Relative to the US, that's true. But there were never proportionally as many gun owners either.
Fucking gun crime gun crime gun crime. Whhhhhhhy must it always be gun crime. Why is dying by a gun somehow so much worse than dying by being stabbed or bludgeoned or blown up.
I don't understand people.
Well, if you look at lots of the US-centric threads that have come up in this subforum in the last couple of years, guns have figured quite heavily. This isn't my bias, or any reformist emphasis, but surely
one of the reasons there have been so many contentious shootings in the states in recent years - by police or private citizens - is the proliferation of firearms in the community.
Can people be killed in other ways? Of course they can.
Why is such an emphasis placed on guns? I would suggest that it has a lot to do with their efficacy in killing, from a distance - and that they really have no other purpose.
I think that rather than downplaying 'violence' more generally, it is simply stating facts to discuss gun violence in and of itself.
Any consideration of an Australian-style byback scheme would be pretty unlikely in the United States, but using that to suggest that no gun reforms are possible or worth attempting seems like throwing the baby out with the proverbial bathwater, to me at least.
For the record, i have never suggested that particular scheme would work in america - only that it didnt have a particularly deleterious effect in Australia, and that regulating ownership of firearms
is possible.
"Why is it always gun crime?"
Can you honestly envision what took place in Umpqua being possible if the killer was armed with a knife, a baseball bat or the like?
Perhaps if he was, the questions and discussions would be different; but he was armed with guns - so people are talking about guns (amongst other things).
