BBC article I appreciate the article is an old one but it was the first time I’d read it. Just 😯

This sums up how the priorities are working…

Terror BAD
Drugs BAD
Everyday (WHITE) Americans running around with Assault rifles killing people, well just a price worth paying for civil liberty…

Some more here, out of date but the content is interesting

A recent stat I saw was that 50% of all guns in the USA are owned by 3% of people. 72% own no guns.

So the gun lobby is terrifyingly powerful from such a small base of support.

Aye, but you don’t want to argue with them – they have all the guns.

bencooper

A recent stat I saw was that 50% of all guns in the USA are owned by 3% of people. 72% own no guns.

So the gun lobby is terrifyingly powerful from such a small base of support.

I thought it was more like a 60/40 split. Anyway, it kind of makes sense when you consider their population centres vs rural areas. Places like LA and New York apparently have (relatively) tight gun laws and even tighter concealed carry laws. Places like Arizona, Kentucky, Oregon, Texas have more lax gun laws and less people.

Then there’ll be a certain number of ineligible people, children fro example.

3.5 times more likely to be killed in a road accident than in a gun related homicide

I don’t see anyone trying to ban cars

The difference becomes even more stark when you realise the proportion of those gun related homicides that occur amongst a small subset of the community, young urban black males, (as both perpetrator and victim) due to a variety of complex and longstanding socio-economic issues.

http://heyjackass.com/

That’s just Chicago, not USA.

3.5 times more likely to be killed in a road accident than in a gun related homicide

I don’t see anyone trying to ban cars
ah the classic whataboutery…
why not try and fix both problems.

From memory;

Suicide is number 1 cause of gun related deaths in US
Inter gang vioence is second

Hijacking 4 commercial airliners and flying them into buildings is always going to get more of a government responce that inter criminal gun crime.

We are in Britian, US domestic policy on firearms is pretty much none of our business.

As above they have 50,000 road deaths pa vs our 3,600 so are twice as likely to die in a car accident as we are. An interesting stat but also none of our business.

We are in Britian, US domestic policy on firearms is pretty much none of our business.

Well get back in your box and if we catch you posting when your in France then 10 mins in the naughty corner and no pudding.

3.5 times more likely to be killed in a road accident than in a gun related homicide

I don’t see anyone trying to ban cars

Well, if I ban your car it’ll make it more difficult for you to get to work, take your children to school, go on holiday, pick up the weekly shop, get to the doctor, etc.

If I ban your gun you’ll find it harder to kill yourself, murder your family, go on a killing spree at a primary school, shoot animals and noisily put holes in paper targets.

I know you’re not really daft enough to think they’re the same thing.

http://www.snopes.com/toddlers-killed-americans-terrorists/

Even using the broadest leeway in counting U.S. victims of “Islamic terrorism” leads to the same mathematical conclusion: More Americans were shot and killed by toddlers in 2015 than were killed by Islamic terrorists.

We are in Britian, US domestic policy on firearms is pretty much none of our business.

Pretty much this, just don’t really get the British (European?) obsession with the American gun laws. I spose in a globalised world their news is our news and it’s all infotainment in the end, also a good chance to look down our noses at our American “cousins”.

If you want to get upset about stuff, there’s a lot more to be upset about than a bunch of people killing themselves with shooters and domestic gang wars.

Pretty much this, just don’t really get the British (European?) obsession with the American gun laws

US foreign policy had been to dictate its views and opinions across the world through regime change and much more. Imposing or trying to the ideal if the good old American way of life. It’s absolutely right that people can stand up, pick fault and criticise. People feel the need to object to things like human rights abuses abroad etc. If you can’t criticise the US you have to leave N Korea alone and ignore the atrocious stuff going on in Africa. Anyone who cannot take scrutiny is trouble.

We are in Britian, US domestic policy on firearms is pretty much none of our business.

As above they have 50,000 road deaths pa vs our 3,600 so are twice as likely to die in a car accident as we are. An interesting stat but also none of our business.

Yes lets all bravely not say anything. Syria’s non of our business either – lets not look or care. Lets just concentrate on ourselves, defending our comfort and in doing so build our legacy – lets be remembered for pulling up the ladder. Heroes, every last one of us.

Well, if I ban your car it’ll make it more difficult for you to get to work, take your children to school, go on holiday, pick up the weekly shop, get to the doctor, etc.

You can do all those things without owning a car. Car owning isn’t a necessity, we have just built a culture around it.

Think about the road deaths, wildlife killed, tearing up of natural environment to build roads, pollution, CO2 emissions, damage and death caused extracting fossil fuels to make power them – cars cause far more damage than guns

and face it, guns are far more fun than cars

[video]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0QtM7X0xYN8[/video]

@mike Chapeau 🙂 You don’t see me posting on here that the French police should not be armed etc. It’s their country and they can run it as they see fit. If I don’t like it I can not visit.

@mac well there are plenty of people here who do say Syria is none of our business (I am not one of them).

If you don’t mind me saying the majority of the foreign critics of US gun policy are anti-American and use the issue as a stick with which to critise the US. You can see in the posts above the references to Terrorism, those posters are anti US foreign policy and want that changed primarily, the gun control issue is not their real concern.

@ninfan both are fun although it’s probably easier to have fun legally with a gun

@jamby got a list of nations we can talk about?

You can do all those things without owning a car. Car owning isn’t a necessity, we have just built a culture around it.

if I ban your car it’ll make it more difficult for you to get to work, take your children to school, go on holiday, pick up the weekly shop, get to the doctor, etc

You appear to have missed a bit of what I said in the interests of making a diversionary argument, I’ve underlined it in bold italics to help you out. I’ll be happy to support your sincere efforts to explore alternatives to our society’s excessive reliance on cars though.

and face it, guns are far more fun than cars

Well, I’m not arguing with that!

Other than moaning, or should that be protesting, on a UK bike forum, what are you actually doing to highlight the scourge of American gun laws?

Think about the road deaths, wildlife killed, tearing up of natural environment to build roads, pollution, CO2 emissions, damage and death caused extracting fossil fuels to make power them – cars cause far more damage than guns

Does anyone else see the hilarity in the forums chief Gun nut trying to compare an object whose primary purpose is to get us from A to B, granted with all the above side effects, and compare it to an object whose first purpose is to kill, granted with the hillarious side effects that youtube is full of innocent objects getting shot up for fun?

an object whose primary purpose is to get us from A to B

Speed limit is 70mph, you can buy cars that do 200mph+

Nobody ‘needs’ that

No more so than anybody ‘needs’ a semi-auto bushmaster rifle over and above a bolt action hunting rifle.

And your point caller? Gun control would save lives full stop.

Car control would save more

No more so than anybody ‘needs’ a semi-auto bushmaster rifle over and above a bolt action hunting rifle.

You’re not honestly that stupid are you?

ninfan – Member
Car control would save more

Thankfully life ain’t black and white. You could control guns like most of the world and improve road safety like the rest of the world does. Or do nothing about either cause it’s a really hard decision and your trying to win da internetz

What’s the point in perpetuating this argument. How can you argue with someone who thinks it is perfectly acceptable for a classroom of school kids to be massacred from time to time to protect their right to pretend that they’re still in the wild west and have their semi-automatic assault rifles and an arsenal of other military grade weaponry for ‘personal protection’. It’s a pointless and hopeless exercise.

wobbliscott

What’s the point in perpetuating this argument

Actually none. America can’t even agree on whether or not a history of mental illness should exclude you from gun ownership.

Different world. Different culture.

an object whose primary purpose

A car is designed to move people and cargo, and in fact many of them are designed to limit the damage they do to both occupants and the unfortunate people hit by them, we are improving their efficiency and impact on air quality, we are improving this all the time, we are even moving to a future where accidents will be reduced by removing the human error element, the tool is being improved and as time goes on it gets better at doing all the things it’s good at and less of things it is bad at.

Tackling road deaths is an admirable goal, NOBODY is arguing against it.

A gun is designed to kill people. We build better guns to kill more people, quicker, more easily, and more cheaply. It is getting worse all the time.

Tackling gun deaths is an admirable goal, people ARE arguing against it.

can you not see how they are not the same thing at all?
can you not see how comparing them paints you in very poor light?
can you not see how diversionary and unhelpful it is?
can you not see how addressing either are not mutually exclusive?
can you not see how absolutely monumentally ballsed up the gun situation is in the US?

As long as we don’t blow ourselves all up and do manage to survive as a species history will look back on this time with disbelief and sadness.

ninfan the chances of being killed in a car accident are equal to the chances of being killed by a gun incident in the usa. What you do see is strict and regular testing of car drivers mandatory registration and a requirement to carry insurance for the car drivers …

interestingly you have as much chance of being struck by lightning in the us as you have being shot in Japan.

Pretty much this, just don’t really get the British (European?) obsession with the American gun laws

That’s easy to explain; it’s all about feeling morally and intellectually superior to the Americans. It’s most definitely a European thing; the French elevate it to an art form but we do pretty well also.

You can do all those things without owning a car. Car owning isn’t a necessity, we have just built a culture around it.

Think about the road deaths, wildlife killed, tearing up of natural environment to build roads, pollution, CO2 emissions, damage and death caused extracting fossil fuels to make power them – cars cause far more damage than guns

and face it, guns are far more fun than cars

Ninfan has a point, if we as a society wanted to, we could do away with cars almost entirely and move to public transport.

A car is designed to move people and cargo, and in fact many of them are designed to limit the damage

This is pretty much an appeal to emotion, cars kill at the same rate guns do. Self driving cars and greener cars are never going to save the planet, that is an utterly specious argument made by people who want to carry on the lifestyle that they are living. BTW, I’d love to know what the death toll of cars are when you take into account environmental degradation.

Ninfan has a point, if we as a society wanted to, we could do away with cars almost entirely and move to public transport.

But that wasn’t his point was it, valid as it might have been.
he was comparing road deaths to divert from the gun argument.

Even if that was his point, there’s nothing stopping that happening in addition to dealing with the gun problem is there? it is not an either/or situation, nor is it as binary as you make out. If you want to reduce it to binary decisions then ponder this:

If you could click your fingers right now and remove either all the guns or all the cars, which would be the better choice for the good of the human race?

I wouldn’t envy anyone who has to make such a choice and weigh up the impacts both long and short term, luckily we don’t have to as things aren’t that binary.

A car is designed to move people and cargo, and in fact many of them are designed to limit the damage they do to both occupants and the unfortunate people hit by them, we are improving their efficiency and impact on air quality, we are improving this all the time, we are even moving to a future where accidents will be reduced by removing the human error element, the tool is being improved and as time goes on it gets better at doing all the things it’s good at and less of things it is bad at

At least include the full quote for context. Perfection and a total elimination of impact both environmental and physcial may not be achievable, but the point is it’s a tool with many positives and we are at least trying to reduce the negatives.

Self driving cars and greener cars are never going to save the planet, that is an utterly specious argument made by people who want to carry on the lifestyle that they are living

It’s not a totally specious argument, primarily because that wasn’t the argument I was making.

It was to illustrate the point that their purpose was supposed to be constructive not destructive. A car is not designed to kill pedestrians or occupants, and it is not designed to pollute, they are negative by-products of it’s positive function (and malfunction). Since we want o continue to make use of the positive function and since we have identified significant negatives, steps are being taken in a continuous improvement cycle to make them better and less damaging to both people and the environment. No such argument can be made for guns which are entirely destructive, when performing their function their impact is negative, and ‘improving’ their function makes them more negative, and no steps are being made to improve them in a positive manner or reduce their impact.

You also appear to be trying to portray me as some lazy car lover not willing to give up my creature comforts which could hardly be further from the truth. I minimise my own personal car usage, cycle or walk pretty much everywhere and help to run a local cycling based charity whose aims are to increase and promote sustainable transport and also to re-use and recycle. I am not your typcial motoring apologist, far from it, but I do recognise that personal transport in whatever form is a necessary thing, I don’t recognise the same of personal gun ownership.

This is pretty much an appeal to emotion,

you’re damned right, it’s an emotional subject and should be treated as such, it’s not just a simple numbers game and you know it.

It doesn’t matter if one is designed to kill, whilst the other is not if the end point is still the same. Personal transport is not necessary at all – and all the technology in the world is not going to save us when 7 Billion people all have access to it. We’d be better off in the long run if 7 Billion people all had access to **** guns instead.

At least then, all the poor and dispossesed of the world would be able to cross the borders and kill all the people who produced most of the CO2 output and made their countries unihabitable.

right so the answer to the question:

“what can be done about the terrible number of deaths due to gun violence in the US?”

is:

“no point doing anything until you’ve banned cars first”

🙄

It doesn’t matter if one is designed to kill whilst the other is not if the end point is still the same

I think it does matter, clearly we disagree, I also think the ‘other things are worse’ argument holds very little water when trying to decide whether or not to address a problem. I’m happy to leave it there.

“what can be done about the terrible number of deaths due to gun violence in the US?”

Not that I think they are a good idea and in an ideal world the US would sanction owning them, but one of the greatest mistruths peddled in this argument (apart from ‘guns don’t kill people…..’) is that the problem in the US is somehow greater than anywhere else in the world and therefore deserves special attention.

It has a problem for sure but there are almost 20 other countries with a much bigger gun homicide rate than the US including RSA and no one ever feels the need to bring them up in conversation.

It has a problem for sure but there are almost 20 other countries with a much bigger gun homicide rate than the US including RSA and no one ever feels the need to bring them up in conversation.

Isn’t that because it’s not as well reported in the media rather than any deliberately special focus on the part of ‘people’ ? Maybe if it was as widely reported and understood it would get more attention in general, or do you think its a deliberate oversight?

I think that another reason it gets such discussion is the stark difference between the US, and other countries that have a close social and political link to the US, especially since, like it or not, there is a link between the US and the UK in that manner, and most people will more closely identify with the US as they feel it’s a similarly developed western nation with a common language. Whether that behaviour is right or not is well up for debate, but I think that’s part of the reason.

You’re absolutely right though GeeTee, it’s not a US specific problem, and the US is by no means the worst, but I don’t think many of the other countries have such a similar a pro-gun lobby to the US do they? Correct me if I’m wrong* but in most other countries with big gun problems it’s more a result of political unrest, social problems and increasing lawlessness and seen as ‘a bad thing’ by most people that they would get rid of in an instant (along with the causes) if they could, rather than a desire to legally hold them for a large number of the population due to a belief in their constitutional right to bear arms.

* genuinely please do correct me if I’m wrong, I’m not as well informed on other countries with gun violence problems as I could be and will be reading up, but I have a gut feeling the US situation from a social/political POV is a bit different?

Wikipedia table of death by gun by country

^ this is interesting, ordered by deaths per 100,000, the US is 11th in the table (of about ~70 countries)

The very worst have horrific levels, and they are still awful right down to about number 20, but then ALL the others are actually very low, it’s certainly not linear so there is a definite difference at the top end of the table.

The top of the table is also mostly countries which I would associate with other political and economic issues, social unrest, poverty, corruption and in a couple of cases massive drug related problems. The US is conspicuous by being the only western highly developed nation.

EDIT – ran out of time to tag on above post.

I also think the US stats being reported for the whole country is often a bit misleading, as there are some specific areas where it is massively higher than others and in some cases exceeds even the worst entries on that table so there is a big element of localisation that is not well conveyed in most articles.

There’s also a fairly large proportion of the US deaths that are accidental and suicide, which are much more easily addressed by normal gun control measures, where as the worst countries in the world it is mostly deliberate homicide, which is obviously more associated with illegal behaviour anyway and has to be addressed in a different way.