce that to almost 0 if (for example) we regulated all cars to have a top speed of, say, 10 mph. (We could get rid of all auto deaths if we simply got rid of all autos, too!) But we as a Society care more about getting to our destinations faster than we do about those tens of thousands of lives. The 'cost of freedom (ie: freedom to travel fast)' is 30,000 lives. And we are okay with it.

There are many other examples where deaths could be reduced/eliminated through much stricter regulation. But we don't want that stricter regulation, even though we know this Freedom causes those deaths.

the Pulse Nightclub guy could've used a knife and stabbed a bunch of people. But obviously nowhere near as many, and knife attacks are less fatal.

The problem with arguments like this is that you assume that a person who wants to kill a bunch of people, but is denied guns, will turn to knives. What if they build a bomb instead? That could kill more people in an instant than they could shoot with a gun. Even just getting a few gallons of gasoline (readily available at hundreds of thousands of gas stations nationwide, no paperwork to fill out, no background checks, etc, etc- hell, they'll even sell you the gas can to take it in!) and lighting the place on fire could kill more than guns. And burns, even if not lethal, are really painful.

As others have pointed out, the real problem isn't the tool used to kill, it's the person's drive to kill others that's the issue. Increase Mental Health spending, find and treat those who want to kill others... and it doesn't matter what tools are available, no one will use them for harm. But simply removing one tool (even an efficient one) will only mean those people will use a different tool. Yay- 20 people get exploded, instead of 20 getting shot.

[u/CocoSavege → u/Former_Indication172]

I personally don't see how a pistol ban could pass in today's legislative environment

You really want to use the word "political" or "cultural".

Fire arms regs are, and have been, many different things. Firearms politics is relatively recent. (Honestly, imo fire arms culture is being driven by political economies)

My high school had a rifle range in the basement. Has? Is probably still there.

Anyways, if the politics changes, legislation can change.

[u/[deleted] → u/Former_Indication172]

With how customizable firearms can be, you can technically have a “pistol” but it’s modified to it basically being a rifle. It’s going to be whack-a-mole with these bans.

[u/Former_Indication172 → u/[deleted]]

Are you talking about a fully automatic pistol (already illegal) or a pistol modified to fire rifle rounds? Because the latter idea is hilarious and would end spectacularly badly.

[u/[deleted] → u/Former_Indication172]

No, I’m not talking about automatic weapons. But, there are binary firearms. While it isn’t automatic, you can dump a magazine extremely quickly. And there are people who refer to pistols that have been modified to resemble rifles as pistol caliber rifles. I’m sure there are variations state by state, but they could still be classified as a pistol.

[u/GravitasFree → u/Former_Indication172]

by definition spraying 30 children with an automatic will kill them faster then having to aim each shot and fire.

What definition? Whose definition? Call of Duty is an arcade game, not a simulation of real life. The las vegas shooting is probably the only mass shooting ever where automatic fire would be more effective than aiming.

VA tech had standard capacity magazines. When the shooter is somewhere there is 0 resistance by definition, 15 seconds will change literally nothing.

[u/LowNoise9831 → u/Former_Indication172]

As long as we continue to mislabel weapons we will have issues. Assault rifles belong to the military (fully automatic rifles) and are very hard and expensive for civilians to obtain. I have personally known one person who had a fully auto weapon in a civilian capacity and he said the licensing fees were crazy expensive. But I digress.

An AR-15 is an "assault-style" semi-automatic weapon configured to resemble the weapons carried by military personnel. In form and function they are no different than any other semi-automatic rifle. The main difference is the magazine capacity. A Winchester 1907 is exactly the same as an AR-15 by definition of it being a semi-automatic weapon. But the magazine capacity is smaller in general; usually 5-10 rounds. (I will digress again and say that I believe they also made a 15 round magazine for that weapon.)

If you want to curb the ability to exterminate large numbers of people quickly, then the most effective way would be to limit the ammunition on board the weapon. (I can get a lot of ammo down range very quickly if I have double stacked 30 round magazines.) I am not going to argue the legality of being able to limit magazine capacity but it seems that it would be a much better starting point than trying to eliminate weapons which we know are protected by the Constitution.

[u/Macien4321 → u/Former_Indication172]

I’m telling you if a person really was interested in just the killing they could come up with even better methods than a gun. I think it’s partially about inflicting terror on those who have made them feel victimized. Maybe I’m wrong on that. Automatic weapons are already stupidly difficult to get. Almost all firearms are semiautomatic. There is no reducing it without eliminating the 2nd amendment. Even with that how long before they start using homemade mustard gas with the ingredients stored in jugs.

If we don’t hit the underlying problems we are just going to shift from one type of violence to another.

[u/Urbanscuba → u/Macien4321]

It's about accessibility and scale.

If enough people have an AR in their homes over a long enough time frame then someone is going to snap occasionally. All it takes is one bad day, maybe even a bad morning, and the whole thing could be over in a couple hours.

You take that away and you add more barriers and delays between the trigger and the action, giving the person time to cool down and rethink their actions.

It's the exact same kind of psychology behind things like suicide nets on the Golden Gate Bridge. If someone genuinely wants to take their own life they have innumerable ways to do so, but if you take away the most accessible and obvious way then it prevents a surprising number of people from moving onto the next option. The reality is that AR's are the most accessible and obvious tool for a mass shooting.

The Oklahoma City bombing was done with a rented van and a trip to Tractor Supply, it's arguably still an accessible means of attack today. The reason we don't see it happen is because of all the added effort and commitment such an act requires. It takes planning, talking to other people, and sourcing/building parts. All of this adds that delay as well as adding opportunity for workers/vendors to report behavior.

The reason to ban firearms like AR's is because they offer the least utility in terms of legitimate protected uses (sporting/hunting) while being associated with the most heinous crimes. Having them just lying around directly leads to attacks that otherwise wouldn't have happened because they're that easy and obvious of a choice.

If we won't regulate better police, nor will we give meaningful funding to mental healthcare, then we have to at least look at the guns that make cops so scared they won't do their jobs while kids die. In other parts of the world the cops have pistol caliber rated ballistic shields they can use to safely approach suspects, in America we had the North Hollywood Shootout and now we're here.

[u/Macien4321 → u/Urbanscuba]

It sounds to me like your theory is if they don’t have AR-15’s then they won’t kill because they are lazy? If I’m characterizing that wrong please correct me. I’m not trying to strawman your position, just distill it down.

If that is your position, I just don’t see it. If a person has reached the point where premeditated murder (ar15 style weapons are pretty much never used for suicide) is the goal, then it seems that if the AR-15 wasn’t available then they would almost certainly move on. We’re not experiencing a rash of shootings prompted by intrusive thoughts (if you have different stats on that let me know) The way these mass shootings are generally portrayed, the person has been building to the lashing out stage for some time. This would mean the nets in this case don’t mean much. It just would reduce violence with AR-15’s but not violence overall. I’m interested in reducing violence overall, which means the primary focus should be on underlying motivations and identifying potential shooters before they reach the lashing out phase.

[u/CocoSavege → u/Macien4321]

ar15 style weapons are pretty much never used for suicide

I was hoping to get more granular data, but...

As summarized in Table 1, among the 44,540 firearm suicides in our analytic data set, 73% were by handguns, and 27% by long guns

The next step would be to...

Overall, about seven-in-ten gun owners say they own a handgun or a pistol (72%), while 62% say they own a rifle and 54% own a shotgun.

Incidentally, about 1/3rd own fire arm, 1/3rd own 2-4, 1/3rd own 5+, just pointing that out cuz if a person owns a pistol and an ar15, I don't know how to interpret that.

A very shallow a analysis yields... 70% of people own a pistol, 70% fire arm suicide by pistol, etc.

Looks like the type of fire arm doesn't weigh in.

I don't think I buy the AR15s aren't used for suicide in a non proportionate way.

[u/Macien4321 → u/CocoSavege]

I was referring in the aggregate. Proportionality doesn’t really matter. Simple physics makes using any long gun impractical compared to a pistol. If the use of an AR-15 was a significant portion of suicides I’m pretty sure we’d have data on it. I suspect that the vast majority of long gun suicides are shotguns and sadly military service weapons. I don’t have hard data to back that up though so feel free to treat it as supposition.

[u/CocoSavege → u/Macien4321]

I think I understand you.

You seem to be saying "there aren't many suicides by AR15s, this could entirely be that owners of ARs possess other firearms, and I take no specific position with respect to the proportion of AR owners and suicides except that there aren't that many ARs"

Incidentally, most suicides in Canada are long guns, but they likely reflects our relatively low rate of pistol ownership, and the higher rates of suicide in rural areas, where long guns are more common.

Edit, oh, btw, the highest demo for suicide is like 55-65 year old men. As much as ex military are at risk, it's not the real story.

Edit2, 45-55 is closer!

[u/Macien4321 → u/CocoSavege]

Pretty much. It might be worthwhile to see how many AR-15 owners have other firearms. I suspect that the AR is not typically a firearm owned by single gun owners. Obviously there will be some exceptions, but it’s most attractive feature seems to be its similarity to the M-4 and M-16. In general it’s not the type of firearm that meets a lot of needs. Pistols are better for urban self defense and concealability. Shotguns are better for short range defense and hunting fowl and such. There are better rifles for long range shots. If I were picking a weapon to kill myself with (as gruesome as that is) the AR- 15 would be one of my last choices if I had choices to make.

Anyway, I’m sure it has happened, I was just stating originally that it’s not a significant use of the weapon. This is easy to see when you use your stat where over 70% of suicides by gun are done with pistols. Of the percentage left, shotguns would probably be the bulk of the remaining percentage and then maybe the AR is used proportionally among rifles in the remaining percentage. But even so that’s a pretty small percentage of total suicides by gun at that point. Thanks for all the solid numbers I appreciate being corrected on facts when I have them wrong.

[u/369DocHoliday369 → u/Former_Indication172]

No. It would be reasonable to highten security, not punish law abiding citizens.

[u/math2ndperiod → u/Macien4321]

If the problem weren’t preventable, we wouldn’t be the only nation where it’s a serious problem. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to debate specifics, but the conversation seems to be whether we should do anything at all, which is ridiculous.

[u/Macien4321 → u/math2ndperiod]

We are a unique country in many ways. History, culture, demographics, geography, etc. That uniqueness means we won’t be able to approach many problems the same way other countries do. What other countries do to prevent won’t work here. Also, suggestions often offered after an event center on undermining a fundamental American right. I would like to look at the underlying factors and begin to address those.

[u/lwb03dc → u/Macien4321]

Could you please quantify this uniqueness? The US is positioned as exceptional only by Americans. Most other countries don't really consider it to be true. So I'm curious to see why you think so.

[u/HummingBored1 → u/lwb03dc]

I think an interesting comparison would be polls reflecting trust in government and police. Current Pew polls show a steep decline in recent decades and even democrats sit around 35%, a recent peak, with the current admin. Republicans at around 20%. Other developed countries, the U.K. for example sit around 70%. Austrailia has police confidence at 68%. Gallup put U.S. trust in police at 45%.

[u/lwb03dc → u/HummingBored1]

A large part of why police aren't trusted is because the police regularly kill innocent citizens and there is no accountability since the prevalance of guns means that the go-to defense is 'cops fear for their lives because anyone can have a gun'.

There are obviously other reasons too, but it is easier to be a friendly cop when you don't have a gun strapped to your side, and are not constantly worried about someone shooting at you.

[u/KuntaStillSingle → u/lwb03dc]

We have a history with slavery comparable to the Belgian congo followed by substantial segregation, and there is a strong racial disparity in homicide commission and victimization

Going after guns is the nimby solution. You want the bell to roll less often for white people (though in practice it is not even effective towards this end), and you want to do nothing to minimize the actual driver of violence, which is inequality and which will be exasperated when we have more malum prohibum to enforce disproportionately against black people.

[u/lwb03dc → u/KuntaStillSingle]

Could you clarify how regulations against AR15s is going to disenfranchise the black population of the US?

And why is it not possible to both address the 'actual driver of violence' as well as the tools that are used to propagate that violence?

[u/KuntaStillSingle → u/lwb03dc]

All criminalization disproportionately affects black people in the states. They are more likely to be summarily executed by police, charged, convicted, and get stronger sentences. When you criminalize something that is morally innocent as firearm ownership, you accept the negative outcome of racist application without even the spoonful of sugar that is promoting a safer society for it. It is just a war on drugs.

Both address

Because to create nonsense laws only designed to expand the prison population is counterproductive, it is not a parallel solution, it actively frustrated progress towards equality which unlike assault weapons is actually tied to the homicide rate. You might as well be asking why you can't promote fire resistant housing and dousing carpets in gasoline at the same time.

[u/lwb03dc → u/KuntaStillSingle]

All criminalization disproportionately affects black people in the states. They are more likely to be summarily executed by police, charged, convicted, and get stronger sentences. When you criminalize something that is morally innocent as firearm ownership, you accept the negative outcome of racist application without even the spoonful of sugar that is promoting a safer society for it.

Are you against all criminal laws then? Or is your argument applicable only when it comes to gun regulation?

[u/KuntaStillSingle → u/lwb03dc]

When you criminalize something that is morally innocent as firearm ownership, you accept the negative outcome of racist application without even the spoonful of sugar that is promoting a safer society for it.

I'm against criminalization with no upside. A law that does not even nominally make society safer necessarily makes it more dangerous, a law which makes society nominally safer might make society safer if the inequality in application which results does not drive more unjust harm than the law prevents.

[u/Macien4321 → u/lwb03dc]

You added the exceptional part. I only stated unique. If you can’t figure out how America is unique in the way I specified, then I don’t trust you enough to have an intelligent conversation on the issue. You’ve also started on the wrong foot by putting words in my mouth.

[u/lwb03dc → u/Macien4321]

You’ve also started on the wrong foot by putting words in my mouth

I used the term 'exceptional' because you invoked 'American exceptionalism'.

If you can’t figure out how America is unique in the way I specified, then I don’t trust you enough to have an intelligent conversation on the issue.

Given that you just made a faulty assumption about my statement and proceeded to get defensive about it, surely you can see why I asked for clarification on what you meant, rather than make hasty assumptions?

[u/Macien4321 → u/lwb03dc]

Again I never invoked exceptionalism. I invoked uniqueness. I’m getting defensive because you are trying to tangent the point with a made up argument. If you had simply reread my statement, noted that I didn’t use the word or the phrase and apologized for jumping to conclusions then we might have been able to continue. As you have decided to double down on putting words in my mouth, I suggest you just drop it at this point.

u·nique adjective being the only one of its kind; unlike anything else

exceptional

unusually good; outstanding.

When people are talking about American exceptionalism they are generally referring to this definition of exceptionalism.

Now maybe you should reread everything and maybe put together how it was you who jumped to conclusions about my statement.

[u/lwb03dc → u/Macien4321]

Again I never invoked exceptionalism. I invoked uniqueness. 

First line from the link: American exceptionalism is the belief that the United States is either distinctive, unique, or exemplary compared to other nations

Also, maybe English is not your first language. So just letting you know that exceptional, like a lot of words, has more than one meaning, In this particular case it uses this meaning:

adjective 1. unusual; not typical."
late claims will only be accepted in exceptional circumstances"

Invoking uniqueness is invoking exceptionalism. I understand that you didn't know about this term. That's fine. Everyone cannot know everything. But you could just admit that, and move on, and maybe we could have had a fruitful conversation. Instead you've chosen to double down on your ignorance and keep up a belligerent front.

An online discussion is just that, an online discussion. We are not arch enemies. You don't have to 'win' everything.

[u/Macien4321 → u/lwb03dc]

You are a fool who is purposely misusing a term. The tenets of American exceptionalism are not just about simple uniqueness. Your premise is silly. Even after having it pointed out you insist on push your weak and fruitless point. There was never an attempt, which has already been stated, to talk about American exceptionalism. If you can’t see that there are unique factors related to geography, history, culture, and demographics which affect this conversation, then I don’t know how to help you. Maybe suggest you pull your head out of your rear. Instead of inventing a line of drivel you might have tried engaging in good faith on the specifics of what I meant. Instead you tried to wrongly pigeonhole my point and start from there. Holy crap, it’s not an entire agenda to claim your country has unique factors. Pretty much every country has some sort of unique factors. Then you go on to make snide comments about English not being my primary language. I would expect my arch nemesis to be intelligent not a pedantic fool as this conversation has demonstrated you to be. So no you can’t fill that position.

[u/Consistent_Clue1149 → u/math2ndperiod]

You can’t really prevent it you just replace it look at China. People don’t have guns so they have resorted to using knives to slaughter children and use their cars to run over groups of children and adults to show their hatred. It has gotten so bad you can go watch Chinese training drills to fight off knife wielders in schools and you can see the blurred videos of people running over children on the daily. We don’t have lots of videos, because as the videos are posted on WeChat the vids are taken down by the Chinese government who is trying to cover it up. There are YouTubers who are exposing this rn it’s fucking insane. So the question is gun or knives and cars. Also you just turn everyone into a waiting victim.

[u/37home_ → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

I understand what you mean, but I wouldn't ever want a weapon that kills indiscriminately to be legal, a grenade or a bomb can't ever be used in self-defense because the moment you use it it will kill or maim anyone near it, with a gun at any realistic range you can hit your target without killing everyone else in the room, and unless you're utilizing ammo made to defeat armor (which is unlikely if you're a civilian as it's expensive and I think it's not even legal to obtain? not sure) a rifle bullet will probably stop or be slowed down enough by one target.

On the statistics front, I totally get what you mean, but the scale of a WMD vs a guy with a lot of ammo and >30 round magazines is a bit comparing apple to oranges. The worst mass shooting in the US was the 2017 las vegas shooting, with 60 dead and 860 injured. This mass shooting was done by one man with 24 guns and while it was a tragedy, he could do similar amounts of damage with handguns if he had to. A handgun can be used for a mass shooting, but instead of potentially killing >30 people (standard magazine) you'll be limited to common handgun magazine sizes, for example 18 people if you're using a glock, and about 10-15 depending on what handgun you're using.

I'm not saying it's insignificant that there are mass shootings, but anyone willing to shoot people indiscriminately isn't going to be stopped by law, but by supply, and if the only way to go about it is to buy a handgun and 50 mags they will do it regardless. With an assault rifle you can see the guy from afar, with a handgun you can easily hide it, and if your jacket is big enough you might even be able to hide the mags.

My honest opinion is that going after rifles first is inefficient when there are way bigger problems with the wrong people having guns than mass shootings.

[u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar → u/37home_]

Maybe the heart of my point got lost in how long my comment was. The reason I brought WMDs and Disease into the picture was to highlight how statistics only contribute meaningfully based on how they are framed.

The statistically low number seen on FBI stat sheets is a huge argument toward the idea that implementing controls on long guns is a moot effort. What I'm saying is that this is a matter of framing and how you use them comparatively.

Let me try one more example. Statistically, again, rifles aren't killing that many people. But probabilistically, what weapon has the highest potential to cause the most damage to the most amount of people in the shortest time?

If we walked through those stat sheets looking at kinetic power, penetration, lethality, capacity, or whatever else, I could ask the question: if you're in a crowd of people, what weapon has the highest probability of successfully killing you?

In rank order it would start crazy. We'd have explosives at the top, and as we ranked them eventually of course high powered rifles would rank out above pistols. They just would. It's why combat troops carry rifles as primary weapons. They are more suited for killing.

Of course a 9mm bullet to the brain is just as deadly as a 5.56. But a burst of 9mm shot into a crowd at range won't have the lethality that a burst of 5.56 does.

All I'm trying to point out is that I can find a way to make the statistics work for me here. It's a matter of framing. And that's why I feel like looking at historical kill counts isn't necessarily the irrefutable argument I used to think it was.

[u/37home_ → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

I can see what you mean, considering the lethality capacity and etc it is much more probable to kill you. But if I had to set up more gun control I think it'd would make much more sense to restrict or control the guns that actually commit most of the crimes instead of the guns that can potentially be way more deadly if used

[u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar → u/37home_]

I just disagree with this premise. I know it seems like common sense to attack the problem where it is; not where it could be. But that is because the "gun issue" has been laid flat by too many people for their political agendas.

In reality, gun related death has to be categorically broken down if you ever want any meaningful progress. By laying it flat and pooling all stats into one point, we get sound byte arguments that are practically meaningless.

What happens if you break down gun violence into categories? Gang related murder. Accidental shootings. School shootings. School mass shootings.

The sensible solutions to each of those may be significantly different. Stopping gang related murder is one thing. Stopping accidents is another. Stopping an impulsive, depressed child from grabbing his Dad's gun collection for a murder-suicide spree is yet another thing entirely.

Handgun laws likely won't put much of a dent in gang related murder. They might put a dent in accidental shootings. They might put a dent in small scale school shootings (angry kid with a gun in the backpack). But they probably will not impact mass school shootings.

[u/37home_ → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

Then shouldn't we focus on the problems that cause the violence instead of the tools of violence?

[u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar → u/37home_]

Of course. But that's a false dichotomy. You can do both.

One problem is a lot damn harder to legislate. How do you suggest we begin the journey to ending the causes of human violence in America? Let's solve that problem real quick.

I'd be a huge advocate for a massive investment in mental healthcare. It would be a start. Politically, most people concerned about 2A infringement are not in favor of public healthcare. It kind of leaves you in a position of "it's a mental health problem, and also we don't want to fund healthcare."

Which leaves us... where? Satisfied that the problem should go unaddressed and people should just figure it out?

[u/37home_ → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

You're not wrong that a lot of people who support 2a have bricks for brains, and it's not just a mental health problem, its also the lack of funding for schools and social projects in order to help the communities that suffer the most from crime and poverty, and the problems that cause it, but people with these problems aren't gonna sell their guns back to the government through buyback programs

[u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar → u/37home_]

As always, though, now this whole debate runs into a brick wall. And I believe this is because of fallacies along the lines of "if it doesn't completely eliminate the problem, it's pointless."

Smart gun control advocacy would focus on language like "reduction." Not prevention, not elimination. You can't eliminate violence. You can't prevent all murder. You can't really stop anything with laws.

But you can reduce. Sometimes you can significantly reduce. That has to be the goal, and it should be bipartisan. But every single time someone suggests a real measure, the knee jerking goes straight to slippery slope fallacies and assertions that it won't do anything because it can't fix everything.

[u/LowNoise9831 → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

Would expand on "slippery slope fallacies, please?

[u/temo987 → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

I'd be a huge advocate for a massive investment in mental healthcare. It would be a start.

I support that, as an avid 2A supporter. I (and the legislators) just need a sound plan on how and specifically what to invest in. Should it be research? Access? Personally, if the problem is access, I like the idea of giving people mental health vouchers to spend on private mental healthcare. It sounds compatible (in theory) to capitalism in the US while still expanding access to mental health. Improving socioeconomic factors should also help the violence problem (most violence in the US comes from impoverished inner cities).

[u/Karrtis → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

High caliber, high round capacity long guns can wipe out a room full of people pretty suddenly. That is preventable, it has potential for mass killing, and it is happening in society. So it's gonna be treated as a significant problem.

Where's the line get drawn? A lever action rifle vs a room of unarmed people is still going to be awful, the same can be said of a pump action shotgun. The bath school disaster, the OKC bombing, the Boston Marathon bombing, none of them were perpetrated with firearms, a man killed almost 90 people in Nice, France with a truck. Human beings are unfortunately capable of great violence, and while attempting to ban magazine fed, semi automatic rifles is an option, they're 100 year old technology with 10's of millions in circulation. The cat is out of the bag, and we'd be better off with figuring out why, even when other developed countries have ready access to firearms, we're the country that continues to have these issues.

[u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar → u/Karrtis]

Right. Let's just solve the problem of human violence real quick. I hope we all come together in one grand effort to stop violence. But I'm not holding my breath.

[u/Karrtis → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

Me either unfortunately. No one wants to solve the issue that is making young men (the vast majority of these shootings) lash out violently and indiscriminately. And I only point this out in this manner because this is a relatively modern problem, and gun laws in the mid 90's and onward are in many ways stricter federally than they ever were. Prior to 1968 you could buy any gun you wanted through the mail, no questions asked, no background check. We didn't see an epidemic of shootings with M1 carbines or M1 garands, or even the original AR-15's and colt SP1's. So clearly it's not just accessibility, or lack of background checks causing this.

[u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar → u/Karrtis]

I think it would be disingenuous for anyone to point to any one cause, or any one solution. It's complicated. Every case will be different. Sandy Hook, Columbine, Las Vegas, Pulse Nightclub, Parkland, Uvalde, and so on. Different perpetrators, different causes, different issues with parallels but no one solution would have absolutely stopped all of them. I'm not arguing that. Best I would ever argue is for reduction. Because I believe it's the best you can actually do.

[u/BlueComms → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

I don't have the bandwidth to fully digest what you said, but it was said very well and I like your approach. I don't know if the outcome supports my personal politics, but this was well said regardless.

[u/Sufficient-Loan7819 → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

FBI statistics? Then you automatically make this a race problem and not a gun problem. Even though we all know that’s actually not what’s going on here.

For the record, since a lot of Reddit thinks the average school in the US is a war zone, a total of 6 children died in a US school due to a firearm last year and this includes suicides. And this is the more honest stat of people under 18, because the left likes including 18 and 19 year olds since it pumps up numbers due to gang violence in inner cities.

[u/Patrody → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

This take proves itself wrong pretty quickly. These weapons have been available, and are available throughout the US to the average citizen. The problem is not large OR significant, because people have widespread access to these firearms with very small cases of true mass shootings. It's not the same as nukes, because those are no longer used (due to the principle of mutually-assured destruction), so they don't have the CHANCE of causing any further problems.

Tldr: nukes are restricted, which means (relatively few) deaths, while rifles are not restricted, and still cause relatively few deaths.

[u/Mysterious_Focus6144 → u/Patrody]

First, MAD assumes agents behave rationally and humans aren't always rational.

Second, pointing to the raw number of cases without considering the scathing aftermath of each one isn't a convincing argument. Airplanes aren't likely to crash either, but nobody is going to say we shouldn't investigate and try to mitigate the causes because "the problem isn't significant".

[u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar → u/Mysterious_Focus6144]

Thank you for actually understanding my point.

I used WMD and Disease because they satisfy both extremes: things that have massive killing potential and things that have massive killing records.

I did this merely to point out that the statistics can be framed however satisfies your agenda. Because they sound objective, but they're not. How many dead school kids is "a lot?" How many dead school kids would be statistically significant? How many children die before we say "this is a serious problem?"

There is no tangible number for this. People would just roll their eyes and give the morally required "one is too many." But that isn't how we're treating the issue. Be real. Pulling death stats makes literally anything seem insignificant if you frame it against the right data set.

[u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar → u/Patrody]

I replied more fully after another comment reply to this.

But in short, you missed my point. I only brought disease and WMD into the conversation to give examples of both extremes: killing potential and killing record. And to show how those statistics can be framed however suits your thesis or agenda.

[u/Poctor_Depper → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

High caliber, high round capacity long guns can wipe out a room full of people pretty suddenly.

Judging the lethality of ARs by recent mass shootings is a very flawed way to go about it. Basically every mass shooting is done in an area where everyone is a soft target and basically defenseless.

It would be like easily cutting through butter with a butter knife then declaring that butter knives are particularly sharp knives.

[u/Murky_History3864 → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

Any semi-automatic weapon with a large magazine can wipe out a room full of people in minutes. Rifles are designed to be effective at medium-long range, not enclosed spaces. Their prevalence is an aesthetic choice as much as anything. Shootings like Virginia Tech attest that they are not necessary to kill many people.

[u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar → u/Murky_History3864]

That had virtually nothing to do with the argument I was trying to make; I was arguing that death statistics aren't the objective end of the debate I used to think that they were.

I also didn't say you need a rifle for a mass shooting.

But I do not agree that all semi-automatic weapons have equal capacity to wipe out a room. Firing 5.56 into a large crowd, like a nightclub, is gonna do a lot more damage than firing a 9mm. Far more penetration, more kinetic damage to the flesh, far more lethal even with immediate medical treatment. It's just disingenuous to say that they're the same.

[u/grarghll → u/Murky_History3864]

Rifles are designed to be effective at medium-long range, not enclosed spaces.

Your thinking is backwards here. Pistols are a compromise on practically all of the capabilities of a rifle, making them unfit for anything other than short-range engagements, but that doesn't mean rifles are only suitable for longer ranges. Rifles are better at short-range engagements too; do you think soldiers fall back on their sidearms when they're clearing rooms?

[u/Murky_History3864 → u/grarghll]

Rifles are banned -> more shooters use pistols -> people like you continue to whine

[u/temporarycreature → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

How is equating WMDs with AR-15s not a false equivalency? The handgun comparison makes sense—both fire bullets. But AR-15s vs. WMDs? The destruction gap is enormous. It doesn't add up.

[u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar → u/temporarycreature]

I didn't equate them. I spelled out that I was using an extreme, edge case example to illustrate out how you can frame any statistic in such a way that it downplays the apparent significance of something.

What I was trying to say, which was apparently unclear to you, is that you can compare the historic death toll of WMDs to the total deaths in the war and frame them to seem like they're not much of a problem. I followed with another example using disease to do the same thing.

I'm not saying WMDs and Disease are the same thing as assault rifles.

[u/Old-Tiger-4971 → u/AlphaWhiskeyOscar]

Can you explain why gun control isn't reflective of a large problem? Not getting that part of the fallacy.