President says ‘epidemic of gun violence is tearing our communities apart’ after mass shootings in Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Baltimore and Chicago

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97 points

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.

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15 points

That’s the price we pay for freedom.

/s

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7 points

That’s a fucked up amount of people damn

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2 points

Shaping up to outpace automobile deaths. Not to imply that our rate of automobile deaths isn’t also totally unacceptable, especially compared to peer nations…

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4 points

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.”

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-22 points

How much of that is suicide?

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38 points

Is there an acceptable figure?

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29 points

Try the other way around: how much gun control would impact in the total suicide number?

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2 points
*

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.

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-66 points

Those numbers are intentionally misleading, they are using people that killed themselves to prop up the numbers. It’s disgusting.

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41 points

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.

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-26 points

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.

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29 points

Explain why they don’t count as gun deaths please.

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-4 points

Gun deaths aren’t the number that’s important. Homicides are

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-6 points

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.

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19 points

It's disgusting.

Yes, people dying preventable deaths is disgusting.

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17 points

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.

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7 points

Wow. So, following those numbers, if you buy a gun, it’s more likely you’ll kill yourself than you’ll kill others.

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7 points

Is it? Gun violence from suicide is equally a problem. I wouldn’t characterise that as a shooting exactly though.

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3 points

They also count criminals shooting criminals!

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3 points

I think it’s a fair number to include, but you are right in the fact it inflates the total compared to how the Gun Violence Archive counted it prior to 2020. The number was closer to 15,00 annually with roughly 22,000 in suicides. Bad numbers any way you put it.

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-8 points

Jfc are you a troll? A bot?

A human being can’t be this stupid and also figure out how to broadcast it to the rest of the world.

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