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This is like saying that cancer isn’t the only way you can die so we should stop trying to cure cancer
It's also like saying cancer is not the only way you can die and pointing to something like syphilis also killing people. Sure they both kill people but one kills way more people and is much less avoidable.
The mass shootings are the symptom of a larger mental health problem. Here in Canada where we have much more gun control we recently memorialized one of our most deadly attacks, The Toronto van attack which killed 11 and wounded 15 (some critically). How is gun control going to help the fact that some people out there want to kill as many lives as possible?
By reducing access to a very powerful tool for murder. Here is a comparison of USA and Canadian homicide rates
Are you pointing to a single incident from 5 years ago as evidence that non-gun mass murders are common in Canada? Do you think that when gun control is enacted, all the people that would have committed murder via gun would instead commit as much murder using improvised weapons? If so, can you show any data that bears this out?
Even though other methods of murder can be devised, restricting access to the easiest, fastest method is effective in reducing murder.
Canada also has a health care system where mentally ill folks can get help.
Canada is also less population dense and only has roughly 1/10th of the US population.
The per-capita rate while a useful tool is not going to compare the effects of mass shootings. You're more than likely talking about handguns in this context which are responsible for a lot more deaths overall than AR-style rifles.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/195325/murder-victims-in-the-us-by-weapon-used/
Switzerland has lots of guns but not mass shootings, and has a much lower murder rate. Finland similarly has lots of guns but not mass shootings.
The bigger issue is that half of the US government doesn't want to fund mental health programs, red flag laws, etc. There are some models we could follow other than "ban guns" or "ban assault rifles" ... but dealing with rampant mental health issues would help a lot. It's just a shame the Republicans will parrot "mental health" but then not vote for bills that will actually do anything to improve mental health.
I hate this about lemmy. It looks like youve been banned/deleted/something from the thread. So now all your comments and all replies have disappeared from the conversation.
I think I said this before, but in case I didn’t: I agree that the mental health side of this equation is also critical. That doesn’t change the fact that the gun control side of the equation is a major factor. Also, if you’re going to cherry pick Switzerland stats, then don’t forget to also look at their gun control laws, which are much stronger than the US (and it appears Canada, although I’m less sure there). You seem to want to cherry pick data to show that it’s all mental health and guns aren’t a significant part of the problem. Good luck with that.
I don't think it was me, but the other person who was acting like a jerk... Which is unfortunate.
I suspect we agree on more than we disagree here, I'm just sick of people who "can't vote for Democrats because they want to take my guns."
I also can't dismiss maybe there are some benefits to having a well armed population.
I don't expect to ever hit 0, maybe you do. But, I think we should be able to do much better than several public places shot up by someone who's out of their mind per year. The fastest way towards that to me is effectively universal health care, research, appropriate treatment, and maybe even investment in some new technology/unexplored mitigation strategy.
Ah yes, the epidemic of van killings we all suffer from.
No one claims gun restrictions are going to stop every last murder.
And if folks were killing each other with Vans several times a week, you can bet there would be some Van Control legislation passed in a hot minute.
That's not the point at all. The point is that there are mentally ill people who want to kill and they'll find a way. We've got a record number of people that are seemingly in this category as of late.
In prior decades mass shootings like this were not issues like they are today, the first AR-15s were available in the late 1950s. You can find "mass shootings" going back into the start of the 20th century, but they're not the same mass shootings we're seeing today. They're much more targeted violence.
Now... It's "I'm going to kill you because you're at Walmart(?)"
Keep in mind the US has roughly 10x the population. If we want to do an apples oranges comparison of the two countries ... that's potentially 10 van incidents in the US in place of mass shootings.
But that's not a fair comparison either because Canada has an accessible health care system.
If your argument is we need to address mental health, I'm not going to argue with you there. But guess which party in the US is described by all four of these bullet points:
gutted our mental health infrastructure
Consistently votes down legislation to fund investment in mental health infrastructure
Consistently opposes any measures to implement Red Flag laws or other attempts to make it harder to own guns
Consistently deflects to mental health being the problem whenever we have more people die
While they are refusing to budge on either of the two middle bullet points, people are just dying.
So I have little sympathy for folks who defend guns with the premise that mental health is the real problem. Fine, let's say it is, doesn't matter because you are preventing us as a nation from addressing either of those issues.
I have voted a pretty much straight blue ticket in all elections since 2016. I also have friends that guns are a very important issue for though, and I don't think the Democratic party is getting anywhere being the "party out to get the guns."
It's not really the same... There are people that like guns for a variety of reasons and 99% of them will never take a life. Their only reason for existing isn't to go on a murderous rampage.
This was the example where I just said "you know what, banning guns isn't going to fix it"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kongsberg_attack
Another person replied about an attack with a van in Canada.
I think we genuinely need to treat this as a mental health crisis, but like for real. Not the Republican "thoughts and prayers" mental health crisis, but a real thought out use of resources to figure out why so regularly we have people in our society that want to kill a bunch of random people.
We should also do more background checks and close loopholes, ~~even though that wouldn't have helped here~~.
It would have helped here. This guy was previously committed for mental health issues. That should have required him to give his guns to a friend or whoever for safe keeping.
Fair enough, I wasn't aware of that detail when the comment was written last night.
So according to you just because we haven't figured out how to stop it we should just throw in the towel, right?
Gtfo with your fatalism.
I'm guessing you think that mental illness is the root cause and also that you don't think a dime should go towards a universal healthcare plan that includes caring for the mentally ill.
Actually you are the one work the false equivalency.
You know why your comparison is idiotic? Because it is comparing a mountain (gun violence) to a mole hill (vehicular homicide). If what you said was at all accurate, people would be using those methods significantly more often in other developed countries. Guess what? They don't. They are used at basically the same rates as here in the US. The major difference is that those countries have much guns per capita.
So again stop pretending like the comparison is even close to a good one or that you have some sort of gotcha.
Considering the same group of people who fights gun control legislation tooth and nail is also very much responsible for the lack of mental health services (and general sorry state of health care) in our country, it sounds to me like you don't really want to solve the gun problem nor the mental health problem you predictably deflect to.
And yes, I'm assuming you are a Republican. If you aren't, try not acting like one and folks won't make that mistake.
R won't support restrictions on gun ownership because they say the problem is mental health, but they won't support spending on mental health either. (Most likely because they seem to oppose anything that would actually help people who suffer.)
Reagan undercuts funding on mental health, resulting in the closure of mental health institutions nationwide:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Systems_Act_of_1980
https://sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas.html
This last one is a ddg search - you can just pick which article you want to read about Republicans voting against mental health funding.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=republicans+vote+against+mental+health+funding
For mental health? Most of them are not much better. Try again.
Would you like to elaborate or you just gonna pull that out of your ass and not even have the decency to clean it off before handing it to me?
Japan and South Korea, for instances, are certainly not known for their great mental health. Guess what they don't have? No constant mass shootings, no trucks being used to mow people down, no constant fertilizer bombs.