timschochet said:
Courtjester said:
So despite statistics that show violent crime is down across the board (at least our current administration tells us), everyone is all upset that this is some kind of new trend?
Not to sound harsh, but this is just like the media's coverage of the Shark Attacks in 2001. Every time a person was attacked, it was the top story on the news that night and people saw it as an epidemic. Yet, when all was said and done and the numbers tallied up, the numbers were no higher than they were the years before,
I think that (taking some of the more abhorrent crimes out of the mix Sandy Hook for example) these random shooting were 3-4 people are killed are not anything new and not some kind of trend, but just something the media latches on to and reports with screaming headlines to incite people and drive ratings.
Again just my .02.
Whether it's a new trend or not, there are ways to make it less likely, and we keep refusing to do them. One obvious means of reducing gun violence is to have background checks on all gun purchases and transfers without exception. Another way is to have universal registration of all firearms owned in this country.
I haven't participated much in the other gun control threads (maybe a post here or there), but I do not own a gun. Other than wanting a shotgun for home protection, just don't really see the need to own one. That being said in 2011 there were approximately 32,000 gun deaths--almost 20,000 of them were suicide, approximately 1,000 were accidents leaving about 11,000 total deaths (and approximately 750 of these were considered justifiable homicides). So the number is 10,000--let's put this in perspective:600,000 people died of heart disease
575,000 died of cancer
440.000 preventable medical errors
130,00 stroke
120,00 car accidents
68,000 diabetes
50,000 flu
(if you want to play semantics, because this isn't included in the list, there were over 350,000 abortions performed by just Planned Parenthood alone last year)
It goes on to the point that homicide (and this includes frying pans) is not even in the top 15 causes of death in the US.
But yet, we are bombarded by the headlines that want to make us believe that guns are just killing people on every block, every minute of the day and this is just the worst thing ever. I know if you have a loved one touched by gun violence, it is a hard thing. I get that and I am not trying to make light of it, but in the big picture, more people die from Cancer in 10 days then are killed by guns all year
10 DAYS===why is this not the headline for every paper in country every night? Why doesn't every newscast start off with "Well another 1,200 people died today from cancer?"
And the answer is there is not an agenda that can be advanced by pointing this out and it doesn't get ratings. So all of you on here that are calling for every gun owner to come forward and register their guns--think about that for a minute. Assuming there are something like 250 million guns in this country (and that is probably a low number and is skewed because most owners have multiple guns), but honestly is asking 200 million people to come forward and register just because less than 1% of the population is impacted by something? And before someone says, "Well tell that to the mother of a kid killed by a gun-wielding maniac," I will feel bad for her, but I will also feel bad for the child that was killed by a lightning strike or a bee sting or a peanut allergy. All of which (like gun homicides) represent a statistically small number of the total deaths in this country and not worthy of a law that will impact 200 million people.
Let's say we put this great law in place ordering everyone to come forward and register, as the evidence presented in the other gun control thread pointed out, less than 18% of the total gun homicides were perpetrated by lawful gun owners. The other 82% were committed by people who had their guns illegally. So in theory, we are going to have 18% comply and the other 82% do just like they are doing now and ignore it. So what have we accomplished??
And don't even go down the road of then we would just really hammer these people when they are caught with illegal weapons because guess what? There is no room in the inn these days. Our jails are incredibly overcrowded and we are seeing a great push to release non-violent offenders as it is. Now we are going to further strain this system by incarcerating everyone who won't register their guns? It is not going to happen. Plus we have a huge backlash in this country over existing stop and frisk laws. Now we are going to further empower police to jail more minorities because they are caught with illegal weapons??
I am sad people are killed. But stricter gun control laws that impact law-abiding citizens are not the answer and as it has been pointed out over and over, would have had ZERO impact on the vast majority of the mass shootings we have seen recently.