it’s mainly the overwhelming presence of guns prior to the proposed ban on them, and the culture built around them.
besides, how many mass shootings happened on the balkans which are also flush with leftover guns from the yugoslav wars? how many happen in the czech republic where you can legally own and carry firearms similarly to the american system? i’m not even gonna compare it to switzerland because while they have tons of guns, they heavily regulate ammo. something is just deeply broken with the united states and simply banning guns wouldn’t fix it.
the real question imo is what drives a person to essentially end their life by shooting up some place? because whether you end up shot to death on sight, paralyzed, or simply stuck behind bars, that’s the end of the road. a society that pushes people to do something this drastic will not stop being problematic if you just take the drastic tool away from people. they’ll just stop taking roughly one other innocent person with them when they snap (which is the average if you consider a mass shooting as anything that injures 4+ people, which is the criterion by which the often cited “one mass shooting per day” works), which is, yes, an improvement, but it only masks the underlying problem.
i know “it’s a mental health issue” is a right wing dogwhistle but that’s because the statement is stupid, because it falls for the standard conservative bullshit of positing there are no systemic issues, just bad people. this is absolutely systemic. if predestined “bad people” in this sense existed there is no reason they’d be born at a vastly higher frequency in the united states than elsewhere.
the answer is likely deeply rooted in economic inequality and the total lack of a social safety net. which is probably why anti-gun rhetoric is pushed by rich organizations, and is therefore allowed to permeate mainstream culture and isn’t stuck on the sidelines like right to repair or privacy legislations. not because it is actually a good solution but because it is cheaper than addressing the root cause. which would be ensuring people always have something to lose, like they have in all the other countries where we see different effects.
The 600 million+ guns (his number was a bit outdated) in 45%+ of the populations hands with no registry to know where/who/exactly how many, who do not want to give up what they’ve got by any means (for all different reasons depending on which demographic group of gun owners we are talking about specifically), and who already have a manufacturing culture in place in regards to firearms, and all the equipment to do so.
No other country had that. Pandora’s box has been opened. What’s more, there are countries with gun bans and a booming black market, they’re just “developing.” I think that is a bit dismissive, as we also have struggles controlling illicit importation that would lead to the same consequences even if we could shut down home production and zap every gun inside the US from existence, they’d come back, in short order. Stuff moves, the cartels have South Korean grenades and soviet AKs in addition to the guns they get from the ATF (operation fast and furious) or straw purchasers.
What makes America different from other nations that didn’t spring up a massive black market for guns
it’s mainly the overwhelming presence of guns prior to the proposed ban on them, and the culture built around them.
besides, how many mass shootings happened on the balkans which are also flush with leftover guns from the yugoslav wars? how many happen in the czech republic where you can legally own and carry firearms similarly to the american system? i’m not even gonna compare it to switzerland because while they have tons of guns, they heavily regulate ammo. something is just deeply broken with the united states and simply banning guns wouldn’t fix it.
the real question imo is what drives a person to essentially end their life by shooting up some place? because whether you end up shot to death on sight, paralyzed, or simply stuck behind bars, that’s the end of the road. a society that pushes people to do something this drastic will not stop being problematic if you just take the drastic tool away from people. they’ll just stop taking roughly one other innocent person with them when they snap (which is the average if you consider a mass shooting as anything that injures 4+ people, which is the criterion by which the often cited “one mass shooting per day” works), which is, yes, an improvement, but it only masks the underlying problem.
i know “it’s a mental health issue” is a right wing dogwhistle but that’s because the statement is stupid, because it falls for the standard conservative bullshit of positing there are no systemic issues, just bad people. this is absolutely systemic. if predestined “bad people” in this sense existed there is no reason they’d be born at a vastly higher frequency in the united states than elsewhere.
the answer is likely deeply rooted in economic inequality and the total lack of a social safety net. which is probably why anti-gun rhetoric is pushed by rich organizations, and is therefore allowed to permeate mainstream culture and isn’t stuck on the sidelines like right to repair or privacy legislations. not because it is actually a good solution but because it is cheaper than addressing the root cause. which would be ensuring people always have something to lose, like they have in all the other countries where we see different effects.
The 600 million+ guns (his number was a bit outdated) in 45%+ of the populations hands with no registry to know where/who/exactly how many, who do not want to give up what they’ve got by any means (for all different reasons depending on which demographic group of gun owners we are talking about specifically), and who already have a manufacturing culture in place in regards to firearms, and all the equipment to do so.
No other country had that. Pandora’s box has been opened. What’s more, there are countries with gun bans and a booming black market, they’re just “developing.” I think that is a bit dismissive, as we also have struggles controlling illicit importation that would lead to the same consequences even if we could shut down home production and zap every gun inside the US from existence, they’d come back, in short order. Stuff moves, the cartels have South Korean grenades and soviet AKs in addition to the guns they get from the ATF (operation fast and furious) or straw purchasers.