It has been barely a few days since the shooting at Club Q in Colorado. As people try to unravel what happened there, elsewhere, in Chesapeake, Virginia, others are learning of yet another, terrible, senseless act of gun violence. This time, it was at a Walmart store, and it seems the manager, under the guise of a meeting with his staff, opened fire, before leaving the meeting and shooting randomly at customers, before turning the gun on himself.
Between this, and the attack on Club Q, we will no doubt hear from the staunch defenders of the 2nd Amendment. We will hear the usual message of thoughts and prayers. The question that many ask (and I am certain this includes many Americans) is, when will enough be enough? When will concerted action be taken to deal with this seemingly endless problem?
In 2021, firearms were by far and away the most common murder weapon in the USA. The cry will go up that many of these were illegal weapons, the stats are inflated by gang violence, it’s the inner cities where the bulk of the problems lie, etc etc. A lot of effort will be expended to deflect from the obvious truth – ease of access to deadly weapons makes it a lot easier for people to kill. Weak controls on firearms spells disaster.
You need only compare other countries, and how they approach firearms. All data is via the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, unless otherwise stated, and it’s all based on 2020, unless otherwise stated.
The US homicide rate in 2020 was 6.3 per 100,000 people. It was said that 79% of all US murders in 2020 involved a firearm of some form. That would make the US murder rate with guns only in 2020, 4.9 per 100,000 people.
What does this mean? Well, it means the USA gun-only murder rate would be higher than the combined total murder rates of Canada (2.0), Germany (0.8), and Australia (0.9) for 2020.
In some cases, up-to-date data is proving a little hard to come by, but we can look at a number of countries, all with varying forms of gun control measures, and note that they tend to be considerably safer than the USA. In 2018, Japan’s murder rate was 0.3, and Japan consistently features as one of the world’s safest places to live. The UK, for all its faults, has a murder rate of 1.12, as of 2018. France had a murder rate of 1.2 in 2018.
What France, the UK, Japan, Canada, Australia and Germany all have, are forms of gun control. Mass shootings are very rare in these countries, and I would wager that’s down to the controls around the types and quantities of firearms people can buy. It’s never quite as simple as just gun control though – these countries don’t have the same cultural fascination with firearms that exists in the USA. Gun culture is the single biggest problem. To outsiders looking into the USA, it’s a baffling and worrying love affair. The rhetoric by anti-control crowds is alarming. We hear, repeatedly, of the right to bear arms, and we hear of how other countries aren’t really free, because they lack the means to resist tyranny. Well, how many tyrants have been opposed, versus how many children killed in school shootings?
I rediscovered an excellent post from one Eric Rasmussen, who talks of what Gun Fans Will Say. He does a superb job of dismantling the arguments that often get put forward by the staunch 2nd Amendment defenders at times like this. Please have a read of it, it’s worth a few minutes of your time.
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It’s difficult to take Eric Rasmussen seriously when he premises some of his arguments on tripe such as “Guns are designed to shoot someone in the back at 100 yards“. Please.
I can’t speak to every element of Eric’s post, but I also don’t doubt his general understanding of gun culture and gun violence. However, like you, Eric is an American, with a different understanding of guns to me, so I’ll step out of inter-US arguments about guns, and focus on what I tend to focus on – how US murder rates with guns *alone* tend to be worse than the combined *total* rates of several other first-world countries. Surely there has to be something that can be done about this? 79% of US murders involve firearms. That speaks volumes.
And most mass shooters have gad prior “contact with law enforcement”. Let’s begin with our legal and mental health systems.
That’s interesting. Do you believe that mental health issues are more of a factor in gun violence, than how easily guns can be acquired?
Absolutely. Anyone who commits a mass murder obviously has some mental health issues. And “easily acquired” is an undefined statement……especially when referring to a Constitutional Right. It’s regulated to an already absurd degree when compared to other enumerated Rights. But the argument writ large underscores how willing Citizens are to oppose civil liberties for everyone, when the subject doesn’t appeal to them.
If you’ll forgive me, I feel we will be on opposite sides of the coin here, which is a product of where I am from, and our cultural differences.
The mental health/gun access argument intrigues me. There are people with mental health issues all over the world. We have them here in the UK, they will be present all over Europe, and indeed the world. Yet mass shootings are a uniquely US phenomenon, and the US is an a unique place among first-world nations for its gun violence.
This is not to say that Britain, France, Germany etc, don’t have their problems, but I feel inherently safer here in the UK. I do not worry about my daughter’s safety at school (my biggest concern is whether she’s managed to get a decent lunch).
I agree. Mentally I’ll people who are undiagnosed or where state and local entities decline to pass along information to the FBI, to upload into the NICS database……is going to result in more mentally ill committing violence with firearms. Is the solution to even further restrict the Rights and civil liberties of all citizens……or is it to fix the system that is designed to keep those people from legally obtaining firearms?
I don’t have a detailed enough understanding of US gun control measures to know how balanced it is in terms of keeping guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. All I can offer are my thoughts and impressions from afar. Is it as simple as saying ‘mental illness causes mass shootings’? Who knows why people suddenly snap, but as I said before, people with mental health issues live all over the world, but only in one country do they seem to be responsible for mass shootings.
Probably. Or terribly different from the incidents we do see in other nations, where mass stabbing attacks occur.
The thing about mass stabbings, is that they are generally rarer than mass shootings, and generally, nowhere near as deadly. They are a serious issue, but the UK knife murder rate is something like 0.48 per 100,000 people, and the US gun murder rate is something like 4.8 per 100,000 people. Regardless, we need to do better with knife crime here.
From what I read about “knife control” in the UK, I’m not sure what more you can do, unless the ability to cut anything, ever……is completely criminalized.
But I think you would agree in those cases…..it’s not the knife that’s at fault.
If we are being technical, you’d be correct. However, would you agree that it is considerably easier to kill people en masse with guns than knives? The Las Vegas shooter was able to kills scores of people, at some range as well.
Sure. But firearms also make it easier for all citizens (of varying ages, physical stature, and with disabilities) to defend themselves against one or multiple threats.
But then the question is, do they succeed at that purpose? I’ve already alluded to murder rates, and the US murder rate with guns alone is higher than the total combined murder rates of several other developed nations. Therefore, can it be said that guns work as a deterrent, or as an effective means of defence? Just look at the numbers – https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-us-gun-violence-world-comparison/?leadSource=uverify%20wall
I guess the question is, do you feel safer in a nation where guns are everywhere, or would you safer in a country where guns are virtually nowhere (such as Japan, which statistically, is one of the safest countries on earth)?
Oh, I certainly feel safer here. Now, I acknowledge that this may come easier for me, as I have a long (and continuing) military background, and I typically carry (concealed).
At the core, I believe the baseline is this: who has responsibility for one’s own security and defense from threats? While a vast majority might be willing to subordinate that duty to the State and various (but mostly absent during the commission of a crime) law enforcement elements……I believe that if a Citizen is a mostly able and capable adult, that duty should primarily theirs.
While they’ve been demonized to the point where people are likely to believe that looking cross at a firearm, will result in maiming or death (and the knee-jerk “guns are icky” vibe)…..the firearm is a tool. Always dangerous in the wrong hands, but a life saver in the right ones.
Certainly, with the right measure of training, I’m sure a gun can be a useful tool, though to me, I feel they are deadly weapons, and if deadly weapons aren’t treated with due deference, they prove just how deadly they are, hence why the US murder rate is substantially higher than the UK’s, France’s, Japan’s, Germany’s, Canada’s, and Australia’s, to name but a few.
I suppose it also depends on how you define ‘threat’. A threat from another citizen of your country? I would certainly take responsibility for defending myself, though depending on the precise circumstances, I’d call the police. The police aren’t perfect (I imagine that’s a truism globally), but compared to barely-trained people with no respect for the dangerous firepower in their possession? Well, it swings back to the question of how effective guns prove to be as a means of self-defence, versus their use in violent and deadly crime.
A threat is anyone who imperils the safety or life of myself, my family, bystanders…..any would be victim of a violent criminal action.Calling the police has its place (usually after the crime has been committed), when a threat is extant, law enforcement serves no immediate purpose.
And I agree, anyone who doesn’t respect the capabilities of a firearm, and spend the minimum time to train to use it (which doesn’t take terribly long for basic self defense purposes)…….shouldn’t own one.