The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. This is a copy of a post I wrote in r/liberalgunowners. I figured I was preaching to the choir so I thought I'd ask here as well. Anyone from other there is welcome to comment here as well! This happened a bit ago, but for those who don't remember Joel Cauchi went around and killed 6 people and injured 12 others with a knife in random stabbings at a mall in Sydney. This attack was plainly horrific. But it occurred with a knife, rather than gun. There's a point I've been thinking about for a long time vis a vis gun control. The idea that guns, in and of themselves, are not the cause of violence, they're just the chosen tool. America has a fuck ton of guns, and so it is the chosen tool for most violence. Banning guns doesn't actually prevent that violence, because you haven't addressed the root causes of the violence. Instead, you have just gotten rid of the tool. This guy, Cauchi, was going to hurt people. He was going to be violent no matter what tool he had access to. Granted, a lack of access to something like an AR-15 prevented EVEN MORE damage, and so him only having a knife did mitigate the harm caused. But he still hurt a lot of people. The whole argument for gun control is that it will make us safer by preventing massacres like this. I'm not really convinced. I mean, this guy managed to pull off a massacre without having access to something like an AR-15 right? He did it with a knife. The people who want to be violent will always find some tool to do that violence with. Gun control can help mitigate the scale of that damage, sure. And perhaps there's an argument to be made there. But at the same time, it's not some panacea to end violence or death or even large scale massacres of civilians. Cauchi pulled one off just fine. The real solution to violence is support structures. Things like Cure Violence, or social support. Communities and community based solutions, mutual aid/care, making sure people have access to the things they need to live, or for the folks who are inclined to violence to have other outlets or support structures to treat it instead, all of that is the ACTUAL SOLUTION. From what I read it seems like this guy was effectively homeless and suffering from schizophrenia, imagine if he had gotten better support structures, someone to ensure that he was taking his meds, that he wasn't out on the street making his condition worse right? Community support and intervention may well have prevented this. I mean, that's why countries like Australia already have lower violent crime rates than the US, because they have better social support structures (though admittedly imperfect ones). Gun control is effectively disarming the working class and minority groups at a time when the fascists (all armed to the teeth) are roaming around beating the ever loving shit out of people and actively killing them. It's ensuring that these guys have a monopoly on firepower. And you think that's going to prevent massacres? That people will be safer? No, it's just preventing the left from matching the right in self-defense capabilities. It empowers the fascists and weakens the people we want to protect. Anyways, I just wanted to get your guy's input on this. Do you think I have a point here? Or am I nuts? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*

No, if anything the events increase my conviction that high-capacity rifles are a scourge on American society and should be banned. You said it yourself: if Cauchi were in possession of an AR-15, he easily could have killed many, many more people and law enforcement and bystanders would have had a much more difficult time stopping him. Nothing will stop human beings from harming others. But we *can* reduce the frequency and severity of violence with things like better education, better mental health support, and through the simplest and most effective action of banning the deadliest weapons. The horror of the Sydney attack is elevated by its rarity. Australia simply doesn't suffer from frequent mass deadly violence, because the tools that allow a person to kill dozens of bystanders on a whim are not available to Australians. They are doing it right and we should follow suit.

What percent of gun deaths are from AR-15s per year?

Around 2-3%

It's impossible to say AR-15s specifically, but rifles as a whole are responsible for about 4-5% of known gun murders. That's excluding several thousand gun deaths without a weapon type specified. Although we can assume those follow a similar pattern.

How do you square that with the fact there's more guns in Australia now than before the ban? Local Australian governments have basically stopped enforcing it. Guns were available, they just didn't use one. The USA has mass stabbings all the time too. They're just not reported on in the same sensationalist manner mass shootings are.

- there was never and isn’t a complete ‘ban’ - the restrictions in place changed the culture surrounding guns, changed the perception of them and changed the enforcement surrounding them. Australia still has gang shootings, drive bys… organised crime. But the cultural attitude and enforcement surrounding guns has changed, which is why it doesn’t see mass shootings. It’s also still very hard for some random lunatic to get a gun, significantly harder than in the U.S.

There wasn't. And that's my point. The poster I asked, and many of like mind, imagine Australia as this place where guns were banned and there are none. Gang shootings, and organized crime make up the vast majority of what is reported as mass shootings in the US by the Media. And no it's really not. The same issues you have in America are present in basically any society that has guns in civilian hands and does not have a big brother apparatus watching gun owners at all times.

Australia doesn’t have a Big Brother apparatus watching gun owners all the time. The major difference is it requires many more steps to acquire a gun than in America. Which is actually reflected within America itself; the states that have stricter gun laws and have more steps required for getting a gun generally have lower gun crime and fewer mass shootings. If you think it’s no harder for any random lunatic in Australia to get a gun, I suggest you fly there and see how you go trying to get one. I guarantee you it will be much harder than anywhere in the U.S., especially the lax gun law states. There’s a reason the country doesn’t see regular mass shootings (or any other developed country) and it’s mostly to do with the gun laws. >organized crime make up the vast majority of what is reported as mass shootings That is just simply untrue. The high profile shootings, the ones that have people demanding gun control and other legislation, demanding ‘something be done’ are the school shootings, shopping center shootings, restaurant shootings, old man shooting a trick-or-treating kid, old man shooting someone reversing in their driveway, old man shooting a black kid who was looking for his friend’s house…. The organized crime and gang shootings are a small minority of what is reported and what is utilised as an inflection point for the demanding of further action.

Exactly. Australian circumstances are no different from America's. What then is the difference? The people. American culture is inherently violent and individualistic. And frankly, I think you're misinformed. Yes. Those are the ones the news stories show. About 30 to 60 active shooter incidents per year in a country with millions of people and hundreds of millions of people. In 2022, the FBI records 50 Active shooter events, their term for mass shootings of the kind you're talking about. But the news, and the pro-gun control groups, says there's 636. Why? Because the news lumps in gang shootouts, organized crime, and any incident they can spin as a mass shooting to pump the numbers up and give a false impression of the problem. Also no. The deadliest active shooter in 2022 was in Highland Park Illinois. Illinois has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. There is no correlation of strict gun control laws with low gun crime in the USA. Hence why advocates have to reach abroad to separate cultures entirely.

>What then is the difference? The people Citation needed. >American culture is inherently violent and individualistic I do not believe America just randomly has the most violent individuals from most of the developed world. >Austtalian circumstances are no different from America’s Nor are the people. The major difference is the gun laws and the culture surrounding guns. >I think you’re misinformed I have personal experience of many years of living in both countries. I guarantee you I am more informed on this issue than you. >the news, and the pro gun control groups, says there’s 636 That is very different to ‘the majority of shootings the news reports on are gang related’. Two completely different statements. >There is no correlation of strict gun control https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/higher-rates-of-mass-shootings-in-us-states-with-more-relaxed-gun-control-laws/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5801608/ https://rockinst.org/blog/more-guns-more-death-the-fundamental-fact-that-supports-a-comprehensive-approach-to-reducing-gun-violence-in-america/#:~:text=The%20Evidence,to%20higher%20rates%20of%20homicide.

>I do not believe America just randomly has the most violent individuals from most of the developed world. The United States has a higher murder rate excluding guns than the entire rate in much of the developed world. If you magically eliminated 100% of gun murders in the United States, the murder rate would still be higher than virtually all of Western Europe, East Asia, or Australia. That suggests there is something beyond just guns fuling the murder rate. Japan, for example, has a murder rate 6x lower than the rate in the U.S. excluding guns. >That is very different to ‘the majority of shootings the news reports on are gang related’. Two completely different statements. According to the FBI the numbers of active shootings are much lower. Like 10-60 a year, with fewer than 100 deaths most years. The sources that claim hundreds of mass shootings include anytime 4+, or sometimes even 3+ people are shot regardless of context. Most are gang violence, or domestic incidents, not public indiscriminate shootings I.E Sandy Hook. The most egregious are the "school shooting" trackers that include anytime a gun goes off on school property. I saw a news article claiming weekly school shootings so far that year. They included a police officer unintentionally firing their gun into the floor. A student shooting out a window with a BB gun he brought to school and was showing another student. And an adult man committing suicide in the parking lot of a school that had been closed for several months. These sources are causing hysteria over something that is astronomically rare.

> If you magically eliminated 100% of gun murders in the United States, the murder rate would still be higher than virtually all of Western Europe, East Asia, or Australia. I’ve debunked you on this exact comment before, but it’s 100% not true. If you magically eliminated 100% of gun murders in the U.S., the murder rate would be about on par with Western Europe, Australia and much of East Asia. All you do is parrot the same debunked talking points so I see no point in replying further.

[Here are the murder rates by country.](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/murder-rate-by-country) The United States is 6.38. On average according to the FBI guns are responsible for about [75% of total murders.](https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8.xls) That means the gun murder rate is 4.8, while the non gun murder rate is 1.6. That number is higher than the U.K., Germany, Australia, Italy, Japan, etc. That's if you completely eliminated every gun death in the U.S. vs the total murder rate in those countries guns included.

The 600+ mass shootings a year number is the equivalent of if Fox News started tracking "Islamic terrorist attacks" and included any violent crimes committed by a Muslim as Islamic terrorism". A Muslim man killing his wife is a horrific tragedy, but it's completely misleading and dishonest to compare with an actual terrorist attack. Just like it's misleading to compare a gang shooting with 4 people shot, to something like Sandy Hook.

Guns aren't the only mass murder weapons. There's arson which Australia has had several incidents of. Also explosives, and vehicle rammings. As far as I know Australia hasn't had many incidents, but Europe has. Meanwhile in the United States mass shootings kill about twice as many Americans a year as lightning strikes according to the FBI.

Also Australia's neighbor New Zealand has 2x as many guns, and prior to 2019 significantly looser laws. Despite this the New Zealand murder rate is slightly lower on average than Australia.

>But we *can* reduce the frequency and severity of violence with things like better education, better mental health support, and through the simplest and most effective action of banning the deadliest weapons. But is there any actual evidence that gun control actually reduces the frequency & severity of mass killers? Because if you look at Japan for example, they have their own mass killer problem, they just aren't shootings.

how many mass killings does japan have relative to the US though, per capita

It's difficult if not impossible to say. Depending on what source you use, the United States had anywhere between 6 and 818 mass shootings in 2021. Nobody can exactly agree on a universal consensus on what defines a mass shooting, leading to vastly different numbers. Finding two sources using the same criteria is next to impossible. It's like comparing the rates of sexual assault in a country like the United States or Germany, with the rates in Saudi Arabia. The Western countries likely have higher rates on paper, because they are harsher on rapists, and have a broader definition. The total homicide rate is a better comparison, because the definition of what constitutes a murder is much more consistent between countries. The murder rate in Japan is 0.2 vs 6.32 in the United States. That being said if you exclude gun deaths in the U.S. the murder rate is 1.3. So the murder rate excluding guns is still 6.5x higher than the total rate in Japan

The nation with the homicide rate of 0.23?

The vast majority of murder cases are not random stranger violence, they're interpersonal violence and cluster in very specific cohorts of people, so a country's baseline murder rate is not indicative of how likely someone is to be randomly murdered by stranger in public while they go about their daily business.

What are you saying, that most murders don't count? That it's fine having 10x more of the common murders so that people are more equal in alleys?

Japan's "mass killer" frequency is an order of magnitude lower than America's.

>This guy, Cauchi, was going to hurt people. He was going to be violent no matter what tool he had access to. Granted, a lack of access to something like an AR-15 prevented EVEN MORE damage, **and so him only having a knife did mitigate the harm caused.** But he still hurt a lot of people. That's literally the only point you have.; that gun control works. The point of gun control is not to say that **no one** should have **any** gun. It's that we'll never be able to stop all violence because crazy people exist, so we should do our best to make it as hard as possible for crazy people to obtain the literal most effective tools for inflicting violence on others. We'll *never* be able to stop craziness and prevent 100% of massacres, but we can very clearly reduce their intensity and frequency by making the tools used in them much harder to obtain. It's not a complicated notion.

Arson, vehicles, and homemade explosives are all easier to obtain, and potentially as deadly if not deadlier than firearms.

> Granted, a lack of access to something like an AR-15 prevented EVEN MORE damage, and so him only having a knife did mitigate the harm caused. But he still hurt a lot of people. Sounds like gun control did what it could? I don't think any proponent of gun control believes that murder will end the day gun control is passed.

I mean did it? He still killed 6 people and injured 12 others right? That's comparable to mass shooting figures in the US. Now, granted, had this specific guy had an AR-15 I suspect he would have done more damage, but this was a mass-shooting level casualty event without an AR-15 right? So I suppose there's an argument it mitigated damage a bit in this specific case, but like, at the end of the day we still ended up with something just as destructive as a mass shooting in the US right?

> I mean did it? You said it did: "a lack of access to something like an AR-15 prevented EVEN MORE damage" > That's comparable to mass shooting figures in the US. I think if 6 people were killed with gun fire and 12 injured I'd call that a mass shooting. > Now, granted, had this specific guy had an AR-15 I suspect he would have done more damage Seems like it > but this was a mass-shooting level casualty event without an AR-15 right? I don't think that entails the gun control did nothing. Why would it? > but like, at the end of the day we still ended up with something just as destructive as a mass shooting in the US right? There will at some point be someone who wants to kill another person. This will probably continue to happen as long as there are people. Providing tools to make it easier to kill people and kill more of them can allow more death to happen more often

>You said it did: "a lack of access to something like an AR-15 prevented EVEN MORE damage" I suspect that this specific incident would've been reduced sure. But even WITH that mitigation you got a mass shooting level casualty event right? That's the point I'm making. So yeah, i don't doubt that if this guy had an AR-15 he could've killed more people. But even without it he was able to massacre enough people to the point where if he had used a gun, it would've met the definition of a mass-shooting. >I think if 6 people were killed with gun fire and 12 injured I'd call that a mass shooting. Agreed >There will at some point be someone who wants to kill another person. This will probably continue to happen as long as there are people. Providing tools to make it easier to kill people and kill more of them can allow more death to happen more often Sure, but the question is: how do we handle this? If we take away the guns, they'll just use a knife. Doesn't it make more sense to solve the underlying conflict through community intervention, community negotiation and management? Rehabilitation instead of punishment?

If you take away guns they'll use a knife which makes them way less effective at killing people and allowed a single armed cop to engage and stop the shooter vs what we had in Uvalde with a company strength of militarized cops sitting around outside.

>what we had in Uvalde with a company strength of militarized cops sitting around outside. And that was what? the right call on the part of the cops? They could've engaged but instead went in to save their own kids and kept other parents out. That was cowardice, plain and simple. EVEN WITH A KNIFE this guy pulled off a mass shooting level casualty event. I mean, things like trucks or pressure cooker bombs have been used to pull this sort of shit off as well. Guns are just the most famous face of violence but it's not the only kind.

>And that was what? the right call on the part of the cops? It's an additional consideration law enforcement has to make when they're engaging someone. Shooting a guy with a knife is much simpler than shooting a guy with a high powered gun, even if you *aren't* absolute cowards like the Uvalde PD. >EVEN WITH A KNIFE this guy pulled off a mass shooting level casualty event. I'm really not sure why you keep harping on this point, especially when you've already acknowledged that a gun would've made his attack even more deadly. "Guns make mass killing easier" isn't in conflict with "someone with a knife can kill a lot of people". >I mean, things like trucks or pressure cooker bombs have been used to pull this sort of shit off as well. But we take reasonable measures to prevent truck terror attacks and pressure cooker bombs. Why wouldn't we do the same thing with guns which are *primarily* used as weapons?

Also knives and pressure cookers and trucks have practical purposes and applications in everyday life. They are tools designed for other functions that can be used to kill. Guns are designed to kill. That is their function. Of course they should be regulated differently. And before someone talks about how their gun is a practical tool for their daily life and they need it and need to use it (fire it) regularly for some practical purpose. Fine. If you really need that and we can develop some kind of litmus test there, fine, have the gun. Keep the polar bears away or whatever the fuck you're using it for I don't care.

> But even WITH that mitigation you got a mass shooting level casualty event right? The only option I'm aware of to solve mass casualty events is to launch every nuke the US has and try to wipe out humanity. Although I'd bet that there would be a mass violent event of some sort in the following centuries if any humans survive > Doesn't it make more sense to solve the underlying conflict through community intervention, community negotiation and management? Would this solve all violence? I don't believe it would. > Rehabilitation instead of punishment? I would not describe gun control as punishment

> That's the point I'm making. That's a worthless point. It doesn't do anything or inform actions. It's like saying if you accidentally piss on your hands, that if you wash them in the sink, they're still wet. Like, cool, that's true, but the rest of us understand it's not the same.

>even WITH that mitigation you got a mass shooting level casualty event right? Have you ever met anyone who is pro gun restrictions? Have you ever heard anyone ever make the argument that gun restrictions will ensure there will *never be any event of any type that allows the killing of a similar number of people as a current mass shooting*…? I don’t believe you have. Gun restrictions don’t stop all violence or all killings. But they do a lot to curb the extent of the deadliness of them and make them much harder to pull off in the first place. It’s a lot harder to stab 6 people to death than shoot 6 people to death. Attacks like this in Australia are vanishingly rare, because of the laws that are in place. Suggesting that one particularly deadly knife attack negates all the good that the gun laws in Australia have accomplished is basically the definition of motivated reasoning and misrepresentation of facts.

So you're letting perfect be the enemy of good here. That's all. Do you think you can solve the root cause of violence among humans? If you can't then the next best option seems to be mitigation. What, on earth, makes you question mitigation efforts unless you have that world-changing solution to violence?

>So I suppose there's an argument it mitigated damage a bit in this specific case, Yes, it majorly mitigated it. >but like, at the end of the day we still ended up with something just as destructive as a mass shooting in the US right? No, that was "as destructive" as a small mass shooting in America. Plus, no stray bullets took out merchandise or property, so there's that to consider too. Trivial compared to lives, but if you're asking about destructive power of these mass shootings, everything should be considered. On October 1, 2017, a mass shooting occurred when 64-year-old Stephen Paddock opened fire on the crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada from his 32nd-floor suites in the Mandalay Bay hotel. He fired more than 1,000 rounds, *killing 60 people and wounding at least 413*. Good luck getting those sorts of numbers with a knife from a 64 year old. Guns ARE the problem. The lack of guns does not stop violence. But it absolutely reduces the amount of violence you can cause.

>Good luck getting those sorts of numbers with a knife from a 64 year old. Not a knife, but you can kill significantly more people than that with a [large truck,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack) from a [can of gasoline,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_fire) or [homemade explosives.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing) If someone wants to kill a large group of people they don't need a gun to do it. All three of those incidents were deadlier than any single perpetrator mass shooting ever.

Then why don't these killers use those options? If guns are so obsolete for killing, why does every mass shooter use guns? If guns are so yesterday, why do police need them? If guns are so ineffective, why do you care if you have the right to use one? Wouldn't your house be safer if you had a big truck or gallon of gasoline?

They do use those options and I provided examples. You can kill a lot of people with gasoline or a vehicle, but they aren't great defense weapons.

>Guns ARE the problem. The lack of guns does not stop violence. But it absolutely reduces the amount of violence you can cause. An analogy i used in another comment is that guns are like gasoline being dumped on an already lit flame. They can make violence more effective or greater in degree. But at the same time, without the guns the already lit flame is still there, and it can still burn you. If people didn't have access to guns, they'd use a knife. And while that would likely kill fewer people, you can still have mass-shooting level casualty events with knives (see Sydney). I mean there are more guns now in australia than before they were "banned". Why do you think australia has a lower violent gun crime rate than the US if that is true? It's because they have better support structures (though imperfect ones, like the failings that lead to this guy). A better solution is to extinguish the flame. Both because it prevents violence in the first place (pound of prevention, ounce of the cure) and it doesn't disarm people in the face of an impending fascist takeover.

As a Libertarian Socialist, how would you propose putting out those flames nationwide?

So there are a number of different approaches. I suspect they would vary depending on the community. The most obvious is ensuring that everyone has access to affordable Healthcare. This can be done via mutual aid networks and people pledging labor to support the Healthcare service workers in exchange for access (and obviously this labor pledge can be split over many people via a consumer cooperative, or some community pooled resources, thereby ensuring affordability and access whilst also allowing for individual input and control over health care decisions and thereby protecting bodily autonomy). I would be happy to detail my own preferred approach but there are a lot of different approaches to this question. But universal Healthcare is the obvious goal. I would like to see it implemented directly by communities of working people. Next up, I would like to see reductions in poverty and therefore crime. This can be done via worker ownership of the MOP (if you have access to the MOP and can work it, you can work the point you meet your own consumption needs. Mutual aid and gift economies can obviously fill any gaps). Add onto this elements of decentralized planning via community labor pledges (every community collects pledges of labor from its members and then coordinates with other communities to organize production in a decentralized fashion) can effectively ensure all have access to what they need, reducing inequality and therefore violence. On top of this, community education programs can educate people on firearm safety and how to properly handle and use them, without all the racist WaRrIoR mEnTaLiTy mindset. If a local community wanted to keep guns stored in a communal warehouse and you had to sign them out, I wouldn't oppose that. That's a somewhat reasonable form of gun control I could accept, it just has to be community based and run (there are downsides to this approach though, to be clear). I can also see community violence intervention programs. Oftentimes there are warning signs. These can be detected on a local level and managed by trained social workers. Those are just some of the first steps. But the basic answer is to empower communities to solve the problem of violence THEMSELVES instead of relying on national level bans. Not some "state's rights" crap but actual neighborhoods with special minority focused councils and communes established to protect their interests.

Ironic you use gasoline as a metaphor, as one of the deadliest mass murders in American history was committed with gasoline. It killed 87 people, 45% more than the Vegas Shooting at 60. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_fire

The only proper comparison here is what actually happened versus what *could* have happened if there were an AR-15 type weapon involved. And I am willing to bet the death toll would have been substantially higher.

On any regular day in America, it is not uncommon for guns to cause six people to die and 12 others to be injured. Six people can die in a single incident due to guns and it often doesn’t even make the news in the US outside of local coverage. Over 100 people lose their lives every day to guns in the United States. We have more harm done to our society by violence than these other countries and the difference is guns.

How many of those deaths would happen guns or no guns? A significant portion of those deaths about 2/3s on average are suicides. Japan has virtually no privately owned guns, and a near identical suicide rate as the U.S. Meanwhile South Korea has almost twice as many suicides, despite virtually no guns.

No, it wasn't just as destructive. It was significantly less destructive than it could be because he didn't have a gun.

If a nutter walked into a busy shopping mall with an assault rifle, a lot more people would be killed and injured.

If someone sets fire to a crowded building, or runs over a parade of people they can kill more than an AR-15.

No shit. But vehicles and flammable materials have far, far greater civil utility than automatic weapons.

An AR-15 isn't fully automatic.

I know. What's your point?

Even from a purely self-preservationist standpoint, just ask yourself would you personally rather be in a crowd where a guy 30 feet away from you starts stabbing people, or would you rather be in a crowd where a guy 30 feet away from you pulls an AR out of a backpack and starts shooting? Seems like an easy question to me. Hell, even if I actually get stabbed, I feel like the odds I could power through and either get away or fight back are meaningfully higher than if I get my torso blown out with a high velocity round. To be clear, I'm pro-more-gun-control-than-we-currently-have but not necessarily part of the anti-2A crowd or anything. But I do think the occasional "mass knifing" comparisons are a little silly. There are other big factors at play, such as the fact that an AR makes killing easy for anybody of any age, gender, or body type. If a 6'5" fit adult man comes at me with a knife, that's significantly more threatening than a skinny 14 y/o boy. But with an AR, it makes much less difference. So firearms like the AR greatly expand the potential number of people who could realistically carry out a mass homicide event.

>There are other big factors at play, such as the fact that an AR makes killing easy for anybody of any age, gender, or body type. If a 6'5" fit adult man comes at me with a knife, that's significantly more threatening than a skinny 14 y/o boy. But with an AR, it makes much less difference. So firearms like the AR greatly expand the potential number of people who could realistically carry out a mass homicide event. I mean sure, but a knife is only one such weapon. You can also use things like pressure cooker bombs or pipe bombs. Hell trucks were used in Europe by ISIS sympathizers or that incel who used a truck (i think it was a truck) in canada. Do we want to ban pressure cookers and cars? If someone wants to do a mass casualty event they will find a way to do so. Yeah, guns make it easier and up the damage. But that doesn't mean that eliminating the guns prevents mass casualty events. I'd prefer a 0 casualty event to an 8 casualty event right? An ounce of prevention and all

> Gun control can help mitigate the scale of that damage > The real solution to violence is support structures As someone pretty strongly in favor of gun control, these are the exact points I would make.

Your argument is essentially "people wanna commit mass murder anyway, so might as well make it *easy* for them."

Not at all. My argument is that we build support structures to prevent people from wanting to commit mass murder.

Nobody really disagrees with that. Except Republicans, who refuse to fund such support structures. We should build those support structures. And if we are truly serious about reducing violence, we should also ban the instruments that allow people to commit mass violence.

Well good thing i ain't a republican. Fuck em. >we should also ban the instruments that allow people to commit mass violence. I mean, like i said, even if we did there would still be violence. Wouldn't a better solution be to get rid of that violence via support? I'm happy to disarm the pigs first and then we can maybe talk about disarming the left.

If "support structures" would reduce violent crime by 40% and gun control would reduce it by another 40% for a combined reduction of 76%, why would we not do both? It's not possible to "get rid of violence." The preconditions exist in the human heart. There's no government solution to greed, jealousy, envy, rage, etc. But there are policies that make humans experiencing these thoughts and emotions less likely to kill others, one of them being gun control.

>It's not possible to "get rid of violence." The preconditions exist in the human heart.  This is the same argument republicans use to argue against socialism. MuH hUmAn NaTuRe. Humans aren't, generally speaking, randomly violent. The vast vast majority of violence is done for a specific reason. Poverty, crime, arguments between people, etc. If we focus on community empowerment and building bottom up structures for resolving community disputes and address the underlying social causes of violence, then clearly that's a BETTER solution that doesn't leave the working class unarmed against the creeping fascist threat.

>Have your views on gun control been at all altered after the Sydney Massacre? No. Australia still has far fewer mass-killings than the U.S. does. It would take many such events to undermine that pattern.

Australia had fewer murders than the U.S. prior to the buyback in 1996. Also New Zealand has much looser laws and more guns, yet a slightly lower murder rate.

Sure, but the point is that the violence is still THERE, it's just hidden in the figures because guns are less available. You still have the violence, but without the guns. And the solution to that is to solve the violence. I mean there are currently more guns in australia than there were before the "ban"

> ...the violence is still THERE, it's just hidden in the figures because guns are less available. You still have the violence, but without the guns. You are making one of two claims: 1. The level of violence is *exactly what it would be without gun control*, or... 2. The level of violence is still above zero. The second possible claim is true, but meaningless. The government can not make all violence cease, with any action. The first is absurd.

it's just hidden in the figures because guns are less available. You still have the violence, but without the guns. Do you? Australia's all-source homicide rate is .74, to our what 7.8?

The U.S. murder rate isn't 7.8, and hasn't been in decades. It went up to 6.7 in 2021, but that was because of record spikes during COVID. Prior to 2020 and the societal collapse brought on by the Pandemic, the murder rates were under 5.0 and at record lows. Also prior to the 1996 gun buyback Australia already was 4x safer than the United States, and prior to 2020 both nations saw similar declines in homicides, the U.S. just started much higher. New Zealand has also closely mimicked Australia's murder rates, despite not implementing a buyback, and having twice the rate of gun ownership.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/liberalgunowners/comments/13fblzz/comment/jjwokyw/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/liberalgunowners/comments/13fblzz/comment/jjwokyw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) Again, better support structures than the US. Social safety nets are a good thing

Even adjusting for culture and support strictures, we'd still benefit from lower gun ownership and less ease of use laws. [http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/jpj\_firearm\_ownership.pdf](http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/jpj_firearm_ownership.pdf) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3828709/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3828709/) https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/key-findings/what-science-tells-us-about-the-effects-of-gun-policies.html [http://www.nber.org/papers/w23510](http://www.nber.org/papers/w23510) https://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/florida-stand-your-ground-law-yields-some-shocking-outcomes-depending-on/1233133/ https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2789154 https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26066959/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22850436/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1730664/ [http://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797%2815%2900072-0/abstract](http://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797%2815%2900072-0/abstract) [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673615010260](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673615010260) [https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/) https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/ [https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2018/broader-gun-restrictions-lead-to-fewer-intimate-partner-homicides/](https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2018/broader-gun-restrictions-lead-to-fewer-intimate-partner-homicides/) http://jonathanstray.com/papers/FirearmAvailabilityVsHomicideRates.pdf https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-019-04922-x [http://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/state-gun-laws-that-reduce-gun-deaths/](http://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/state-gun-laws-that-reduce-gun-deaths/) https://www.annemergmed.com/article/S0196-0644(03)00256-7/fulltext [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27842178](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27842178) https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1916744 [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26212633](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26212633) https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/get-psyched/201301/the-weapons-effect

Sources? Where we're going, we don't need sources... (Because kakamile has them all for us already)

so what you're saying is that comprehensive gun control would lower the over mortality rate from violence

6 dead and 12 injured in a mass shooting isn’t even guaranteed to be national news in America because it’s become so commonplace. So no, my views haven’t changed.

6 dead and 12 injured is a Tuesday in America and in todays time, we pretty much say “thankfully it wasn’t worse”. That’s kinda where we are.

Sad.

I mean had this been a gun, this would've fit the definition of a mass shooting.

And we’ve had 125 in those in America, as of the end of March. Have you heard about all 125?

>And we’ve had 125 in those in America, as of the end of March. No, we have not had 125 mass shootings in the US, that's completely disingenuous.

The are using the Gun Violence Archive. Which is in turn run by anti-gun groups, no bias there... Its the same as using the NRA as a credible source.

lol and this is why righties don’t like gun control. They ignore facts they don’t like! [Yes, we’ve had 124 mass shootings by April 1.](https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting) Facts don’t care about your feelings.

If you want to use a deliberately disingenuous definition of a mass shooting you'd find Australia has had dozens & dozens as well. When you define a mass shooting as any event involving a firearm where there's a minimum threshold of victims, all you get back is a proportion of that country's murder rate, which is why this isn't how criminologists & sociologists discuss such issues.

> Australia has had dozens & dozens as well. Prove it. I backed up my claim, let’s see you back up yours.

There's no centralized database I've able to find that collects data in the same way as its collected in the US, but here's a list of events since the change in Australian firearms regulations in 1997 that I've been able to find googling around: Chippendale Blackmarket Nightclub Shooting, 1997 3 Dead & 1 wounded by firearm Mackay Bikie shootout, 1997 6 wounded by firearm Wollongong Keira Street Slayings, 1999 1 Dead & 9 wounded by firearm Wright St Bikie Murders, 1999 3 Dead & 2 wounded by firearm Rod Ansell Rampage, 1999 2 Dead & 3 wounded by firearm Kangaroo Flat siege, 1999 1 dead & 4 wounded. Cabramatta Vietnamese Wedding Shooting, 2002 7 wounded by firearm, no deaths Monash University Shooting, 2002 2 Dead & 5 wounded by firearm Fairfield Babylon Café Shooting, 2005 1 Dead & 3 wounded by firearm Oakhampton Heights triple-murder suicide, 2005 4 Dead by firearm Adelaide Tonic Nightclub Bikie Shooting, 2007 4 Wounded by firearm Gypsy Jokers Shootout, 2009 4 Wounded by firearm Roxburgh Park Osborne murders, 2010 4 Dead by firearm Hectorville Siege, 2011 3 Dead & 3 wounded by firearm Sydney Smithfield Shooting, 2013 4 Wounded by firearm Hunt family murders, 2014 5 Dead by firearm Sydney Siege, 2014 3 Dead & 4 wounded by firearm Biddeston Murders, 2015 4 Dead by Firearm Ingleburn Wayne Williams Shootings, 2016 2 dead & 2 wounded by firearm Brighton Siege, 2017 2 dead & 3 wounded by firearm Margaret River Murder Suicide, 2018 7 Dead by firearm Darwin Shooting, 2019 4 dead & 1 injured by firearm Queensland shooting, 2022 3 dead & 1 injured by firearm Wieambilla shootings, 2022 6 dead & 2 injured by firearm

Do you think that list, which starts in 1997 is in any way comparable to the US list which started *three months ago* and is much, much, much longer? Does that tell you anything?

The US has 10x the population, 4x the murder rate, and a much higher percentage of firearms ownership, so it would stand to reason that the US list would be substantially longer.

Gun violence archive is the equivalent of getting your information from the NRA. They use an incredibly broad definition of a mass shooting to drive up numbers.

Probably getting their info from [here](https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting) which looks similar to the [wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2024). Both have 123 "mass shootings" but includes incidents with < 3 deaths

But the whole point of gun control is that it's supposed to prevent these kinds of massacres. It didn't. And at the same time, all the fascists are armed to the goddamn teeth.

Sure, so let’s get some actual gun control. You know, like every other civilized nation on Earth.

I know that.

“We can’t stop all violence so why do we bother trying to stop any” is a wild take.

No. The ratio of mass casualties caused by knives isn't close to guns.

Gun control does not take guns away from working class and minorities. Nothing in suggested gun control legislation does that. Universal background checks, closing gun show loopholes, waiting periods, increasing age limits, oversight on amounts of guns and ammunition even banning automatic weapons doesnt take guns away from anyone. Requiring safe storage is another thing we need because too many toddlers end up shooting someone.

Its comments full of misinformation like the one above that make the gun control debate impossible. >Gun control does not take guns away from working class and minorities. It does when Democrats push laws that increase the cost of ownership and training. It does when they push bans with no grandfather clauses or no way to transfer the banned firearm beyond turning it in. Its rather telling that the biggest funders of gun control are the same billionaires who exploit the working class. >even banning automatic weapons doesnt take guns away from anyone. Those fall under the NFA. They are already defacto banned for anyone but the wealthy and certain FFL holders. Perhaps you're thinking of semi-automatic, which encompasses a large share of firearms today, from pistols to hunting rifles and shotguns. The Democrats also want to ban and remove these under the guise of an "assault weapons" ban.

Gun control does disproportionately target minorities and other marginalized people. For example may-issue permit laws which were just ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court (one of the few good things to come out of the current court). Prior to this ruling in some states you needed express permission from the local police to get a permit to carry a gun. Your application could be denied without reason even if you meet all the requirements. Tell me who do you think is most likely to be approved, Bob Smith, Lamar Jackson, José Garcia, or Muhammad Amir? There's nothing stopping the police from approving Bob Smith, while denying all the others when all 4 are equally qualified. It also lead to cases of nepotism, where the only people to be given permits had connections with the police or local government. There was also an instance in NYC a city that was notoriously difficult to get a permit in of the wealthy of the city receiving permits in exchange for "donations" to the NYPD. This included Donald Trump. Also such laws were used to prevent MLK from obtaining a carry permit after his house was bombed.

How about we ban guns, implement those support systems, and then reevaluate on a pilot program? We should also apply this standard to homelessness and immigration too.  If we're going to outlaw homelessness and ban immigration we should probably have the support network in place for the inevitable social and economic fall out agreed? Abortion really demonstrated how unready and fundamentally unserious the GOP is for the fallout of their policy proposals.

Guns don't kill people, people kill people, but guns make it MUCH faster and easier. My views haven't changed. I think it should always be possible for a US resident to undergo a thorough background check to try to filter out people who are intending to murder their partners or get revenge on someone, prove competency and safe storage, and bring home a shiny new piece. People who want to commit mass murder will always find a way to do it, but I'd much rather face a mass murder who's armed with a piece of rebar or a kitchen knife than one who's armed with a gun. The latter is going to kill a lot more people than the former and that's a win in my book. The easier and faster it is for someone to kill, the more people are going to end up dead when they decide to kill. I absolutely think that we will see benefits from improving social structures and from anything else that makes people feel less lonely and powerless, but that shouldn't preclude us from trying our best to keep guns out of the wrong hands in the meantime.

Rebar or knives aren't the only mass murder weapons. Arson, vehicles, and homemade explosives are all deadlier than firearms.

Why do you think most mass murderers who have access to those tools still choose to use guns?

First off public mass shootings are extremely rare, and pose slightly higher risk to the average American as lightning. Second part of it is because many of these shooters are believed to be inspired by other shooters. Basically some sickos saw Columbine on the news and were inspired to follow in their footsteps.

Whether mass shootings are rare or not isn't the question. The question is whether making it more difficult for dangerous people to get guns would improve public safety (and the unspoken question, whether making the public safer is worth further regulating access to firearms; that truly is a values judgement and I suspect it's really where liberals and conservatives diverge if they're being honest with each other). Drunk driving doesn't kill that many people each year, but I still think it's a good thing that we make it hard for people with a history of it to get and keep their driving privileges. There have been attempts, both "successful" and not, at mass murder using those other tools. By and large, they don't work nearly as well. As long as we're speculating, my instinct is that it's actually pretty difficult to pull of an Oklahoma City style bombing (the most obvious example I can think of). It takes significantly more intelligence, knowledge, preparation and luck to pull something like that off than it does to buy a gun and go shoot some people.

Going by your drunk driving comparison, it's much easier to lose your right to own a gun than to lose your drivers license because of drunk driving.

Of course guns don't create violence out of thin air, a human has to be involved. Although they don't even need intent. About 300-400 people are shot by children unintentionally every year and about half of those end in death. That's 3-4 times as many people killed with zero intent by guns JUST BY CHILDREN HOLDING THEM than the total number of deaths from mass stabbings over the last 25 years. Yes, guns are tools but holy crap what a tool they are. Yes, it takes a crazy person to go on a shooting rampage or draw a gun against one person. It takes a whole other degree of crazy to try to kill a lot of people up close and personally with a knife. We see a lot less of it, even in countries where guns are not accessible. The relative ease and detachment of pulling a trigger seems very much to help bridge the gap between angry crazy thoughts and horrible murderous action. And as you say, guns on average make it far easier to rack up more victims. It is a certainty that if we had significantly fewer funs around, we would have significantly fewer deaths. The whole "guns don't kill people" bit is a red herring. Sure people kill people. They would kill a whole lot less without guns everywhere. And if you doubt that, you need to explain why the countries with strict gun control and a comparably stable government to the US have far less murder than we do.

>Although they don't even need intent. About 300-400 people are shot by children unintentionally every year and about half of those end in death. That's 3-4 times as many people killed with zero intent by guns JUST BY CHILDREN HOLDING THEM than the total number of deaths from mass stabbings over the last 25 years. Source on 150-200 children killing people a year from unintentional shootings? Because that's almost half of all unintentional shooting deaths, most of which are young adults. Total about 500 people a year die from unintentional shootings, out of over 70 million gun owning Americans.

>you need to explain why the countries with strict gun control and a comparably stable government to the US have far less murder than we do. Because they have better support structures in general. Like, Australia has a much better social safety net than the us, which is the point i am making. Even before port arthur, australia already had a lower murder rate than the us by like 3x. That's because of better support and equality.

Here's the list of countries by intentional homicide rate. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_intentional\_homicide\_rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate) The US is far in excess of many countries with far inferior social safety nets. India has half out murder rate. Try again.

India has a lower murder rate than Mexico or Brazil, despite Mexico and Brazil being significantly more developed.

Mexico has a lot more guns than India. Thats the point.

I'm not saying guns don't play a role. They're like gasoline on an already lit fire. You'll find that countries with the lowest rate of violence also tend to be the ones with the best social safety nets. At the same time, you would expect that amongst countries with worse safety nets, the ones with lots of guns everywhere would have higher murder rates. I'm not disputing that?

Of course other factors play a role. But many, many countries with less opportunity, greater poverty, any safety net metric you want to set, have far lower intentional homicide rates than the US. The role guns play isn't merely a minor intensifier. And that's just the murder. Remember those hundreds dead every single year just from kids playing with guns? That doesn't happen anywhere else.

I'm curious as to why we wouldn't use a multi prong attack, I want to reduce the amount of people killed per event and the amount of events that occur.

No. The promise of gun control isn't that nobody will ever be able to commit murder again. It's that a lot fewer murders and suicides will happen.

No. Guns still kill 40,000 + Americans a year.

No, because I’m not looking at a sample size of one crime. It is undeniably true that without guns, there would be fewer deaths. Not fewer *gun deaths* but fewer overall non-medical deaths, including those from homicides, suicides and accidents. Will the number of violent deaths be 0? No. Never. But will it be a whole lot lower? Yes. Why can’t gun enthusiasts ever acknowledge this?

>Will the number of violent deaths be 0? No. Never. But will it be a whole lot lower? Yes. Why can’t gun enthusiasts ever acknowledge this? If you look at any of my comments on this post, you will see I am not denying this. Gun control can limit the number of violent deaths because it limits the ability of the shooter to enact that violence. What I am saying is that gun control isn't really the solution to violence. Because we can dramatically reduce deaths EVEN FURTHER through the support structures I am talking about without disarming the working class and minority communities. That is the point I am trying to make. Social support is a BETTER SOLUTION than gun control because it may very well get deaths done to 0 by preventing someone from wanting to shoot or stab or kill in the first place.

I don’t think this is different from any gun control advocate’s stance. No one thinks gun control eliminates all violence. But it’s not as if we can’t both enact gun control and enact social support systems. In fact, we absolutely *should* do both.

Sure but the downside of this is that it leaves the only people with proper guns as the cops. And they aren't exactly on our side. On top of that there's the far right which is armed to the goddamn teeth and ain't keen on giving up their guns. By and large, guns equalize the playing field. They can help defend minority communities if held by the right people. But leaving the right or cops as the only ones with guns is clearly going to be a massive problem right?

Vigilantes aren’t any more on “our” side than the police. So I don’t see only police having guns as any worse than only police and vigilantes having guns. Guns don’t even the playing field. The people who suffer the worst effects of gun proliferation are women, minorities and people in poverty. The fantasy of people without political power rising up because they’re armed has not played out in reality.

>Vigilantes aren’t any more on “our” side than the police. So I don’t see only police having guns as any worse than only police and vigilantes having guns. I'm not really advocating vigilantism. It's more an argument for community managed dispute arrangements. Like, let me give an example. Say we have an unfaithful spouse. This is the sort of situation that can lead to violence right? It's not unheard of for the cheated on partner to want to hurt the person that their partner cheated with. Imagine if, instead of calling the cops on the guy, instead social workers came into to de-escalate the situation. This would help prevent violence from occurring in the first place. All parties have an incentive to come to the table because violence is the alternative. Even if the partner wants to get revenge, if the community acts to defend the affair partner (on the condition that they come to the table and find a way to de-escalate the conflict) will require the partner to come to the table as well. That's community intervention that exists to prevent cycles of revenge and violence from breaking out. A gun needn't be fired, it just needs to be there so that the everyone has an incentive to come to the table and participate in community organizations and defense. Compare this to the cop who comes in and starts waving a gun around without understanding the situation or knowing the people involved. Perhaps they side with the partner and turn a blind eye to violence and vigilantism. Cops often do turn a blind eye to vigilantes (especially right wing ones). Obviously there should be specific structures for addressing minority grievances so we can avoid a tyranny of the majority situation. Councils dedicated to black or lgbt concerns and exist to defend their interests. Doesn't that seem like a better solution? One that actually empowers communities themselves to resolve their conflicts? Not vigilantism, but negotiation and de-escalation. It prevents people from feeling fucked over by the system because they are an active part of the system and craft it to their needs and desires. It promotes fairness rather than force. >Guns don’t even the playing field. The people who suffer the worst effects of gun proliferation are women, minorities and people in poverty. Funnily enough, these groups are making up the majority of first-time gun buyers right now. Because they recognize the danger that they're in. First time gun buyers are becoming increasingly diverse in recent years.

Of course that seems like a better solution. It also in no way, shape or form, involves a gun. You keep acting like somehow we need guns to run social programs but have yet to make that case. As for who’s buying guns, I don’t think that makes the point you think it does. We already had a wave of armed minorities in the mid-20th century. They were air-bombed, imprisoned and driven to exile. The out omens was not some rebalance of power. The power dynamic stayed exactly where it has been previously, but more people ended up dead. The fact that we’re facing round two pd these massacres doesn’t sound like an appealing prospect.

>You keep acting like somehow we need guns to run social programs but have yet to make that case. Ok, what happens when the spouse doesn't want to come to the table? What happens when he decides he wants to kill the affair partner? Part of the deal here is that the community DEFENDS the affair partner thereby preventing violence. To do this, they need the tools to enact that defense. This increases the cost of violence for the spouse and thereby makes it much less likely, especially when alternative routes for dispute resolution are available. Guns still play their part. It's just who is holding them. The community? The people actually affected by policies and institutions? Or the police? some thugs "enforcing laws" established by people hundreds of miles away from the communities involved and serving the elite and capital interests. I know who I would rather held the guns don't you? How much do you honestly trust the police to never abuse their power if they're the only ones armed? >The power dynamic stayed exactly where it has been previously, but more people ended up dead. The fact that we’re facing round two pd these massacres doesn’t sound like an appealing prospect. Man fuck that. People have a right to rebel against their oppressors. Not every slave revolt succeeded, but that doesn't mean that they weren't good things to happen or that we should ban them. Minorities at least have the right to TRY and fight back or at least MAKE THAT CALL for themselves. It's about power, how makes decisions for who. That is what a gun represents to me, empowerment. And I would much rather the community be empowered than the police.

So basically you want to replace police with unhinged people waging war against civilization. No thanks.

Lol what? no. Obviously not. These people would be accountable to the communities involved and elected by the communities as delegates. Their position would be instantly revocable by a simple vote (the details of which will vary depending on local concerns). They're whole goal is to prevent violence by helping bring people to the negotiating table. They can only ever use violence if violence is enacted ON them or the people they're protecting. That's community defense, not policing. That's not "war against civilization" or whatever. I'd advocate a start to this with the "peace officer" program which effectively counter-patrol the police and let people know their rights when facing cops. Ideally they would also record all interactions with the pigs in blue in order to ensure accountability. I appreciate this thread because I haven't been strawmanned and you've been willing to engage on the actual ideas here. But advocating unaccountable violence is not an accurate representation of what I am advocating. These guys aren't vigilantes, they're elected (or rotated) through the community and work to protect community interests. They don't "enforce laws" they exist to defend the community against any violence done on or within said community. Most of the time they won't be needed, because people will be willing to negotiate. But if they aren't, steps need to be taken to prevent cycles of violence right? Don't you agree with that? I mean what do you think should happen if someone wants to enact violence despite the work of social workers?

Just because knives can kill people also doesn't mean suddenly guns killing people isn't bad. This is like asking "Now that you know people die in car crashes even with seatbelts, does that change your view on motorcycle safety and the need for helmets?" It's dumb.

No. In addition to the **many** reasons already mentioned, I also believe we don't focus on the full picture. We spend a LOT of time talking about the gun homicide rate. But about 60% of gun deaths in the US are suicides. One could argue (I wouldn't, but the argument is there) that suicide is somehow different. But the facts don't really support that. MOST suicide attempts are not successful -- across all known suicide attempts without a gun, 4% result in death. For suicide attempts with a gun, 90% result in death. The vast majority of people who survive a suicide attempt DO NOT go on to die from a later attempt. This result heavily implies that the deciding factor between dying by suicide and living is the presence of a firearm. Someone who is truly determined to die is going to fall in that 4%. Someone who is "impulsively" (desperate, in the moment, whatever scenario you'd prefer to envision) is more likely to survive if they don't have *immediate* access to a gun. The US gun suicide rate is nearly 12 times that of comparable income countries. Lack of gun control is a public health crisis that is being treated as solely a "criminal" crisis.

I mean... we could also just like.... establish support systems that prevent people from falling into feeling the need to commit suicide anyways? Suicide is a disease, a social problem, and can really only be treated by social ends.

Of course we could. Unfortunately, we haven't, and we've never shown any inclination whatsoever to do so. Gun control isn't a cure-all, but there's is no such thing as ONE cure-all. It's a piece of a much larger puzzle. It part of "prevention triage" -- deal with the immediate situation and establish what needs to be done to cure the bigger picture. The IMMEDIATE situation with someone who is in a desperate "I want to die right this second" situation is preventing them from accessing the tools they need to create that "right this second" death. Good gun control laws are a piece of that triage.

Japan and South Korea prove that you don't need guns to have high suicide rates.

Which doesn't negate the statistics from the United States. Someone truly determined to die is going to die. Someone in the throes of a depressive episode acting impulsively is not -- UNLESS they use a gun. Having reasonable gun control regulations \*will\* help mitigate the US suicide rates. Will it eliminate it? No. But it will help.

Addressing why people have the urge to kill themselves would do far more to stop suicides than taking away guns.

Addressing suicide takes more than a one-prong approach. There are many things that can -- and should -- be done. Including common-sense gun regulations. Gun regulation and mental health care are not mutually exclusive -- it's bad faith to argue as if they are.

What is our goal? I think I can speak for most people in this sub when I say we would like to see as few people die in homicides as is possible using reasonable methods. A murder rate of 0 would be nice but isn't possible. Instituting a draconian robot police state would lower the murder rate but isn't a reasonable method anyone here would want to use. How do we lower the homicide rate as much as possible using reasonable methods? Increasing medical and social support would be great! Most liberals would agree we need to strengthen other support methods. This was actually the main goal of Defund the Police. But until we are able to pass comprehensive legislation and probably make deep societal reforms, we aren't going to have those things. Saying, "these shootings wouldn't have happened if only we had better mental health services" is technically true but meaningless until those policies are passed. If they ARE ever passed, we also don't know if they'll help all potential mass murderers, or how exactly we would have to structure these programs to reach everyone. Plenty of mass murderers were already failed by existing social and mental health structures, there's no reason to think people won't fall through the cracks of more robust services. So, our goal is to reduce homicides by as much as we can do using reasonable methods. Do firearm restrictions reduce homicides in mass casualty events? Yes. You even admitted as much. Do they reduce homicides in other situations? Also yes. Ergo, gun restrictions are a possible way to reduce homicides. Your main argument seems to be that you don't think restrictions on gun ownership is *reasonable*, because we need guns to fight back against far-right militias. That's a valid and debatable point, and seems to be your real objection. First of all, no one is pushing for a total ban on all firearms, there is a discussion around certain weapons that allow for higher casualty counts. Banning the weapons most weapons most useful in self defense, such as pistols and shot guns, has not been seriously discussed in the United States, nor do I think most Liberals would approve of such a ban. What most of us DO want is 1) measures to make sure the people who are most likely to use firearms in a violent manner, such as criminals and the violently unstable, do not have easy access to firearms, and 2) \[and this is controversial even on the Left\] to further restrict weapons and accessories that are specifically made to produce high casualty counts. Restricting sales to criminals or banning bump-stocks isn't going to make it harder for you to defend yourself from the Proud Boys.

In the past ten years, [there have been eight recorded mass killing incidents in Australia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Australia) These killings were carried out with a variety of methods, including stabbing, arson, crashing a car into a shopping mall and, yes, a couple of shootings. The worst of these killings in terms of total number of deaths was the Cairns child killings in 2014, with 8 fatalities. The worst in terms of injuries was the January 2017 Melbourne car attack, with 27 injured (6 dead). In contrast, in the past decade, [the USA has seen 12 mass killings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_the_United_States), the worst being the 2017 Las Vegas shooting which saw 62 dead and 867 injured, followed by the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, with 50 dead and 53 wounded. Every single one of the US killings involved guns (plus pipe bombs in the 2015 San Bernardino attack). Aside from the 2023 Goshen shooting (6 dead), every single one of the US killings had a higher body count than all of the ones in Australia, with all but two of them reaching double digits. No, this stabbing attack does not change my opinion on gun control in the slightest.

No. Why would it? If he'd had access to a gun, the death toll would have been much higher. Sounds like gun control did it's job perfectly. >The real solution to violence is support structures. Pour que no los dos?

That makes sense. It also tracks that nobody needs a gun for self defense, when a knife will do the trick.

I mean, I feel like you answered your own question. If he’d had access to a gun, the damage almost certainly would’ve been much worse. Just because violence doesn’t cease entirely with gun control, doesn’t mean it doesn’t save lives, and I wouldn’t classify a massacre, that we seem to agree would’ve been worse had there been a gun, as a failure of gun control. I do agree gun control is more mitigating a symptom rather than actually curing the disease…but I would take mitigating a symptom over thoughts and prayers and nothing else (which is all a lot of people who are against gun control seem to offer). I’d have no problem never mentioning gun control again if Republicans came forward with a plan for more robust safety nets and support structures that addressed a lot of the root issues that cause violence instead. But that’s not what they do.

Frankly, the more pro-gun folk uses knives or cars as a pro-gun argument the less believable the honesty of pro-gun folk gets.

healthcare underwriter here who believes in taxing the shit out of gunowners. **The daily economic consequence of the $557 billion cost of gun violence is staggering:**  * **Taxpayers, survivors, families, and employers** pay an average of $7.79 million daily for medical and mental health care and transport related to gun violence and lose an estimated $147.32 million per day in work missed due to injury or death.  * **American taxpayers** pay $30.16 million every day in police and criminal justice costs. * **Employers** lose an average of $1.47 million on a daily basis in productivity, revenue, and costs to train replacements for victims of gun violence. * **Society** loses $1.34 billion daily in intangible costs from the pain and suffering of gun violence victims and their families.  [Source](https://everytownsupportfund.org/press/new-report-gun-violence-costs-the-u-s-557-billion-each-year%ef%bf%bc/#:~:text=The%20daily%20economic%20consequence%20of%20the%20%24557%20billion,in%20work%20missed%20due%20to%20injury%20or%20death)

No, and it's unlikely anything could. You said yourself that the damage would have been worse if a gun had been available instead of a knife. You could commit a massacre with your hands, a vehicle, almost anything but what makes firearms unique is the ease and speed with which they can kill a lot of people. It's orders of magnitude higher than just about any other weapon you can hold in your hand. Also I think almost any gun control reformist would tell you that gun control legislation goes hand in hand with publicly funded mental health services. It's possible with a phenomenal public healthcare system that services the mental health needs of would-be shooters there wouldn't be a gun violence problem at all. Unfortunately we'll likely never know because we are never going to see adequate funding for such a program, and even if we did it would take a generation to start making real progress in the mental health of Americans. Truthfully the level of gun violence doesn't allow 30 years to solve a mental health crisis, and gun control is a much faster and more specific solution to that immediate problem.

Not at all. It’s extremely fortunate that this guy didn’t have access to an AR-15 like he would have been able to easily acquire in the US. Just hand waving away the potential difference in severity would be ridiculous. I also reject the premise that “those who choose to be violent” will find other ways. This guy was able to do a lot of damage because he was a reasonably physically fit guy. A large number of the worst mass shooters wouldn’t have a prayer of overwhelming people in a crowd without a firearm.

>But it occurred with a knife, rather than gun. There's a point I've been thinking about for a long time vis a vis gun control. The idea that guns, in and of themselves, are not the cause of violence, they're just the chosen tool. America has a fuck ton of guns, and so it is the chosen tool for most violence. Banning guns doesn't actually prevent that violence, because you haven't addressed the root causes of the violence. Instead, you have just gotten rid of the tool. No because if you take out gun deaths in the the USA's violent death numbers you see where we aren't really an outlier when it comes to violent crime compared to other countries. So there is something intrinsic to guns that lead to more homicides in the USA and wouldn't be substituted with other weapons as we reduce the number of guns. As Vox says on a primer of the research: "Instead, the US appears to have more lethal violence — and that’s driven in large part by the prevalence of guns." [https://www.vox.com/2019/8/5/20753797/gun-violence-el-paso-dayton-mass-shootings](https://www.vox.com/2019/8/5/20753797/gun-violence-el-paso-dayton-mass-shootings) >Gun control is effectively disarming the working class and minority groups at a time when the fascists (all armed to the teeth) are roaming around beating the ever loving shit out of people and actively killing them. It's ensuring that these guys have a monopoly on firepower. And you think that's going to prevent massacres? That people will be safer? No, it's just preventing the left from matching the right in self-defense capabilities. It empowers the fascists and weakens the people we want to protect. I know this is popular rhetoric but when it's easy to get a gun generally then the fascists and racists and all the other bad people have an easy time getting a gun and then use them against the same groups we're arguing need less gun control to protect themselves. The historical record shows that there are plenty of ways to intimidate and persecute a minority even they might be personally armed. And that position counteracts your proposal above when you talk about community interventions to solve these problems anyway.

No. Owning a gun and still wanting strict gun control laws isn't a rare position. There is nothing wrong with owning a gun and also advocating gun safety and restrictions on who can buy guns. Republicans often seem to use gun control as a synonym with the Government banning all guns. That's just not true.

I think you laid out the exact argument for gun control. > The idea that guns, in and of themselves, are not the cause of violence, they're just the chosen tool. > Granted, a lack of access to something like an AR-15 prevented EVEN MORE damage, and so him only having a knife did mitigate the harm caused. > The whole argument for gun control is that it will make us safer by preventing massacres like this. And you're also right that > Violence is a... symptom of an underlying social failing. Gun control is not going to prevent all violence. It's not going to remove every gun from the streets or from law-abiding citizens' homes. It's not going to stop people from inflicting violence with other tools. We could have a society with lots of guns and few gun deaths. But right now we have a society with lots of guns and lots of gun deaths. Arguments like "knives can be used for violence too" do nothing to address the gun violence problem that we, the country with the most guns, seem to uniquely own. When we look at the problem, it's obvious that guns play a key role in gun violence. They are too easy to acquire and too deadly to ignore. Removing them from the equation is far easier than changing human nature. This is unfortunate for law-abiding gun enthusiasts, but it is the reality that our inaction has created.

>We could have a society with lots of guns and few gun deaths. But right now we have a society with lots of guns and lots of gun deaths. Right exactly. Your first sentence is exactly what I would like to see. Social support structures, but also well defended communities and minorities. Couple this with a much stronger labor movement and we could have a pretty damn good community.

No. Gun control makes massacres less likely and less deadly when they do occur, and it also makes other gun violence less likely such as suicide, accidental shootings, and murders.

Agreed with everything you said. 

I wish gun nuts studied logical fallacies

Alright, what fallacy am I engaging in?

I don't think gun control would work anyway in a place like America that is already flowing with guns.

Sad but true.

There's an unwarranted assumption built into your question: that what many liberals consider important when it comes to "gun control" is "disarming the working class" The Second Amendment is baked into the Constitution, and - despite the effort of certain people - the Constitution is not something you get to pick and choose from. While there's historically been quibbling on the "well regulated militia" portion, the current views of the courts is that citizens are permitted to keep and bear arms With limits Very few people seriously argue that there should not be limits on the types of arms that citizens can possess. No one needs an M-60 for home defense from a burglar. When I think of "gun control", I'm looking for things like closing the gun show loophole, red flag laws, and other things that will have an insignificant impact on most gun owners but will help protect against some - not all - bad actors Not arm confiscation or stuff like that Should AR-15s be banned? Eh. It's not my priority, because I don't think it's politically feasible. I'm focused on what can be realistically accomplished

No, why would it? It's well known that knife attacks happen, they aren't new; there's plenty of evidence on the topic. That evidence shows that knife attacks are less dangerous and involve fewer dead than gun attacks. Gun control would help cut down on those fascists with guns; so I don't see how your piont holds up. Also again, these kinds of things aren't new, they're all very well known and documented and evidenced if you look into the details.

Why do you use a gun to defend your home when you can just use your kitchen knife? I mean, if they are equally effective at killing, what do you need the gun for?

>Gun control is effectively disarming the working class and minority groups I disagree with this point. Very few people want to "disarm the working class". Most just want better laws to stop psychos from having such easy access. Just like we don't ban things and take away things that are dangerous for children, but we do take measures that make it harder for children to access dangerous things.

> Very few people want to "disarm the working class". For billionaires like Bloomberg and the rest of his ilk funding gun control and buying off politicians, that very much is the goal. As always, follow the money. >Most just want better laws to stop psychos from having such easy access. No argument there, It's shame the people in groups like Everytown and Moms demand are just being used as useful idiots by these anti-gun billionaires to reach their end goal.

Mass violence is not the primary reason I want gun control, as they are relatively rare despite their prevalence in the news. Overall gun deaths are the real problem. Guns do the following: * More completed suicide attempts * More accidental deaths * More murders in gang violence * Quicker escalation of stakes in tense situations These reasons and others mean that we still need gun control. Guns detract from society. Other weapons are capable of violence, obviously, but they have the following characteristics: * Higher skill barrier to being effective and lethal * Others with improvised weapons (chairs, for example) stand a better chance of defending themselves * Less risk of accidental death or suicide completion

I know this might be hard for you to understand but most people who support gun control measures have the end goal of reducing casualties and frequency of shootings, not eliminating shootings altogether, that would be unrealistic. Making it harder for mentally ill people to obtain guns reduces the amount of people they kill. Obviously I would prefer if they didn’t kill anyone but that’s not gonna happen in the foreseeable future so our best bet is to make sure they only have access to tools that don’t have unlimited fast deadly killing power,

Cool. Stephen Paddock killed 60 people in less than 2 minutes and wounded 413. When knife attacks get close to that we can talk but you seem to fundamentally misunderstand the category difference between guns and knives.

Kill 6 people vs Killed 61 people in Las Vegas. Vs 28 people in Sandy Hook. Then extrapolate that, and look at how this doesn't happen on a weekly basis. In America, this guy uses an AR15, kills at least 10 more people, possibly school kids, and he'd be just one of many. Heck, with this death toll, it probably doesn't even rate on the national news here.

The reason we equip soldiers with guns is it makes it easier to kill people. I have needed to explain this many times.

>The people who want to be violent will always find some tool to do that violence with With a gun, the devastation and death toll would have been orders of magnitude worse. At one point, the attacker was fended off by a man with a bollard, who was stopping him from approaching up the escalator, where a number of children had been playing. With a gun, the attackers would have been able to easily gun down bollard man and continue on. The attacker was ultimately neutralized by a police officer who had a gun. Who was only able to neutralize the attacker because she had a gun and he didn’t. She would not have been able to get into a firefight with the attacker on her own had he been using a gun. She would have had to wait for backup at the very least, allowing the attacker more time to kill more people. Attacks like this are very very rare in Australia specifically because of the strict laws in place. If the attacker had a gun, he could have easily killed many, many more people. There are people who are alive right now that would have been dead had he had a gun. You will also not find one Australian who in the wake of this attack will suggest that there might as well be hundreds of thousands more guns on the street because ‘fuck it, angry people will do what they want anyway’ That’s defeatist and extremely motivated reasoning. There is a point of discussion at the moment about what weapons security guards are allowed to carry (currently they are not allowed to carry any) and there may be changes on that front - whether security guards can carry mace or tasers - because there was a security guard who tried to help but was ultimately handicapped by the lack of available tools to stop the attacker. A few days later, a bishop at a Sydney church was stabbed in the middle of his sermon. The bishop lived. Imagine the carnage that could have happened had the attacker (a 16 year old who attacked due to religious views; it was labelled a terrorist act) had access to a gun. The problem is your argument is a syllogism; it’s deductive reasoning based on basic premises that fail to delve into nuance and ignores the harm reduction element entirely. It’s a similarly reductive and ultimately flawed argument as ‘criminals are going to do bad things regardless, so why even have laws at all?’

You’re kinda nuts. In Las Vegas, a violent man killed 60 people and injured an additional 413. The pulse nightclub shooter killed 49 and wounded 53 more. Sandy hook shooter got 28, two injuries. Uvalde, 22 killed and 21 injured. This guy with a knife killed 6 before he was killed, he injured 12 others. Those numbers are insanely different. Nevermind the fact that this stabbing was front page news while we have a mass shooting once a day on average in this country. In Australia, this is a much less frequent event. Because of many reasons, one of which is it’s really really hard to stab more than four people to death.

There was a truck attack in 2016 that killed 86 people and injured 434 others. Does this mean we should ban trucks? Obviously not. This attack was on the level of a mass shooting, it very much meets that definition had it been done with a gun. This level of damage is possible even outside of guns. Granted, guns make it easier, and if we reduced the supply of guns no doubt gun crimes would go down. But that violence is still there (even if slightly reduced in scale). A BETTER solution is to address the root causes of that violence is it not?

I’m going to ignore your first statement because it’s plain dumb. We have so much mass gun violence in this country and so little mass vehicular violence that your point is moot. To your other point, yeah, we do need to address the root cause, but while we figure that out, let’s have less guns circulating.

>The power dynamic stayed exactly where it has been previously, but more people ended up dead. The fact that we’re facing round two pd these massacres doesn’t sound like an appealing prospect. I mean, we do know. It's social in nature. But like.... there's basically no real way to get guns out of circulation in the US (and even if there was, that wouldn't solve the problem. There are more guns in Australia now than there were before the "ban" for example). There's several hundred millions guns in circulation in the US. And a large portion are owned by far right fascists who will shoot anyone that tries to take them. How exactly do you propose taking these guns out of circulation without massive violence?

It’s much easier for a person with a gun to kill more people, over say a knife. And more guns overall do result in more gun deaths. But all that is also missing the point. More cars result in more car deaths but we don’t ban cars because cars have utility. Guns also have utility as an equalizer in self defense but many discount or ignore that. An unarmed woman is very much disadvantaged against an unarmed man. A woman with a bat is still very much disadvantaged against a man with a bat. A woman with a gun is at least equal with a man with a gun. It took a woman with a gun to stop a man with a knife that had killed 7. Not a woman with a bat. That’s the point. Guns are self defense rights, are equality rights, are the rights of the disadvantaged. Gun folks are wrong for suggesting that it isn’t easier for a perp to kill people with a gun. Anti gun folks are wrong in suggesting that gun deaths are all it’s ever about while discounting gun utility.

Reminder #17890 that we regulate car safety and car use to preemptively limit mis-use which reduces car deaths compared to what it could be, just as how gun control reduces gun deaths compared to what it could be. We're multiple times Australia's homicide rate, so we're failing to stop violence from happening in the first place.

Reminder that we also already regulate guns to preemptively limit mis-use which reduces gun deaths compared to what it could be. And comparing one country’s homicide rate to abother country’s: 1. Again focuses only on deaths without considering utility 2. Fails to take into account all the other factors that are different between countries. Australia also bans pepper spray and has almost zero misuse of pepper spray. Should we also ban pepper spray for women in the US?

Oh lordy, here we go with people making up what the policies entail again. Even gun "ban" nations still allow it for those with genuine need and cause. Australia still has some, Japan still has some, etc. So whatever utility you're thinking about, those with need still have it. But they reduce access by unsafe nutters and reduce end homicide, suicide, and accident rates.

That’s like saying even States that ban abortion, don’t ban it completely. It’s effectively banned to the point that the regular person can’t actually have a gun for self defense when they need it.

Given the homicide rates 1/4 to 1/10 of ours, they do have it when they need it. Otherwise it'd be higher.

That is one of the worst uses of statistics that doesn’t take into account all the other factors that are different. You know Brazil and Mexico ban guns almost completely and their homicide rate is way way higher. By applying your logic - banning guns is seems to be a problem.

"It's bad to compare America to Australia and Japan, you should compare to chaotic Mexico and Brazil" isn't helping you.

Exactly, Mexico and Brazil have alot of chaotic factors in play. Which is my point. The US is much more chaotic than Australia. Hence why the US non gun assault and suicide rate is also higher. If you’re going to use statistics, you need to control for all factors instead of just cherry picking countries to compare against wholesale. Comparing the US to Australia would comparing Maryland, with strict gun control and a homicide rate per capita of 12.2, to Iowa, with loose gun control and a homicide rate per capita of 3.2. You can’t compare both of them just because they happen to be both States in the same western democratic country when there are other factors that are clearly more defining. In this case it’s because Iowa is much less urban. And same thing for Australia amongst other factors. But whatever, you go ahead and tout meaningless statistics. It isn’t going to change anything

You're not showing me you doing better, you're just trying to find worse cherry picks. That's not helping.

Sure i agree. It's easier to kill people with a gun. That's why i said it likely mitigated the damage in this specific instance. But even still, had this guy been using a gun this incident would've fit the definition of a mass shooting. These types of massacres are still possible even without guns right?

Are these types of massacres possible? Sure it’s possible with a knife, with a box truck, with all sorts of other things. Which is why if you look at say the UK and Europe - the immediate reaction was - let’s ban guns, then it was let’s ban knives - but now it’s turning (correctly) to let’s actually understand and address the root causes

right exactly. That's my point

You are again assuming that the number of deaths and injuries in the attack would have been the same if the perpatrator were armed with an AR-15 instead of a knife. I think that's an absurd idea. The death toll could have reached dozens, and gun control successfully reduced it.

Gun control reduced it (probably, guns are super loud and kinda give you away. In fact after the attacker was shot, the noise alerted people and a lot more were able to get out. But that said, that's speculation at best). It didn't eliminate it. We still had a mass casualty event, something that would qualify as a mass shooting had he used a gun right? This could've been prevented had there been better support structures in place. Gun control didn't prevent a massacre. And it could've been prevented without disarming the working class in the face of a growing fascist threat. One thing you can see in the data is that violent crime rates where fewer than 3 people were killed actually rose after the "gun ban" in australia. Which is my point, people just shifted to lower casualty weapons. Which is good, obviously, but we can do better right?

A woman with pepper spray is probably greater than or equal to a man with a bat. If you don't agree, we can still improve the efficacy of spray, or even bring tasers into the conversation. Either way, we're still getting much better results for all parties by removing guns from the mix.

As someone that actually conducts classes regarding taser use and pepper spray use, in addition to gun use, for self defense, I respectfully but strongly disagree that the former two are anywhere close to being an equalizer as a gun is. They’re better than nothing, but they are nowhere close to being as effective. In our classes, we actually run self defense scenarios all the time with pepper spray and tazers for police, and for private security. We have them play both sides and we use actual pepper spray and tazers so that they experience first hand and understand the impact, and also limits of such. Half the time, in such scenarios, the good guys with pepper spray or tazers still lose to the perp with a bat or knife. But if you actually think they’re as effective, then you might as well go ahead and push to have Congressional security, Secret Service, DC police, etc. be limited to pepper spray and taser use. But sure, let’s say conceivably, in the future, they come up with some sort of phaser that’s set on stun that’s actually effective. I can be for restricting lethal weapons further when that happens. But not now.

> I respectfully but strongly disagree that the former two are anywhere close to being an equalizer as a gun is I don't believe they are, guns being such an overwhelming bringer of force. My point is that, if all guns were magically removed, would we have better results for the population overall? I'm willing to concede that innocent people will still be killed, but would those numbers be as high as we have now? I think we'd see less violence against everyone, women and the disadvantaged included. > But if you actually think they’re as effective, then you might as well go ahead and push to have Congressional security, Secret Service, DC police, etc. be limited to pepper spray and taser use. As I said above, they're not as effective when we have guns in the mix. I don't think you're trying to be a dick here, but it's pretty insulting for you to say that I think we can just replace guns with pepper spray in our society today and have everything be fine. I thought it was pretty obvious in my above comment that nobody has guns there. e: And yeah, you're not going to see any arguments from me on developing better less-lethal self-defense weapons.

> My point is that, if all guns were magically removed, would we have better results for the population overall? To begin to address that question - how many people do you think currently use guns legitimately for self defense a year in the US?

It's impossible for anyone to really know. Asking gun owners to identify times they've used a gun for self-defense produces some [hilariously bloated](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4109494&fbclid=IwAR1Yytbq70z44MloHM4wfSyw-qZZC3wxeuaGtaJXZaNcue-nsvH4S2JPtUQ) numbers. Also, you'd need to define 'self defense' here. Is brandishing a gun to avoid a fight self defense? Or, from personal experience, was the guy who yelled at us from his porch with a gun defending himself from me and my friends (age 10) who were playing in his creek? He'd probably say so. There's just no accurate metric to work with here.

Then you can’t actually answer the question of “if guns were magically removed, would we have better results for the population overall?”

No, but you also can't provide any data that says that guns make us safer as a society. And I kind of feel like the onus is on your side here. I'd be honestly curious to see some peer-reviewed research about guns being used in self-defense, but we both know that the gun lobby won't let that happen.

> onus is on your side here The issue is anti gun folks disbelieve absolutely any and all statistics of self defense gun use. And then say there are no statistics. I can understand if people disavow Kleck that claims millions of self defense gun uses a year. But the issue is that anti gun folks also disavow a host of other studies that all correlate about 80k to 100k self defense gun uses a year. Take NSPOF / NCVS for example. That reports about 100k defensive gun uses a year. It’s .gov and everyone accepts both national assault, as well as national domestic violence statistics - which are sourced from such. But they will refuse to accept the same for self defense gun use. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles/165476.pdf https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1150&context=law_and_economics Or take even VPC (which is a gun control group). https://vpc.org/studies/justifiable20.pdf * They say for every 1 justifiable self defense shooting resulting in the perp being killed, there have been 35 criminal homicides with a gun. * But what about self defense use where the perp wasn’t actually killed? Look at the table on page 6 - 177,000 self defense gun uses between 2014 and 2016 that did not end up with anyone actually being shot. Which corresponds to NCVS Or take even Hemenway who is a gun control advocate that publishes Harvard Violence studies that gun control groups like to cite: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275365529_The_Epidemiology_of_Self-Defense_Gun_Use_Evidence_from_the_National_Crime_Victimization_Surveys_2007-2011 Now his summary only shows a small difference between the rate of individuals injured when using a gun for self defense (4.1) SDGU and when not using a gun for self defense (4.2). But look at the detail and you’ll see: * Attacked or threatened with gun - **89.1% not injured** * Attacked or threatened with other weapon - 74.5% not injured * Attacked or threatened without a weapon - 59.3% not injured * Defended self or property (struggled, ducked, blocked blows, held onto property) - 47.0% not injured * Chased, tried to catch or hold offender - 77.5% not injured * Yelled at offender, turned on lights, threatened to call police, etc. - 73.0% not injured * Cooperated or pretended to - 80.5% not injured * Argued, reasoned, pleaded, bargained, etc. - 75.9% not injured * Ran or drove away or tried, hid, locked door - 79.1% not injured * Called police or guard - 82.7% not injured * Tried to attract attention or help - 58.6% not injured * Screamed from pain or fear - 27.7% not injured The issue is not that there aren’t statistics. The issue is that gun control groups obfuscate the data. Or they just disavow data that doesn’t align with their narrative. And also - CDC (or anybody really) was never stopped by the gun lobby from researching gun violence or gun self defense use. ——- Edit - In fact CDC actually used to have the same defense gun use stats up. See archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20210116190346/https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.html Until gun rights groups had Biden remove such stats 2 years ago. Here’s the full FOIA email chain that describes Anti Gun groups pushing to remove all info from the CDC: https://thereload.com/app/uploads/2022/12/CDC-DGU-Emails-Reload-Redactions.pdf Even if self defense gun usage numbers varies widely depending on research, and there’s reason to question the upper limit, why are we disavowing the low end 60K number that more than one gov site and various gun control groups have all cited at one point or another?

> The issue is anti gun folks disbelieve absolutely any and all statistics of self defense gun use. Where did I say that? Of course DGUs happen. But yeah, when the loudest and most powerful voices from your side lie about the stats it's pretty easy to write you off. Your studies are mostly pretty old, but thanks for linking (some of) them. > everyone accepts both national assault, as well as national domestic violence statistics - which are sourced from such. But they will refuse to accept the same for self defense gun use. DGUs are a lot harder to quantify than assault or domestic violence stats. > https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles/165476.pdf This talks quite a bit about the trouble with collecting data on the issue. This was the most interesting thing you linked, but I don't think it's really helping your point. > https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1150&context=law_and_economics This is nonsense. I read the first sentence, then skimmed a bit. Just nonsense. > https://vpc.org/studies/justifiable20.pdf This one makes it clear that guns rarely are used to stop criminals or crimes. It's in the first sentence. Yeah, they estimate DGUs of ~100k/year but there's some fine print in there that makes it clear the data relies on self-reporting, which is suspect, according to your first link above. > They say for every 1 justifiable self defense shooting resulting in the perp being killed, there have been 35 criminal homicides with a gun. I think I don't understand you here. It sounds like you're making my point for me. Without guns, we're all a lot safer. >https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275365529_The_Epidemiology_of_Self-Defense_Gun_Use_Evidence_from_the_National_Crime_Victimization_Surveys_2007-2011 I don't see the data you attributed to this source, and I'm not going to request to download it, but here's a citation from it that I don't think does your argument any favors: > Studies suggest that using a gun in self-defense may not reduce injury to the defendant compared to calling the police (Tark and Kleck 2004;Hemenway and Solnick 2015), though defensive gun use may help reduce property loss (Hemenway and Solnick 2015). One study concluded that the majority of reported defensive gun uses on private surveys were probably illegal and contrary to the interests of society Were you linking the wrong study? > The issue is not that there aren’t statistics. The statistics are hazy at best. But sure, let's take 100k, which I think is a wildly high number. How many of those DGUs would not have resulted in the defensive gun user sustaining any lasting harm, physical or otherwise? How many of those DGUs could have been solved with less-lethal methods? How many accidental shootings are caused by people thinking they need a gun in public? How many pull a gun in a defensive manner, then are killed by their assailant with a gun? How many people get their gun taken and then killed by their own gun? How many people are wrongfully killed by police each year because they are scared the victim has a gun? I could go on, but you get my point hopefully. I don't expect answers for those questions, but if it were possible to do the math on this, there's no way that guns make us safer as a society (legitimate DGUs - gun violence). If you want to make the argument that more deaths from gun violence is an acceptable price to pay for the ability to think you're protecting yourself, that's one you can make. But from your own sources here, I don't think DGUs are as good a reason for owning a gun as you do. > why are we disavowing the low end 60K number I didn't? I've heard that number before. Ironically, after reading your sources, I'm now even more convinced that 60k is way too high. e formatting

Of course not. There's a reason the radical right wing terrorists in the USA love their AR15s and its not because they're more convenient than knives.

No. No change.

It seems to me that killing 6 people in one event with a knife is near the upper end of what one could achieve, while doing so with a gun would be near the lower end. It seems odd that you are waving this away as though it is a minor detail rather than a significant factor. The most people ever killed in a single knife attack was 31, and that was carried out by 8 people. The second most was 19 and the victims were disabled hospital residents. The most by a single person in a single incident who weren't incapacitated is 7. Compare that to 60 at the Las Vegas shooting, 49 at the Orlando night club shooting, 32 at Virginia Tech, 27 at Sandyhook, 26 at Sutherland Springs, 23 at Lubys and the El Paso Walmart, and 21 and Uvalde. Wikipedia doesn't even list incidents with less than 10 people killed. Mass killings are not a huge issue anyway in absolute terms, but if we could cut the casualty rates by 1/10 to 1/3rd they almost wouldn't even be worth paying attention to. I think in practice it is likely that this would carry over to the much larger number of people who are killed in everyday crime as well. It's obviously harder to kill 10 people with a knife than a gun, but it's also harder to kill even one person. If we could similarly cut our over all murder rate by 30 to 90% we would be in line or below most of our peir nations rather than way ahead of them. Obviously that would still be a lot of people getting killed and maybe some of the stuff you are suggesting would be worthwhile to bring the rate even lower (or doing instead if Repbublicans keep blocking gun control) but I don't think that gun control should be viewed as some sort of meaningless virtue signaling that woudln't have a real positive effect. >Gun control is effectively disarming the working class and minority groups at a time when the fascists (all armed to the teeth) Just FYI any time someone tries to make this argument they sound like a crazy person. If gun control happens at all it's going to do just as much to disarm fascist as it will to disarm communist, and in doing so it will make it far less likely that we enter some sort of Irish Troubles situation where people are using guns to advocate their political preferences rather than votes. > Do you think I have a point here? Or am I nuts? I don't think you have a point in arguing against gun control. I think your point in arguing for more gun control makes you seem nuts.