To put the tragedy in perspective, the same day as the Uvalde massacre there were (statistically) 53
other gun murders and 66 gun suicides. That doesn't even include accidental gun killings, killings by cops, nor the many shootings that cause maiming or coma but not death. As horrid as such a tragedy is, it's just "the tip of the iceberg" of a more general problem.
80% of murders in the U.S. involve a firearm. The U.S. murder rate has fluctuated over time: It was even higher than now in the 1970's and circa 1990; dropped sharply during the Clinton prosperity; and rose sharply during the Trump era. (These trends
might not be caused by White House incumbency, but the strong correlations are still interesting and mnemonic.)
Other places have American movies and entertainment. Other places have higher population densities.
Nowhere else has your daft second amendment, and nowhere else has significant numbers of school shootings.
It’s not fucking difficult to see where the problem comes from.
You repealed the eighteenth amendment; Now either repeal the second, or stop pretending to care.
I agree that America's gun culture, and its fetish for the Second Amendment, are a big part of the problem. America has more privately-owned guns than people; almost half of white male adults own a gun. The demographics may be interesting: White Americans with a college degree are
much less likely to own a gun than those without a degree. (For non-whites, the correlation to education disappears.) Republicans are a whopping 2.5 times as likely to own a gun as Democrats!
Availability of guns certainly correlates with gun violence. The three states with most guns per capita are Montana, Wyoming and Alaska. The three states with most suicides per capita are Montana, Wyoming and Alaska. (Most successful suicides are by gun. Non-gun suicide attempts often result in survival and second thoughts.) This perfect correlation does not extend to murder: The seven states with highest murder rate are Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Arkansas, South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee. (Not exactly the list of states where QOPAnon accuses liberals of filling youth with CRT or anti-God anger.
)
But, as other posters have mentioned, mental illness is another reason that America is dysfunctional compared with other developed countries. By many measures, including suicides and drug-related deaths, the U.S. does worse than other Western democracies. This is due partly to healthcare: in Europe free counseling or treatments are readily available. This is not the case in the U.S. and even some "good" insurance plans may not pay for mental health treatment.
Besides the lack of treatment, are there other reasons for the poorer mental health in America? Lack of a "safety net" is certainly a problem, as is the deliberate fomenting of anger by traitors and saboteurs like Rupert Murdoch, Tucker Carlson or Donald Trump. Do the following stats provide a hint?
mhanational.org said:
Outpatient mental health service use in the past year was highest for adults reporting two or more races (8.8 percent), white adults (7.8 percent), and American Indian or Alaska Native adults (7.7 percent), followed by black (4.7 percent), Hispanic (3.8 percent), and Asian (2.5 percent) adults
This number represented 21.0% of all U.S. adults. The prevalence of AMI [any mental illness] was higher among females (25.8%) than males (15.8%). Young adults aged 18-25 years had the highest prevalence of AMI (30.6%) compared to adults aged 26-49 years (25.3%) and aged 50 and older (14.5%).
(The low number for blacks might partly reflect lack of access to outpatient mental health service.)
The Charleton Heston quote. 'IYou can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers'.
That pretty much explains our gun problems.
Heston was interviewed in Michael Moore's famous documentary. Asked why he wanted to own a gun, Heston replied "because I can." Asked why Canada had less of a murder problem, Heston referred to U.S.'s "ethnic diversity." Sensing this was a wrong answer, Heston terminated the interview soon after.
What is the point of new laws if the old ones are not enforced? It’s a straw man that conservatives don’t want to get illegal guns off the streets. But if local judges and prosecutors are lenient on criminals using guns, what do you expect? ACAB! Abolish prisons! Bail reform! Okay.
Do you just cut-and-paste this whenever there's a gun tragedy? Try again, next week, on the next massacre — maybe the comment will be relevant then. This murderer thought that the old law about waiting until 18th birthday was enforced. Having already threatened gun violence and shown mental illness, a background check should have stopped his purchase.
