Three people reportedly shot in Six Flags Great America parking lot

ApolloAndy:

I don't know that anyone has ever killed more than 2, maybe 3 people with a knife at a time

Hold my beer:

“We don't have a "gun violence" problem in this country. We have a "violence" problem in this country. We have a culture where, for an uncomfortably large subset of the population, the slightest insult is grounds for the use of deadly force. Because we have a lot of guns, that deadly force often comes in the form of a gunshot, more so than in countries with fewer guns, where such force often takes other forms, and admittedly, is frequently less lethal.”

I 100% agree with this. American culture is hooked on violence. From our movies, video games, nightly news, we love it. I’ll admit, I love watching violent movies. But I’m not a violent person. So what keeps someone like me from turning violent as opposed to someone who would turn to violence to solve a problem?

No, you can't start pinning it on art. Europe has the same movies and video games that we do. I'm not violent for blowing **** up in Halo, and I'm not going to be gay from watching Queer Eye, and I'm not going to become a chef by watching British Bake-Off.

I know some people who became morons by watching certain types of programming.

Americans are not predisposed to more violent tendencies, do not have more mental health problems, etc. We have extremely easy access to lethal weapons, many of them not designed for self protection but designed for combat.

https://c8.alamy.com/zooms/9/e3f2a5ddbd3e43ab954c8c098ccf0f3e/egt6ef.jpg

Jeff said:

Trucks don't kill people, drivers do! Am I right?

This is a much better point than the joke you expected it to be.

People like us (intelligent, functioning individuals with no desire to cause great harm) immediately go to other weapons like the silly knife analogy. But if I had no gun and wanted a bunch of people dead, I'm renting a moving truck and driving into a (crowd, school, park, playground, public place with large crowd) and then when that catches on and mass running-overs become the new murder du jour, then we can have real conversations about the violenece and not the means.

Jeff:

Killing people is still killing people regardless of the words used, or whether it's offense or defense.

You completely lost me here. Offense or defense isn't just semantics, it's literally the difference between justifiable homicide and murder. If we are taking the 10,000 ft view then yes, a dead person is a dead person and it is sad. But if I'm looking at individual instances of violence and it is clear who is the aggressor and who is the innocent victim, then I'd like to live in a world where the good guy has a chance to defend themselves, and I'd like them to have a decisive advantage.

Jeff:
You can't separate good and bad guys from having guns, so if neither has them, what's the problem?

I think this is the crux of the whole debate. Let's look at it this way (I'm on a real bullet point kick lately, sorry about that):

1. Only good guys have guns
2. Only bad guys have guns
3. Everyone has guns
4. No one has guns

Everyone agrees that #2 is the worst situation, and I'd guess that most would agree #3 (which is where the U.S. is currently) is the second worst case, since the bad guys still have guns. So I think we're arguing about which is the best scenario, #1 or #4. Part of the problem is that, at least in the U.S., #1 feels just as fantastical as #4. If you allow guns at all, then it's impossible to keep them out of the hands of the bad guys, but here in the states guns are everyone and are imbedded in our culture (and Constitution), so good luck getting rid of them all. Even an earnest attempt to get to #4 would probably wind you up in #1. My order, from best to worst case, would be 1, 4, 3, 2.

RideMan:
Getting back to the violence problem, I'm still not sure how you solve that, but at least we can try to isolate the problem in a useful way.

End the drug war. That would almost certainly be more politically popular, logistically feasible, and more effective and lowering the rate of violent crime than any gun legislation that has a chance of passing into law.

Bakeman31092:

...it's literally the difference between justifiable homicide and murder...

As you said, both result in dead people. They're both bad to me, and I find neither acceptable. If you don't agree, that's cool, but that's where I'm at.

So...violence is bad? Hey, I think we just found common ground!

/thread

So "mental illness" isn't really the problem, if you consider the data.

I think part of the problem is when people (i.e., politicians) promote linear causality (A leads to B) to try to explain, and therefore "help solve" something like mass shootings.

Perfect example is Columbine.

Everyone becomes obsessed with needing to know what caused it, because if we figure that out than we can cure the problem.

So what caused Columbine?

I'm not sure how many of you remember that, but yea...we really finally settled on Marilyn Manson. Then we blame Call of Duty, or Judas Priest, or fill-in-the-blank.

The only honest answer to what made Columbine is that we will never know. Humans hate not being able to find the A, so we make stupid **** up to make ourselves feel better.

It's not all the guns, or all the fancy gun attachments, or the fact that my brother in law sells assault rifles from his basement (yes, he does), or (lack of access and/or treatment to) mental illness, or bullying, or ****ty families, or the war on drugs, or Winger.

It's all of those, with no single recipe for each case.

OK maybe it's Winger.

That NYT article was a great read, thank you for sharing.

Bakeman31092:

1. Only good guys have guns
2. Only bad guys have guns
3. Everyone has guns
4. No one has guns

Everyone agrees that #2 is the worst situation

I am not going to push this too hard, it's really really a thought experiment that occurred to me today when I saw this story - which is totally bonkers and NOT any kind of scenario that should be used as the basis of public policy, it's just the thing that started me thinking about this question.

Student Fatally Shot by Woman He Stopped to Help

The woman, Yasmine Hider, pulled out a gun and made the couple walk back into the woods, according to the statement. Mr. Simjee then pulled out his own gun, leading to an “exchange of gunfire” in which Ms. Hider was shot several times in the torso and Mr. Simjee was shot in the back, the statement said.

Part of the bonkersness is that it somehow involved kidnapping, not the simple robbery I initially thought it was going to be. But I think that's pretty rare. (If you're using "I might be kidnapped by someone pretending to be a stranded motorist in the middle of an Alabama swamp" as justification for owning a gun, your sense of risk assessment is calibrated differently from mine.)

But - I'm finally getting to the point here - imagine the case of a simple robbery. Most robbers are happy being robbers, they're not interested in being murderers or taking the rap for murder. They're armed to get you to do what they want you to do, hand over your wallet or jewelry or whatever.

I, a non-gun owner, will hand over my wallet. Person B, who carries a weapon, might decide to use it and either (a) end up dead or (b) end up killing someone. Either of Person B's outcomes are, I would argue, worse than mine.

Granted, I am assuming that (a) my robber won't shoot me anyway, and (b) Person B's robber won't see the gun and flee, and Person B will leave it at that. I obviously have no data for this, this is my thought experiment from this morning.

There are also other scenarios to consider, like the possibility of sexual assault, which might change your thinking on the subject.

Don't take this too seriously.

Yes! Absolutely outstanding summary, OhioStater.

I couldn't agree more. (sneaking in a 4 1/2 year old Gonchback)

But yeah, this! So much this:

OhioStater said:
It's not all the guns, or all the fancy gun attachments, or the fact that my brother in law sells assault rifles from his basement (yes, he does), or (lack of access and/or treatment to) mental illness, or bullying, or ****ty families, or the war on drugs, or Winger.

It's all of those, with no single recipe for each case.

Deja vu. This thread was just a rehash of that 4 year old Facebook debate, derailment included.

OhioStater:

OK maybe it's Winger.

Probably more like Ted Nugent.

I know that I am ignorant about guns but I had no idea this sort of thing existed. I am not sure that even Ted Nugent could withstand that sort of firing rate.

That's deeply disturbing.

Crazy. I kinda want to try one of those.

There’s an auto racetrack within earshot of my house which also has a government training facility on premises that includes firearms training. I frequently hear fully automatic gunfire and usually assume it’s from there, but now that I know these exist, I wonder if anyone near me has used them. Sound travels oddly around here, which means it’s sometimes hard to tell which direction it’s coming from, but some auto gunfire I would swear did not come from the direction of the racetrack.