Gun Crazy: Why Is America Different From Other Countries?

[marmar]

from truthout:


Gun Crazy: Why Is America Different From Other Countries?

Wednesday, 20 February 2013 10:02
By Joel Boyce, Care2 | Op-Ed


The 1989 school shooting at the École Polytechnique, also known as the Montreal Massacre, was, and remains the worst in Canadian history. 14 people were killed by shooter Marc Lépine, all women, before he turned the gun on himself. This exceeds the victim death toll of the later Columbine massacre by one, though it’s eclipsed by the events in Newtown, Connecticut this past December.

Some people might be surprised that we have school shootings in Canada. It’s true: we’re not immune to those rare bouts of madness that drive a person to do the unthinkable. There may always be people whose minds break in that way, no matter where you live, no matter how much headway we make against society’s endemic problems. And yet the numbers tell a story of gun violence in Canada that is wildly divergent from that of the United States.

The Canadian story begins in the small town of Altona, not far from where I live, where a disgruntled teacher killed several school trustees and children before turning the gun on himself, way back in 1902. It’s one of 11 such incidents in Canadian history, and the second worst. The majority of school shootings here have only had a single death, and the most recent, in 2010, ended without loss of life.

The United States, meanwhile, has had school shootings in every decade since the 1850s, and the last two full years to go by without one of these horrific events? 1990 and 1981. Last month alone there where eight gun attacks in schools in the United States. It’s getting worse instead of better, perhaps even exponentially so. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14671-gun-crazy-why-is-america-different-from-other-countries

[xchrom]

1. du rec. nt

[Ash_F]

3. I know the US has 3 times as many guns per capita

EDIT - Woops meant to reply to OP

According to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country

But if you look at how the two countries compare as far as percentages of households with guns. The US is only twice as high. I think that is a more relevant statistic to this conversation.

sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Canada
http://factcheck.org/2012/12/gun-rhetoric-vs-gun-facts/

I'm not 100% on these sources; it was just a quick search, but it seems the US gets these mass shootings a much higher rate than only 2 times that of Canada(need source). I know population disparity also matters.

I am not trying to counter the article. I am just hesitant on its final assertion that both countries are equal in their levels of crazy.

[Recursion]

8. I did an OP about that a while back

We have more guns than other countries, but our level of gun violence is significantly higher even than that higher rate of gun ownership would predict, going by other countries' data. We have more guns and we're more violent to begin with.

[raidert05]

2. K&R

Easy Access to fire arms and in general I have found in my travels that Americans in general are more stressed and aggressive than other societies.

[CrispyQ]

5. I agree that a lot of it is our culture.

We have a wild-west, shoot-'em-out, rugged-individualist mentality. Stress & aggression are just going to get worse, cuz things are not going to get better.

[awoke_in_2003]

6. Stress and guns...

bad combo.

[Downtown Hound]

4. I think Michael Moore hit the nail on the head regarding this issue in Bowling for Columbine

The bottom line is, in Canada and other Western nations, they take care of their people better and they're not constantly pumping them full of fear with the media.

Those things, combined with the ease with which you can get a gun in America, are why we have more mass shootings.

[cbrer]

7. Word.

The only thing I might add would be that Americans are pumped up with many mood altering, psychosis treating drugs too. Lacking a link, or any credible research, I'll just state that it can't be healthy.