Posted on Feb 18, 2018
9 Countries The U.S. Should Learn From When It Comes To Gun Control
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Gun Control
Firearms and Guns
Republicans
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Law
Posted 7 y ago
Responses: 16
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If I wanted to live under the laws of other countries, I'd live in those countries.
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SPC Casey Ashfield
Spot on. Anyone who feels the Second Amendment should be abolished would be very happy in any country that does not respect the right of self defense. Or at the very least NY, MA, CA, NJ, or Hawaii.
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"It's not normal" I love that phrase. How is it not "normal"? Sad? Yes. Tragic? Yes. Normal? What the hell does that mean. Inasmuch as the article opened on that valuable insight, I proceeded with caution.
...and well we should. Consider the next paragraph: "According to the BBC, more Americans own guns than anywhere else in the developed world. Gun homicides account for a greater percentage of homicides overall than anywhere else in the developed world, by a huge margin. High-powered assault rifles cost approximately the same as a new MacBook. Even since the heartbreaking massacre at Sandy Hook, there have been over 1,500 mass shootings. In fact, the country averages one mass shooting a day."
Not a factual line in it. Shall we dip in and take just one? "High-powered assault rifles..." (There is not such thing) "...cost approximately the same as a new MacBook." So what? And the author leaves the best for last: "In fact, the country averagees one mass shooting a day." Really? Where the hell did that statistic come from?
Then come the statistics. Lots of apples and oranges comparisons there. The FACT is that if you remove the largest ten cities in America from the equation, the ones with the most restrictive gun control laws, America ranks about third from the bottom of all nations in the world in homicide by guns. Yet, according to the author, we need to implement more of the same.
But here's the real problem. The United States is not like any other nation in the world nor in history. We are the only nation in which We the People are sovereign, responsible for our own choices and actions. If we have failed, it is in that we have not prepared our citizens adequately to be responsible citizens. That's the problem we need to work on.
Now ignore the background noise of others from other parts of the word offering bad advice. We don't need them. We have plenty of home grown idiots occupying that function...
...and well we should. Consider the next paragraph: "According to the BBC, more Americans own guns than anywhere else in the developed world. Gun homicides account for a greater percentage of homicides overall than anywhere else in the developed world, by a huge margin. High-powered assault rifles cost approximately the same as a new MacBook. Even since the heartbreaking massacre at Sandy Hook, there have been over 1,500 mass shootings. In fact, the country averages one mass shooting a day."
Not a factual line in it. Shall we dip in and take just one? "High-powered assault rifles..." (There is not such thing) "...cost approximately the same as a new MacBook." So what? And the author leaves the best for last: "In fact, the country averagees one mass shooting a day." Really? Where the hell did that statistic come from?
Then come the statistics. Lots of apples and oranges comparisons there. The FACT is that if you remove the largest ten cities in America from the equation, the ones with the most restrictive gun control laws, America ranks about third from the bottom of all nations in the world in homicide by guns. Yet, according to the author, we need to implement more of the same.
But here's the real problem. The United States is not like any other nation in the world nor in history. We are the only nation in which We the People are sovereign, responsible for our own choices and actions. If we have failed, it is in that we have not prepared our citizens adequately to be responsible citizens. That's the problem we need to work on.
Now ignore the background noise of others from other parts of the word offering bad advice. We don't need them. We have plenty of home grown idiots occupying that function...
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Alan K.
CPT Jack Durish - That dam Fault would Go for sure, I know that. May shake near half the Country...!
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SGT Jim Arnold
CPT Jack Durish - the only thing I can say about that is California would be losing out by passing on your service.
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CPT Jack Durish
SGT Jim Arnold - California doesn't have much left to lose. Business is fleeing. Productive people are fleeing. The state is about to fall into the ocean, not because of geological faults, but rather faulty management.
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CDR (Join to see)
CPT Jack Durish Thanks for the response. I won't dispute that it is not a perfect article. There are issues and some of the stuff they say is fact that is wrong, but the main theme which is that gun control can work if applied correctly is backed up by the simple fact that in each of the countries listed they applied very strict gun control law and regulations and their gun related homicide rates decreased and are well below that of the United States. And in quite a few of those countries people still own lots of guns.
Now, let get down to those facts. Of note all of these facts come from the University of Sydney School of Public Health and used references from the United Nations, individual government websites, and academic institutions.
According to the BBC, more Americans own guns than anywhere else in the developed world. - The US as on average 101 guns per 100 residents.
Gun homicides account for a greater percentage of homicides overall than anywhere else in the developed world, by a huge margin. - this is subjective to what is considered the developed world. The US has on average 3.60 fire-arms related homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Only the drug riddle countries of South and Central America and parts of Africa are worse than the US.
Even since the heartbreaking massacre at Sandy Hook, there have been over 1,500 mass shootings. - They include murder suicide of families to get this number. It is misleading. But lets be honest the number is not zero either which is what a lot of other countries have, zero mass shootings.
The Australian portion is a fact. Regardless of their history and culture, the people of Australia were willing and able to do something about mass shootings and their homicide by fire-arm rate and part of that was gun control measures. The significant decrease in suicides does hurt either. Would go a long way to decreasing our suicide and family death by murder suicide mass shootings we have. As MSG Tom Earley has rightly point out in another post, the gun laws in Australia are changing. They appear to be becoming more libel. It remains to be seen if crime still decreases, stays the same or rises.
The UK Portion is also fact. other crime is up but murder by gun is almost non-existent. As they pointed out that you can't really murder a lot of people at once with a knife holds true as well. If it's a decision of having more people die by gun or more people hurt but alive by violence, I will take violence every day.
Israel is actually much lower at 1.04 gun related homicides per 100,000 people. Israel which is under much greater threat to invasion or a need to have it's citizens become armed than the US ever will has much more restrictive gun ownership laws.
Japan does have a different culture than we do and that is very though to overcome but not impossible. Culture changes over time. We were once a very white male land owner centric nation. There wear massive societal battle regarding race and sex that are still ongoing but we are not the white male supremacist nation of the 19th century anymore.
The Czech Republic is proof that we as a nation could still positively enjoy guns and gun ownership while still reducing gun related homicides and mass shootings. 0.15 gun related homicides per 100,000 people. High gun ownership at 16.3 per 100 people.
Canada is a broken record here as they have 0.18 gun related homicides per 100,000 people and 30.8 guns per 100 people which is 1/3 the US rate of gun ownership yet homicides with guns are 16 times less likely than in the US. 17 mass shooting since 1989.
Germany is the same as the rest. Excellent gun regulations. Low firearm murder rates. 0.07 per 100,000 people while having 30.3 firearms per 100 people. The author is off ass on the "well-regulated" comment as that is not quite what the text in 2A is trying to get at.
Singapore is a horrible example to put in this list if you goal is to show democratic countries with representative government where citizens can own firearms but there it tight regulations. Frankly this weakens the articles argument.
Norway and the other Scandinavian all have gun ownership around the 30 per 100 people range. Again much like other European countries the rate of gun homicides is about 16 times less than the US.
Now lets look at our argument about the 10 largest cities with restrictive gun control laws. You can't just subtract them out unless you do the same for the rest of the world and then the US is still in the same spot with much higher homicde by gun rates than most of the world. Also those 10 cities show that gun control works. Criminals there don't purchase guns there. They go out to neighboring states or cities with liberal gun laws and bulk purchase or steal weapons and bring them back. If you were to also institute the same throughout the country you would see gun homicide rates decrease in those cities.
I will be the first to admit that outright bans on guns will notwork here and this idea of taking all guns away is ridiculous. Neither are feasible. But the common threads in all of these countries are:
1. Intense background checks
2. Intense Mental health checks
3. intense pre-requisites (tests and exams)
4. Limits on what types of guns can be owned
5. All laws and regulations are uniform across the country
None of these ideas run afoul of the 2nd Amendment and all are already enacted to varying degrees in our country. The difference is we don't have uniform laws across the country like those other countries with high gun ownership and much lower gun homicide rates.
The United States is unique and we have unique problems but we can learn from others. As the article ends with - "the world offers many cases where gun control has been a success, and there's something to learn from each and every one of them."
If you don't think we have a gun related homicide problem in this country then you will never be persuaded to change our gun control laws and regulations. If you do believe there is an issue then we do something about it and try to fix the problem or we don't and go with what we have been doing which is not much and we continue to have mass shootings and high rates of gun related homicide.
I believe we have a problem and we need to fix it and we can look at good examples from around the world to modify to our unique situation.
Now, let get down to those facts. Of note all of these facts come from the University of Sydney School of Public Health and used references from the United Nations, individual government websites, and academic institutions.
According to the BBC, more Americans own guns than anywhere else in the developed world. - The US as on average 101 guns per 100 residents.
Gun homicides account for a greater percentage of homicides overall than anywhere else in the developed world, by a huge margin. - this is subjective to what is considered the developed world. The US has on average 3.60 fire-arms related homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Only the drug riddle countries of South and Central America and parts of Africa are worse than the US.
Even since the heartbreaking massacre at Sandy Hook, there have been over 1,500 mass shootings. - They include murder suicide of families to get this number. It is misleading. But lets be honest the number is not zero either which is what a lot of other countries have, zero mass shootings.
The Australian portion is a fact. Regardless of their history and culture, the people of Australia were willing and able to do something about mass shootings and their homicide by fire-arm rate and part of that was gun control measures. The significant decrease in suicides does hurt either. Would go a long way to decreasing our suicide and family death by murder suicide mass shootings we have. As MSG Tom Earley has rightly point out in another post, the gun laws in Australia are changing. They appear to be becoming more libel. It remains to be seen if crime still decreases, stays the same or rises.
The UK Portion is also fact. other crime is up but murder by gun is almost non-existent. As they pointed out that you can't really murder a lot of people at once with a knife holds true as well. If it's a decision of having more people die by gun or more people hurt but alive by violence, I will take violence every day.
Israel is actually much lower at 1.04 gun related homicides per 100,000 people. Israel which is under much greater threat to invasion or a need to have it's citizens become armed than the US ever will has much more restrictive gun ownership laws.
Japan does have a different culture than we do and that is very though to overcome but not impossible. Culture changes over time. We were once a very white male land owner centric nation. There wear massive societal battle regarding race and sex that are still ongoing but we are not the white male supremacist nation of the 19th century anymore.
The Czech Republic is proof that we as a nation could still positively enjoy guns and gun ownership while still reducing gun related homicides and mass shootings. 0.15 gun related homicides per 100,000 people. High gun ownership at 16.3 per 100 people.
Canada is a broken record here as they have 0.18 gun related homicides per 100,000 people and 30.8 guns per 100 people which is 1/3 the US rate of gun ownership yet homicides with guns are 16 times less likely than in the US. 17 mass shooting since 1989.
Germany is the same as the rest. Excellent gun regulations. Low firearm murder rates. 0.07 per 100,000 people while having 30.3 firearms per 100 people. The author is off ass on the "well-regulated" comment as that is not quite what the text in 2A is trying to get at.
Singapore is a horrible example to put in this list if you goal is to show democratic countries with representative government where citizens can own firearms but there it tight regulations. Frankly this weakens the articles argument.
Norway and the other Scandinavian all have gun ownership around the 30 per 100 people range. Again much like other European countries the rate of gun homicides is about 16 times less than the US.
Now lets look at our argument about the 10 largest cities with restrictive gun control laws. You can't just subtract them out unless you do the same for the rest of the world and then the US is still in the same spot with much higher homicde by gun rates than most of the world. Also those 10 cities show that gun control works. Criminals there don't purchase guns there. They go out to neighboring states or cities with liberal gun laws and bulk purchase or steal weapons and bring them back. If you were to also institute the same throughout the country you would see gun homicide rates decrease in those cities.
I will be the first to admit that outright bans on guns will notwork here and this idea of taking all guns away is ridiculous. Neither are feasible. But the common threads in all of these countries are:
1. Intense background checks
2. Intense Mental health checks
3. intense pre-requisites (tests and exams)
4. Limits on what types of guns can be owned
5. All laws and regulations are uniform across the country
None of these ideas run afoul of the 2nd Amendment and all are already enacted to varying degrees in our country. The difference is we don't have uniform laws across the country like those other countries with high gun ownership and much lower gun homicide rates.
The United States is unique and we have unique problems but we can learn from others. As the article ends with - "the world offers many cases where gun control has been a success, and there's something to learn from each and every one of them."
If you don't think we have a gun related homicide problem in this country then you will never be persuaded to change our gun control laws and regulations. If you do believe there is an issue then we do something about it and try to fix the problem or we don't and go with what we have been doing which is not much and we continue to have mass shootings and high rates of gun related homicide.
I believe we have a problem and we need to fix it and we can look at good examples from around the world to modify to our unique situation.
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9
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I love it when they compare the US to other countries. First of all, we are not other countries. Second, the US is the number 1 country that the rest of the world wants to immigrate to. The reason for that is our culture of freedom and choice. Guns guarantee those freedoms that we hold so dearly.
My other issue with the article, besides the fact that it’s factually incorrect (there are not mass shootings every day in the US - a mass shooting is 4 or more people killed at the same time at the same location), is that it ignores the murder rate in general. How someone is killed is less important than the number of folks killed. In countries with less guns more folks are stabbed than shot. Does that make it a better place?
This article is just another ill informed person expressing their opinion based on emotions and not the facts or the real world.
My other issue with the article, besides the fact that it’s factually incorrect (there are not mass shootings every day in the US - a mass shooting is 4 or more people killed at the same time at the same location), is that it ignores the murder rate in general. How someone is killed is less important than the number of folks killed. In countries with less guns more folks are stabbed than shot. Does that make it a better place?
This article is just another ill informed person expressing their opinion based on emotions and not the facts or the real world.
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