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this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
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If those two nations are considered high, what would you consider the US which has 3x the amount of guns per capita than Canada does? Do we just label US gun ownership fucking absurd so gun nuts stop bringing up that ridiculous point?
The US has way more than 3x as many guns per capita than Canada. The official estimate are also almost certainly low by an absurd amount.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180508072254/http://weaponsman.com/?p=33875
The number I found was within that range (the low number) so the per capita numbers would be 3-5x. The main point is the same though that we have an absurd amount of guns.
That range was also based on 2016 number before NICS check and sales records were smashed over and over again. The numbers being presented now are at the bottom of the likely range from nearly a decade ago after millions and millions of guns have been sold over the past years. I would be very surprised if there were actually fewer than 750m in the us.
Has Canada one third the per capita gun violence of the US? Spoiler: it doesn't. People bring up that point because it clearly shows that gun ownership does not correlate with "gun crime". Guns do not cause crime. Guns are a means to an end. Do you want to treat symptoms? Then go ahead and regulate shit out of guns. Or, do you want to treat causes? Then prevent poverty, establish proper welfare and universal health care.
If you feel the need to label everyone who brings up that point a gun nut, I will have to call you a smooth brain for not understanding the difference between symptoms and causes. But, maybe we can do without the insults?
Nobody is claiming it is a 1:1 correlation. While guns themselves do not commit crime, they make it significantly easier to commit. Lowering the opportunity cost to commit crime is going to lead to a higher amount of crime plain and simple. Most gun violence is committed by gangs. If fewer of them had access to guns, it would be much harder for them to commit violent crimes since drive by stabbings are not as much of a thing and would not increase as a substitute for guns. We can look at the UK which has similar levels of wealth inequality to the US and has similar rates of knife related violent crime but significantly lower gun violence.
Should we treat poverty? Absolutely. But that has a hell of a lot more variables in it and is a much bigger task. We can also walk and chew gum at the same time and work on both of them. I'm not even one to ask for significant gun restrictions outside of those in Canada or Switzerland. But if you are looking to decrease gun violence, the most sure fire way is going to be to significantly decrease the number of guns.
The issue that we must face in the USA is that is not remotely possible. They are here to stay regardless of what anyone wants. They number in the hundreds of millions and can perpetually exist in silent, dark places that no one knows about. They don't announce their presence with beacons or signals, and could be hidden anywhere.
The way I face that issue is to not worry about it. I take comfort in knowing that violent crime is very rare, and my society is very safe overall, and I carry on doing whatever I want without fear of any of that.
This, yeah. The reason that gun laws vary so wildly on a state by state basis is because plenty of cities have implemented pretty strict gun laws at the behest of their citizens, but without overarching federal legislation which is pretty fuckin hard to get passed, nothing ever happens and you can just take in guns by the vanload from a state or two away.
You'd also probably see some level of civil disobedience or refusal to enforce whatever amount of gun regulation, by the police, by storefronts, by gun-owning citizens, whatever. I expect that would probably go up as you increased regulation. I dunno about federally requiring licensing in that context. The usual response to this is a delusional kind of "WELL THEN JUST ARREST THEM OR FIRE THEM ALL" kind of thing, but, I mean, if even a third of people decide not to conform, or actively oppose, your legislation, that's a pretty big problem that requires more careful consideration.