President says ‘epidemic of gun violence is tearing our communities apart’ after mass shootings in Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Baltimore and Chicago
According to the Gun Violence Archive, 21,782 Americans have been killed in shootings halfway through 2023.
I know that’s not 100% mass shootings, but that’s still a stunningly bleak number. Rounding up from the .97 that’s five human lives every hour of 2023 up to July.
It’s bad, but after watching over a million Americans die of COVID while (seemingly) half or more of the country refused to take - or often even acknowledge - the most basic of preventative measures… Well, I just don’t know any longer.
Shootings are far less deadly, and that’s a much more murky subject as there are plenty of justifiable reasons to own a gun. You also have to wonder how many deaths are Darwin Awards, or justified self defense… It’s just an incredibly complicated subject compared to “hey guys, let’s wear masks.”
Try the other way around: how much gun control would impact in the total suicide number?
About half, it was 54% in 2021. The problem with an assault weapons ban is it will do almost nothing to gun violence. More people are murdered with hammers every year then with ar15s. The vast majority of US gun violence is performed with regular pistols.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/
If they actually cared about the problem instead of just publicity, then they would look at banning pistols of all magazine capacities instead of rifles. If they wanted to do something acceptable for both sides of the aisle that could eliminate up to 40% of gun violence, they would prohibit people with domestic abuse charges from owning firearms. (See The Problem with Jon Stewart).
Or they could address the core problems facing people at the bottom of the economic scale, like hunger and mental health amd healthcare, the problems that make them desperate and emotional. Banning guns to prevent murder is akin to banning alcohol to prevent drunk driving. It works, but it hinders the majority of law abiding citizens all because a small percent of people misuse it.
The sad truth is they dgaf. So they do publicity shit like this that doesn’t matter.
Those numbers are intentionally misleading, they are using people that killed themselves to prop up the numbers. It’s disgusting.
And those shouldn’t count? Do you have any idea how much easy access to guns increases suicides? Many, many suicidal people would still be alive without the easy access to guns in the US. It’s one of the easiest and painless ways to kill yourself.
Things like suicide are far more related to a lack mental healthcare and the stigma around getting help than weather or not people are allowed to own firearms. Not everyone has those kinds of problems. An assault weapons ban is certainly unrelated to those seeking self-harm and most crime.
Suicide is not what first comes to mind when someone talks about gun violence or shootings. Nobody said they don’t count - just that it’s misleading.
They are definitely not misleading. They break it down in the same page by suicide, accidental killing, and etc. https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
So it’s 9,611 as non-suicide deaths. That’s 51 per day and 2 per hour.
Wow. So, following those numbers, if you buy a gun, it’s more likely you’ll kill yourself than you’ll kill others.