Why does the US have much more gun violence than Europe, etc.?

[kerry-is-my-prez]

The reason - we have tons of guns floating around in this country. I looked it up and only about 15% of the guns used in violence are stolen. Most of the guns were purchased from the same old gun dealers and pawn shops over and over again. I'm sure the NRA fights for the "rights" of all of these dealers.

Many times the gun user was able to purchase the gun himself or was with a friend or acquaintance who purchased it and then handed it over to the user. About 85% of the guns originated in the U.S.

For the people who say: "If they let more people/students carry guns it would help" that just mean there will be MORE people who might use guns after becoming suicidal/homicidal or MORE people who might be able to grab it out of someone's hands or steal it from their homes.

In addition, there would be a big increase in people getting in fights with others and using a gun to "settle" a fight.

Also, most people panic in an emergency. This would lead to panicy people shooting the wrong person, etc.

[BlooInBloo]

1. We have more guns. Duh.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

4. THAT was my point - if you bothered to read the whole post...

[BlooInBloo]

8. Well then you had an excellent, if wordy, point.

[maggiegault]

13. Wordy? It was less than half a page.

And saying "Duh" to someone who is making a salient point only makes YOU look like an asshole.

[BlooInBloo]

17. I didn't say his point wasn't salient - that's just you making shit up.

[maggiegault]

68. Uh huh. If you say so.

[devilgrrl]

2. Because we live in society consumed with fear!

Fear fear fear fear fear fear


:scared::scared::scared::scared::scared::scared::scared::scared:


Bugga bugga bugga!!!!!


:scared::scared::scared::scared::scared::scared::scared::scared:

[davepc]

3. Michale Moore made a whole move about the subject

I think his conclusion was a little more complex then "we have more guns"

There's a lot of factors that figure into it.

[SteppingRazor]

5. There are other nations that, per capita, have way more guns than we do...

and yet have less gun violence. So, that theory doesn't hold water by itself. There have to be other factors.

[ptolle]

24. names please

Your argument would have been more effective if you could have named those nations. I'm not disagreeing with your statement, just saying you could have supported it better.I've got to believe that part of the equation is our society's belief that a death solves something it's part and parcel of the fact that we have and use the death penalty more than any other so-called civilized country and that the chimperor's first reaction, at least according to the pr statement released, was to reassure the NRA that there would be no stampede towards gun control and likely no debate about the subject.It's also evident in the wingnutter's first reaction that more guns(if only the students, professors, or whomever had been armed this never would have happened).

[pitohui]

6. if you saw "bowling for columbine," the answer was "no one really knows"

europe has more gun control but compare apples to apples, there is high gun ownership in canada but per capita shootings are much, much lower

moore offers a million different theories in the movie but in the end the answer seems to be "no one knows"

[SteppingRazor]

9. Well, he seems to lend more credence to the "violence in media" theory than any other one...

and by media, meaning the nightly news. not music, entertainment, etc.

[pitohui]

27. he does but not very strongly

you are left w. a strong sense that it is really a puzzle

remember the scene where he and the other dude just look at each other and say "why is it? why is it? so why is it?" for like five minutes?

[SteppingRazor]

70. Sure, but also recall the scene...

wherein all the Candians are describing the difference between local news in their country and local news in ours.

I definitely agree he doesn't strongly support it. But it is the only answer to he "Why?" question that he doesn't refute in the movie.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

11. Because the NRA doesn't want anyone knowing it I suspect....

n/t

[smirkymonkey]

61. Maybe we have more mental illness and poor impulse control.

:shrug:

[Colobo]

7. Latin America has as many guns as the US

or even more (not regulated), and these kinds of things are unheard of. Puerto Rico is one of the most violent countries on the planet, and that has never happened in our history. Ever.

People down there Americans are a bit crazy, and these events only reinforce the stereotype.

[SoCalDem]

10. Guns + troubled people = innocent people dead

Unless you are in the lah-dee-dah elite (and even there, sometimes) people are more stressed than ever before. Losing a job can send people into a homicidal rage, losing a girlfriend can do it. Even an odd "look" can set some people off..

Add guns to the mix, and there you go.

[Colobo]

15. Americans are a troubled bunch

Again, these shootings are not common in other parts of the world. They are unheard of in many places in which your average joe has more guns in his house than your average police department.

[renie408]

12. What you said. And...Americans ain't quite right.

Seriously. Didn't I hear in Bowling for Columbine that Canada has more guns more capita than the US, but much MUCH less gun crime? There is something about America that makes people want to shoot each other. I am not kidding. How much road rage do they have in other places? How much just plain old rage RAGE do they have in other places?

We seem like an angry, crazy country to me sometimes.

[maggiegault]

14. I Agree. It's not just that we have more guns, WE HAVE MORE MORONS

[Arugula Latte]

50. We're Number One in Violent Morons!

:patriot: U-S-A! U-S-A!








x(

[bdamomma]

48. some people like to use weapons than to talk a problem out

people have a very low threshold for keeping themselves under control in times of stress. All the more reason it should harder for people to get guns. Terrible there is no more passion/respect for life anymore.

[jody]

16. We have more criminals. Guns don't cause crime and guns are used over 2 million times a year by

law-abiding citizens to prevent crime.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

20. That was taken from a study that was termed by many as inaccurate and non-scientific.

http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Hemenway1.htm

[jody]

26. And by others as accurate. No study has been published to refute the 2 M stat, just opinions by

gun-grabbers.

[brentspeak]

23. Where are you getting your "guns are used over 2 million times/yr to prevent crimes" assertion?

[jody]

32. Source below.

How Often Are Firearms Used in Self-Defense?

There are approximately two million defensive gun uses (DGU's) per year by law abiding citizens. That was one of the findings in a national survey conducted by Gary Kleck, a Florida State University criminologist in 1993. Prior to Dr. Kleck's survey, thirteen other surveys indicated a range of between 800,000 to 2.5 million DGU's annually. However these surveys each had their flaws which prompted Dr. Kleck to conduct his own study specifically tailored to estimate the number of DGU's annually.

Subsequent to Kleck's study, the Department of Justice sponsored a survey in 1994 titled, Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms (text, PDF). Using a smaller sample size than Kleck's, this survey estimated 1.5 million DGU's annually.

There is one study, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which in 1993, estimated 108,000 DGU's annually. Why the huge discrepancy between this survey and fourteen others?

[renie408]

45. Don't you think the answer might lie closer to 'less crime' than to 'more guns'?n/t

[jody]

54. I don't understand your post, please explain. n/t

[renie408]

59. It is end-based thinking to work on the theory

that 'if everybody had guns, we could shoot the people who want to commit crimes.' I agree with you. The problem is that we have more people who feel compelled to commit crime. I honestly don't know how you go about getting ahead of crime, but getting AHEAD of it is what we need to do.

God, as much as I hate to say this, the right wing nut lady on MSNBC is making a lot of sense. We have to do a better job of producing healthy people in this country. We need to change the way we cover these kinds of events. We need to stop glorifying violence. Do you know that the people around here get more freaked out about their kids seeing a naked person in a movie than seeing some freak hack the stars into little pieces...graphically? And god forbid you use the word 'scrotum' in a kids book!! We have to change that. We have demonized any frank and healthy discussion of sex and pretend that abstinence works, but we don't care a bit about how much violence our kids are exposed to.

I am just a housewife from the southeast. I don't know how to do this, but I bet somebody smarter than me does. I KNOW I can't get your gun away from you. I am at least smart enough to recognize that is a non-starter. But even you have to agree that it would be better if people didn't feel the NEED to own guns. We need to stop putting our finger in the dike and start fixing the leaks.

[jody]

63. I understand. The causes of crime are complex including population density and income disparity.

Crime statistics show that crime goes up from rural areas to densely populated areas like New York City.

You're just a housewife from the southeast and I'm just a poor old country boy but I know that I am the only one responsible for protecting me and mine. For that I need effective, efficient tools for the job and handguns are the choice of law enforcement officers and criminals, neither of which have a natural, inherent, inalienable right to defend self and property.

[DaveJ]

47. People are led to believe crime pays in this society

At very least, whoever comes closest to committing a crime without crossing that line makes the most $$$. We aren't a culture that believes hard work and good intentions pay off.

[jody]

56. Crime does pay, the people who twice burglarized my home will never be caught for those crimes and

many/most white collar criminals including people like Ken Lay will also never be caught.

Perhaps the biggest criminal of all sits in the Oval Office and will never pay for his crimes against humanity.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

51. Not true.

The actual statistic is "there are over 2 million times a year when people claim that they used a gun to prevent crime".

That's a completely different, and largely worthless, claim.

[jody]

57. Please provide a source for your opinion. n/t

[Warpy]

18. We are a violent culture, period

and would be just as violent with knives, broadswords, bows and arrow, slingshots, or rocks lashed to handles.

That's one thing Moore touched on in "Bowling for Columbine."

Other cultures are just as gun soaked as we are, especially in the Middle East and South America, but they don't have nearly the level of mayhem that we do.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

19. We have more macho jerks, a culture that at its worst

doesn't allow men to express any strong emotion other than anger, and media that glorify the mean and dumb.

[Colobo]

25. Machismo is way more prevalent in Latin America and these crazy events basically don't happen

There has to be another reason...

[brentspeak]

Mass murder shootings aren't normal in Latin America, but garden-variety murders are

Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico all have high murder rates. And what goes on in Brazil's inner cities is unbelievable.

[Colobo]

33. Yes, but mostly caused by drug trafficking and poverty

Two different kinds of violence. Puerto Rico is the world 3rd most violent nation, and we have never had a school shooting. Ever.

Why is that?

[brentspeak]

36. I don't know. Why all the violence in Puerto Rico?

I'm surprised to hear about that. Wasn't Puerto Rico rapidly gaining ground economically?

[Colobo]

37. Drug trafficking.

It has taken control of the poor and lower middle class citizens. Puerto Rico loses around 800 young men, from ages 18-30 every single year, steady, since 1983 or so, and the population down there is about 4 million people, so you can imagine.

[warren pease]

39. Yup. The male gender role...

I think that's a huge contributor, Lydia. The fact that the only legitimate emotions ascribed to men are all derivations of aggression, violence, competitiveness, hatred, anger and so forth. Getting in touch with your inner estrogen isn't real high on the list of permitted male attributes.

We're really just a bunch of barroom drunks, with violence as a first response. We're taught competitiveness since grade school, and we fight for everything -- a place in the best kindergarten, the best prep school, the best university, the best grad school. Then we fight for a place in line, a square yard of asphalt, a job, a raise, a promotion. We even fight over the grave site with the best view, as crazy as that sounds.

Everything's a zero-sum game in America. I win, you lose, and tough shit for you. And the denser the population, the more friction, the more competition, the more free-floating rage, and the more people going insane and blowing people away.

The second amendment doesn't help the situation, but I think blaming it exclusively is too simplistic. As others have pointed out, many countries have as many or more guns per capita. They just don't typically use them to murder large numbers of people in a random explosion of rage madness.


wp

[Colobo]

21. We are a nation of war,

of school shootings, of teenagers killing bums for fun, of crazy workers who shoot their co-workers because some stupid shit...

We are the nation of brute force, of senseless dominance. We own, we control, we destroy...

It's frustrating...

[Bicoastal]

22. I imagine a campus full of students packing heat...

...in an instance like this, how would anybody know who the shooter was? Many of them would end up shooting their fellow students, believing them to be the perpators, and it would just create a chain reaction. Then, the police and security would get involved, and with a campus full of would-be vigilantes, it's highly likely they'd make a mistake as well.

The bigger question, of course, is how such an unstable person was able to get their hands on a firearm in the first place.

[KG]

28. we live in an adolescent society, led by children, peopled with infants.

this country has some growing up to do.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

29. guns and the media.

[IChing]

30. For statisics as compared to other countries

This is a good link from a Canadian international study.

http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/international.html

[uppityperson]

31. More people in a huge country?

[kerry-is-my-prez]

35. This is statistically - not just by number/volume.

n/t

[provis99]

34. prevalence of handguns

I think the reason that Canadian and US murder rates are so drastically different is the easy availability of handguns in the US. If you take away handgun killings, the murder rates are identical. When I was in the US, I got a concealed weapon permit, not to actually carry a handgun, but just to see how easy it was for a foreigner to get one. In Indiana, I was cleared to carry a concealed handgun in 30 minutes, and could carry on campus, in a school, a church, a bar, essentially everywhere but a law court or a military base. Scary, isn't it?

[patrice]

53. And, we're busy propagating concealed carry as we speak. n/t

[slackmaster]

38. Probably the same reason we have more knife violence and bare-fisted violence

:nuke:

[depakid]

40. The Australian example- their response to a mass killing WORKED

The chances of gun death in Australia dropped twice as steeply after 700,000 guns were destroyed in a national firearm ‘buyback’ and amnesty, reveals a decade long study in Injury Prevention.
The study tracks the 10 years following the introduction of gun law reform in Australia between 1996 and 1998.

The legislation was prompted by a firearm massacre in Tasmania in 1996, when 35 people were killed and a further 18 seriously wounded.

The reforms banned the use of semi automatic and pump action shotguns and rifles, destroying more than 700,000 weapons taken from a population of 12 million adults.The study shows that in the 18 years before the legislation was passed, there were 13 mass shootings in Australia, in which 112 people died and 52 were wounded.

There have been no mass shootings since the law came into force.

The fall in the number of deaths associated with the use of firearms, including suicides, rapidly accelerated after the law took effect. The decline was at least twice as high (6%) as it had been before the reforms were introduced.

More: http://www.physorg.com/news85298565.html

[slackmaster]

43. But the Australian homicide rate has been pretty constant over decades

I've seen all that before, depakid. If fewer people are being shot to death but more are being stabbed or beaten to death, how can anyone say that it "worked"?

http://aic.gov.au/publications/tandi2/tandi261.pdf

Not to mention the fact that an Australian style gun ban is politically a non-starter in the USA.

[depakid]

55. Looking at things through distorted American lenses

First of all, the prevalence of guns- and gun violence was always relatively low in Australia- so taking simply looking at the overall equation with guns removed wouldn't be expected to make much of a difference.

Second of all, there's no data showing that people committing crimes of violence by other means would have preferred to use a gun.

I was there for 3 months- prior to the incident in Port Arthur, and two things struck me- you rarely heard of people being shot, but you did hear weird stories like people robbing convenience stores with things like samarai sword. I shit you not.

That's one of the many reasons I fell in love with the place and hopefully will be living there soon.

What the data does show however, is that gun violence is way down, and there hasn't been one single mass shooting since the laws went into effect. No guns- no mass killings (I guess someone could always make a bomb- but to my knowledge, that doesn't happened there, either).

Unfortunately, I agree with you. As any Brit or Ozzie would note: Americans have irrational and dysfunctional attitudes about firearms. It's ingrained into the cultural psyche. Contrast that with what happened after the Tasmanian mass shooting. There wasn't any hue and cry to reinstate the death penalty- but there were huge rallies in support of responsible gun control.

America on the other hand has condemned itself to repeated incidents and a far higher prevalence of gun violence than any other Western country. America has also condemned itself to the largest penal system in the world- as well as the world's highest per capital incarceration rate AND has more people in prison (raw numbers) than any other country.

Not something to be proud of- yet I don't see any light at the end of that tunnel. Not a glimmer.

[slackmaster]

58. Gun violence is "way down", but you are just as likely as ever to be assaulted or murdered

Makes sense to me.

:eyes:

[depakid]

65. First of all, the rates did drop slightly- but more to the point

THERE WASN'T MUCH GUN VIOLENCE TO BEGIN WITH so you'd hardly expect to see a large overall impact in the stats, other than in firearm related violence.

One thing that really bugs me (and isn't directed at you per se- so don't take offense) is that the vast majority of Americans think that everyone else around the world thinks and acts or should think and act like they do. They believe that conditions abroad are similar to (or worse) than their "greatest country in the world."

They are not. People in other Western countries typically have it MUCH better than Americans do in many ways. Healthcare, education costs, hours worked per week, vacation and family leave- you name it.

Gun violence (and violent crime in general) as well as incarceration rates are only one of many things that have become (and will almost surely remain) dysfunctional in American society.

[El Supremo]

41. An infantile preoccupation with bosoms

J. Algernon Hawthorne:

Why this whole bloody place is the most unspeakable matriarchy in the whole history of civilization! Look at yourself! The way your wife and her strumpet of a mother push you through the hoop! As far as I can see, American men have been totally emasculated- they're like slaves! They die like flies from coronary thrombosis while their women sit under hairdryers eating chocolates & arranging for every 2nd Tuesday to be some sort of Mother's Day! And this infantile preoccupation with bosoms. In all time in this Godforsaken country, the one thing that has appalled me most of all this this preposterous preoccupation with bosoms. Don't you realize they have become the dominant theme in American culture: in literature, advertising and all fields of entertainment and everything. I'll wager you anything you like that if American women stopped wearing brassieres, your whole national economy would collapse overnight.

:crazy:

[KG]

62. i'm a leg man myself.

maybe that's why don't share in this countrys gun fetish! :hi:

[kerry-is-my-prez]

42. We have a lot more juveniles in the US who kill or are killed.

http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org/pubs/gun_violence/sect01.html

The firearm homicide rate for children under 15 years of age is 16 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined. Among those ages 15 to 24, the U.S. firearm homicide rate is 5 times higher than in neighboring Canada and 30 times higher than in Japan, and the firearm homicide rate for the 15- to 24-year-old age group increased 158 percent during the 10-year period from 1984 to 1993 (see figure 4). This contrasts with a 19-percent decline in gun-related homicides for those 25 and older. A teenager in the United States today is more likely to die of a gunshot wound than from all the "natural" causes of death combined.

n/t

One leading survey reveals that between 1994 and 1996, the percentage of 12th grade males that reported carrying a gun to school in the previous 4 weeks increased from 4.8 to 6.3, or roughly 1 in 17.19 Another survey tells us that 12.7 percent of students ages 12 to 19 reported knowing a student who brought a gun to school.20

[TwilightGardener]

44. Because of our empty lifestyle of consumerism? Our increasing

personal isolation and loneliness? Our preference for cultural trash instead of art that uplifts and educates? And, oh yeah, our fascination with guns and violence?

[bdamomma]

46. we have more guns than Europe

[JVS]

49. Because sometimes you just gotta snap and go postal!

It's how we roll in the USA!

[treestar]

52. At least we manufacture something

Everything else is made in China.

[Toots]

60. Rush Limbaugh

:shrug:

[Lone_Star_Dem]

64. I don't know, but perhaps it's due in part to better mental health care there?

There's no real simple answer here as you imply. While the murder rate in the us with firearms per capita is very high at 0.0279271 per 1,000 people vs. 0.00102579 per 1,000 people in the UK. I find it equally alarming that the suicide rate among US males is 19.8 per 100,000 people vs. 11 per 100,000 people in the UK.

[depakid]

66. Curiously, a lot Western nations have higher suicide rates

Some you'd never in a million years suspect.

http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suiciderates/en/

[and-justice-for-all]

67. "The Right to bare Arms.."

If you think of the time when that was conceived, you can understand that made since. But, that no longer the case. 'The Right to bare Arms' was to protect the general populace from invading Britian and France, people had 'the right to bare arms' as to be a civil malitia to defend the new found land, the colonies as well.

I think the 'the right to bare arms' needs over turned, it no longer serves in the best interest of the majority and is actually a civil hazard. No one should be alloud to goto Wal-Mart and buy a gun of any kind or even a sporting good store for that matter. If people want to hunt, which I think should be banned, then that task should goto Natioal Parks and Wildlife department. So, if you want to hunt then you need to be employed by that Department to so and all that is killed is given to Soup kitchens and low income families.

We need stringent arms control in the country, even law inforcement needs to use other deterent means other then firearms.

[Irreverend IX]

69. The US is a First World country with lots of Third World bits thrown in.

Class divisions are extremely sharp, along with cultural and ethnic divisions. Support systems for individuals, both in the form of social services and family have been weakened due to our consumerist, hypercapitalist lifestyle. We're the richest country on Earth, yet some of our citizens live in total poverty and our culture places a lot of emphasis on dog-eat-dog ruthlessness.

Europe's developed countries have less in the way of class divisions and less ethnic strife. I think Japan's low rate of violence has less to do with their strict gun laws than with the fact that 95% of their people self-identify as belonging to the "middle class." Even in Latin American countries and other poor nations with sharp class divisions, there are strong family units and cultural support systems.

The US was that way too during the Great Depression, when neighbors cooperated to survive, but since the rise of consumerism our way of life has become more and more cutthroat. I suspect many Americans have a sense that the world is against them and that they have no real friends. You can feel it in the corporate offices, in the cookie-cutter subdivisions, in the pages of the fashion magazines. If someone feels like that, what's to stop them from going on a killing spree?