Amazing how this topic/narrative surges whenever the chances of leftists and minorities arming themselves and/or actually doing something peak.
So what happened this time? Recent Performative Resistance/“No-Kings Protest” turn-out lower than expected? Higher? Someone show up armed and people talked to them instead of assuming they were a counter-protestor? Police and other local morons particularly brutal in a way the press couldn’t gloss?
This may be referencing a chart from CNN’s report on Small Arms Survey data, which includes many other statistics making the same point. Here’s another:
Hmm, why did you exclude Switzerland, Mike?
Hey, look, it’s divisive rhetoric!
Crimes and violence are caused by unjustified heirarchies, in particular, the ruling class ruling over the working class.
You know what would reduce school shootings? Publicly funded mental health services for young people.
This kind of post is aimed at dividing the working class into two groups, pro-gun, and anti-gun. Refuse to give in to their messaging. Solidarity across the WHOLE working class!
Bingo
Nah dude, I’m sure we will all be drowning in peace once only ICE, police and the US military have all the guns :D
nothing on this comic advocates against publicly funded mental health services
Sure, but know what else would reduce school shootings?
Less guns.
Would it? Is that the only solution?
Why do Yemen and Switzerland have such high ownership and no school shootings?
Don’t get me wrong, less guns would be good for many reasons. And I think we can get there, eventually. But right now, I have zero confidence that our government is fit to enforce any law fairly. Neonazis are openly running the DoD and ICE, this is not the time to dial back the Bill of Rights.
Which is more likely, funding for better mental health services as a whole or removing guns from the unwilling?
So, Australia doesn’t publicly fund mental health treatment and still hav3 way, way less gun deaths.
We also have way less guns.
You guys have stock standard excuses. None of them are true.
How about both? Why do you pretend it’s one or the other?
Give free mental health support AND prohibit guns. Best of both worlds
Comics like this are just preaching to the choir, and only the ones so fervent they’re blinded by their own self righteousness. It’s so obviously cherry picked and slanted if you’ve looked into the issues at play. It shows no respect for the reader at all, and likely only hardens the opinions of those it disagrees with.
You can’t convince anyone of anything with this kind of trollish virtue signal. It only exists to get the author pats on the back from people in their own camp.
This kind of shitty rhetoric harms the cause. You can’t win hearts and minds with blatant disrespect.
Why all the side issues. Is it true, or not?
If it is true, and I believe that it is, it may explain why you are triggered?
I think it’s lying to try to get people to do a good thing.
Deception destroys credibility.
And it makes fun of people who disagree with it.
It alienates, not converts.
Ok, then what is the truth?
I see no disrespect. I see a good and valid point being made that a huge amount of Americans are oblivious to the obvious.
Do you really think that dismissively talking down to people telling them they’re delusional is the best way or even a way to win hearts and minds?
That is a cherry picked statistic. It is blatant propaganda.
Explain which bit is cherry picked and why? Is it disputed that the US has very high gun ownership and very high gun deaths when compared to other first world countries?
It doesn’t include countries with high gun ownership and low deaths. Gun ownership doesn’t actually necessarily correlate with gun violence. USA is a violent country for various other reasons.
I did a bit of research myself. A few Nordic countries, and New Zealand, have high gun ownership and low gun death rates.
It seems that the difference is that these countries have very high gun regulations, strict purchase and permit laws and restrictions on storage. I’m not an American, but in truth, is this the case in the US? For instance, none of these countries permit handgun open carry. In Australia owning a handgun at all is next to impossible (almost) and the requirements hardly make it worthwhile for target shooters.
You’re totally right
What’s missing here are all the counties where guns are prohibited, period, and where basically there are no gun deaths because doh.
It’s easy to just throw this as “cherry picked” but it’s a basic fact that the US has ab insane amount of gun violence whereas counties with strict gun laws have little gun violence and countries with extremely strict gun laws have practically no gun violence because there aren’t any guns to use to begin with
You bad guns, you ban gun violence, period
The mental health issue that is constantly brought up is a separate issue that should of course also be fixed, it’s just that the US thinks it’s a good idea to have extremely bad mental health support mixed with free guns when you open up a bank account.
Do you care that people are dead, or that guns were used to kill them? Is it okay to do mass murder by bomb or truck?
If you care about deaths, then you make a chart about deaths. If you care about guns, you make a chart about guns.
This is a chart about guns.
Removed by mod
It would help if you name these countries and their stats. Not giving you homework to do, but it is an empty statement to make after the OP posted actual data.
Happy to accept that the US isn’t a standalone if we see your information.
The vertical axis is labelled “gun homicides”. That’s not a very useful statistic.
It should be noted that this chart compares gun homicides to gun ownership, which… of course those will correlate
If we plotted kangaroo injuries vs kangaroos per capita, we’d see a similar outlier in Australia
It would be more useful to see gun ownership compared to total homicides, to see if an overabundance of guns correlates with more murders. Even then, though, a correlation between the two might not be casual in that direction. It may instead be that in areas with a high homicide rate, people are more likely to own a firearm for defense.
What you would need to prove is that places with high gun ownership have significantly higher homicide rates, but places with high homicide rates don’t have significantly higher rates of gun ownership
That’s exactly the point! The whole, “it’s the owner, not the gun” argument is dumb. If you have more guns, you have more gun-related homicides – as simple as that.
When the populace don’t have easy access to guns, then that’s one weapon less they can use to hurt others.
Well for most of the named countries using all homicides versus gun homicides makes little difference.
australia 0.8 belgium 1.08 canada 1.8 france 1.3 portugal 0.72 spain 0.69 usa 5.76
What you should look up is homicides/non-homicide crimes against gun ownership. You will find that the US does not in general have more crime except for homicides.
You also are not going to find a country with anywhere near the gun ownership that the US has, so I suppose your are safe there.
My problem with this dataset is, it combines US in one dot, while all other countries crowd at the corner. I failed to see a trend saying “more guns = more gun homicide”.
If there is a chart showing that state by state, presumably regresses to a line, that I can get behind.
Another interesting tidbit is that homicides (among all violent crime) have fallen steadily since 1993 in the US, while firearms ownership has increased.
Don’t think everyone needs or should own a gun. But of course if you compare gun ownership to gun related deaths it’s generally going to be higher when more guns per capita are present. You can do the same thing with cars, lawn mowers, dogs and even vending machines. The more of a thing there is, of course there is going to be more deaths and injuries related to it.
It’d be a good start to just conduct proper tests before handing people firearm permits. People who can barely read or who rage when you honk at them should never be allowed to own, let alone carry firearms.
The only is a stop a good gun with a guy, is a bad gun with a guy! Two guns! Both guys.
Finally, proof that homicides cause gun ownership
I know you mean this as a joke but does that not make sense with US history?
A lot of killing causes people to own guns, a lot of guns causes a lot of killings, and repeat.
The chicken or the egg
Yes, just a joke.
I’d have a hard time preparing for a school shooting or similar, simply based on the mere lack of guns in my environment. I think I held an actual gun in my hand once in my life and that was in Murica. And it was a civil war times rifle. Not sure I’d even be able to do a shoot without hurting myself.
The US seems to be a huge outlier on both axes. You would have to exclude it to make any sense of the data.
Don’t worry, they instead excluded countries like Switzerland that have high gun ownership with nonexistent homicide rates. So is all good. Also, including only gun homicides instead of all homicides, as if it is suprising that people use the weapon available to them. I guess as long as people are stabbed to death instead of shot, is all good.
where is switzerland? on the chart, this often gets touted as the counterpoint
On this chart Norway would also be listed with 29 guns per person. These are owned by only 10% of the population however, and automatic rifles are banned for civilians. I don’t disagree with the sentiment of this meme, but it’s cherry picking data in exactly the same manner as “the other side” would do just for a cheap gotcha argument.
These are owned by only 10% of the population however
Thats the case in America too, iirc like 30% of households have at least 1 gun, and if you assume 4 people per household, and 1.25 gun per American, that means the average gun-owning household has 16 guns.
It makes a lot of sense to own more than one gun. For self defense you might own one shotgun, one handgun, and a smaller handgun for concealed carry. If you’re a hunter, you likely want two rifles in different calibers, a shotgun, and a hand gun. In addition to that you might have an old gun laying around or grandpa’s old hunting gun, a range toy, some historic gun you like for some reason. Sport target shooters will have a few different guns, depending on what disciplines they shoot. Then there are also more serious collectors who might have dozens or hundreds of different firearms.
Yes. What’s the point of owning a firearm if you can’t have a gun for when you’re sleeping in your bedroom, a gun when you’re on the toilet, a gun when you’re on the couch watching the TV, a gun when you’re at the front door greeting guests, a gun when you’re driving your F150, a gun for that second amendment right, a gun when you go grocery shopping, a gun when you go buying clothes, a gun to go with your Tony Montana cosplay and you know, a gun just for fun. What are you supposed to do? Go outside without a gun? Use one gun for all those things? Don’t you know switching to your sidearm is always faster than reloading?
You don’t need all those guns. You want all those guns.
Don’t you know switching to your sidearm is always faster than reloading?
We call this the New York Reload and strapping down with like six pistols is a legitimate tactic.
Very true. People have all kinds of stuff they don’t actually need, but just like having.
I’m not sure the number of guns someone owns makes a difference regarding public safety and gun crime.
I support stricter gun laws in the US, registered ownership, some kind of license, sales only through licenses dealers, restricted advertising, waiting times, safe storage requirements, etc. A lot of gun regulations in the US are not very effective and more symbolic. Bothering legal owners more doesn’t necessarily help with violent crimes using firearms.
Fundamentally the main reasons for gun crime are social and can improved without changing gun regulations.
I agree. The main reasons for crime are social and in America that should definitely be improved upon, but have you questioned why specifically gun related crimes are so high compared to let’s say knife-related crimes? Because in Europe it’s probably the opposite, knife-related crimes are higher than gun-related crimes.
Yes, easy gun availability makes gun crime more likely. If you think your victim might have a gun, you want to use a gun to rob them. Knives are very deadly weapons as well and very hard to regulate.
In many European countries it’s easier to get a gun illegally than legally.
Any kind of registration of ANYTHING in the US is a bad idea. Especially at a time where the federal government is openly genocidal towards certain minorities, especially trans people. Having a list of trans people who own guns would be free eats for them if they declared every single one a terrorist or enemy of the state.
A valid concern.
A gun registry wouldn’t list if people are trans or not though. A list of trans people you would get through healthcare and insurance. Changes of a legal name is probably registered somewhere as well. So they would need to cross reference.
If they want to go after trans people individually, they would go for leaders and activists first. They are easily found on social media nowadays. Then go after organized groups.
An individual armed trans person is much less of a concern, than organized groups armed or not.
Who are you to tell how many of those someone needs? If someone isn’t a murderous psychopath it does not matter how many guns they have cause exactly none of them will be used on a person.
Let’s me rephrase it then. You can want to have all those guns but it’s not sensible to have all those guns.
The argument here is that it’s sensible to have so many guns. It’s not sensible because even among Americans the median gun owner owns 2 guns. You don’t need a shotgun, a handgun, a concealed carry gun and a whole other set of guns for hunting and whole other set of guns for the shooting range etc. That is not sensible, that is just someone wanting a whole lot of guns.
You don’t need a shotgun, a handgun, a concealed carry gun and a whole other set of guns for hunting and whole other set of guns for the shooting range etc. That is not sensible, that is just someone wanting a whole lot of guns.
What you described in the first sentence is entirely reasonable, you just don’t understand it.
Here’s an evaluation based strictly on cost.
My hunting rifles cost something like $2 per round or more to fire. If I want to go to the range and practice technique firing 50 to 100 times is normal. This is a cost of $100 to $200 dollars.
My plinking, or training, rifles on the other have a cost of about 4 cents per round to fire. So now a practice day at the range is below $5.
However I cannot hunt with a training rifle, it’s caliber is far too small.
It’s the same with shotguns and handguns. The heavier ones are necessary for real activities but they cost a lot to train with. The smaller caliber ones are much less expensive to train with but aren’t useful for real work.
What you are missing, IMO, is that firearms are tools and people who use their tools tend to own more than one of each.
TBH if you’re a hunter you DO need different guns, because a gun for deer is overkill for something like wolves/boars but mostly useless against something like a bear. But aside from that, if I did live in the US I would be a collector, but the only guns I’d seriously plan to buy brand new would be a carry pistol, a shotgun, and a rifle. And as long as they’re following the law and no one’s getting hurt, I don’t think it matters how many guns one could have.
Ah yes, the two genders, completely sane “piles of guns” owner and raging psychopath.
Nuance doesn’t exist, accidents don’t happen and a mostly overlooked societal mental health crisis is woke DEI propaganda.
It makes a lot of sense to own more than one gun
It’s hard to tell for me if this is meant as satire.
On this chart Norway would also be listed with 29 guns per person. These are owned by only 10% of the population however
Wait, so you’re saying the average Norwegian gun owner owns 290 guns? That sounds very implausible.
Yeah, the numbers seem wild to me. I live in Norway. I have family who lives up north among polar bears, so they have gun for bear protection. My in-laws do some hunting, so they have a few hunting rifles. I feel like my family and in-laws are far above the regular citizens when it comes to gun count per person, but it still averages to around 0.5 guns per person among us. I don’t know anyone in Norway who owns a gun to defend against other humans. Who are these 10%?
I think carrying the guns around plays a big role too
Also the social safety net and availability of (mental) healthcare, it’s not like Europe doesn’t have some glaring problems in that regard but holy shit is it better than whatever the US is doing.
yeah the type of firearm would be very useful data
next to germanybetween Portugal and Canada. according to small arms survey, which supplied the data, switzerland has about 25 guns per 100 people and .5 deaths per 100k people..5 deaths per 100 people.
You mean per 100,000 people, right?
yeah, fixed
Thank god 😅
Alright, thanks for confirming!
Total homicides, total deaths, firearm homicides, or firearm deaths? Because the graph in the comic is intentionally misleading that way.
violent killings involving firearms, i think it said
So mostly suicides then
don’t think so actually, have a look.
Switzerland distributes a lot of firearms, particularly through their mandatory military service. But Switzerland also very tightly controls the supply of ammunition for all of those firearms they issue.
Uhm not really, I have multiple family members which store quite a bit of ammunition at home and while noone might get them by accident you could easily get the guns and the ammo if you wanted to.
Controlling supplies doesn’t mean they can’t get some, just that they had to jump through quite a few hoops to get it.
What hoops? Being 18? Not having psychological issues, not having been in serious legal trouble before? That’s about it.
The issue the USA has is how they treat weapons, as toys, not as deadly tools we can appreciate and yet should respect and only handle safely.
Can’t shoot your gun if you don’t have ammo.
Which get very stricktly regulated in Switzerland
Czechia and Austria are also worth putting on this chart.
While the data might be cherry picked, one thing that can’t be displayed here is motivation. In Canada, a decent number of people have guns, but you can’t carry firearms with you, you have to take highly specific routes while transporting any restricted hand guns. The role of guns is sport shooting and hunting and it’s highly regulated for those.
In the USA, guns are intended to be used to kill other civilians. Owning a gun for self-defense purposes is buying with the intention that you may one day use it to kill another human. Not an enemy combatant in war, but a fellow citizen with a gun.
It’s only a feeling, but I feel like that might be the biggest distinction between the USA and other (omitted) high-gun-per-capita countries. Guns in the USA aren’t for mitary drafting or protection against a national invasion.
There’s also the matter of training and licensing. A buddy in the USA was staunchly opposed to gun licensing. When I said that in Canada, it just helps ensure that people know how to maintain their gun and use it safely, he said, “Well the people who don’t take the time to learn how to maintain it and use it safely just shouldn’t get it in the first place”, which I’m sure is a popular enough sentiment, but it’s also the argument for licensing. The zero barrier for entry approach is also a problem.
I’d love to see more nuanced stats than this 4-panel comic is presenting.
Guns in America, to me, are a perfect representation of the fallacy of personal responsibility.
Let’s take a scenario that, while tragic, has happened in the USA; a small boy of less than 6 finds a gun, plays with it, and shoots their baby sibling. The common refrain from responsible gun owners is: “You should’ve kept it locked and trained your family to use it responsibly!”
But who’s “you”? The shooter? The victim? One was killed and one was traumatized. The parent? They didn’t suffer nearly as much as the others.
So it’s not even the only issue where I hear “We need parents to be more responsible!” but simply saying that won’t change the number of drunk deadbeat parents putting zero effort into their children; and potentially leading other real human beings to suffer for it.
You should’ve kept it locked and trained your family to use it responsibly
I don’t get it. Why not just have it locked away in some kind of safe? Why the need for training?
In terms of assigning responsibility, this is an easy one.
“You” refers to the firearm’s owner. Firearm ownership comes with a high degree of responsibility. It means knowing and following the four rules, at least two of which must be broken at the same time for someone to get hurt. It means maintaining a reasonable degree of control over that firearm at all times, whether it’s on your person or being stored.
If anyone is “finding” a firearm, reasonable precautions were not taken to secure that firearm.
These cases all boil down to gross negligence on the owner’s part. Legally and logically, the owner should be the one to suffer the consequences.
Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, the incident gets treated as a “tragedy” and legal consequences do not get applied.
So yeah, haul the parent to court, and then sit the traumatized child down and tell them “Good news! The law has correctly identified the negligent party in this incident. You may be eligible for up to $1mil in damages!”
while he’s sitting there crying over his dead sibling. Better, you want to extend this case to a school shooting? Go announce to 30 parents that “We worked out who is negligent!” You discover common, repeating human ignorance after the fact, and nobody is saved.
The fact that some people in our society are negligent is an expected outcome. That’s why your friend will yell at you one night when you take his car keys away, and then thank you the next day when he’s sober. The point is that society can plan better for that negligence, rather than just pat themselves on the back for spotting it.
I think there is a distinction between responsibility and blame. I don’t think blame is easy to assign here, but responsibility is, the parents are responsible. Doesn’t really change anything after the fact, but I also wouldn’t say that the idea of personal responsibility is a fallacy. But just saying that people should be more responsible doesn’t actually change the situation, you’re right.
I live in Jersey and based on what you’ve written we have similar laws regarding guns, and you’re not going to believe this, but we consistently end up as one of the states with the least gun-related crimes. It must just be some crazy coincidence.
Seeing that reminds me, as atrocious as that is… the numbers are miniscule compared to the biggest killer. Pharma.
