Guns- Putting it in perspective in my real world.

There are no quick fixes. It will take decades of small incremental measures to bring gun violence down to less horrific levels.
Doing nothing won't change anything and the biggest change needs to be in the mindset of the people. They have to want things to improve.
 

Doesn't anyone ever get tired of discussing this topic over and over again?
So tiresome!
It simply will NOT eradicate an entrenched gun culture!
(Of course, it also provides a convenient way of venting anger, envy, and BIAS against the U.S.!
 
Susie said:
Doesn't anyone ever get tired of discussing this topic over and over again?
So tiresome!
It simply will NOT eradicate an entrenched gun culture!
(Of course, it also provides a convenient way of venting anger, envy, and BIAS against the U.S.!
Click to expand...
Absolutely! Beyond the insanity surrounding the whole debate around the 2nd amendment, what I find most troubling is the unwillingness of our legislators to do ANYTHING that would even begin to address our culture of gun violence in this country. They are self-serving cowards, most of them, only interested in preserving their jobs.
 

Susie said:
Doesn't anyone ever get tired of discussing this topic over and over again?
So tiresome!
It simply will NOT eradicate an entrenched gun culture!
(Of course, it also provides a convenient way of venting anger, envy, and BIAS against the U.S.!
Click to expand...

Reform of any kind begins with consciousness raising.
Think civil rights, women's emancipation, same sex marriage and add to that changes to gun culture.
To not talk about it is to sweep the problem under the carpet.

No-one is forced to enter the conversation. The ostrich approach is always an option.
 
Envy? hardly. Why would people envy a gun culture that perpetuates this madness? Not everyone wishes to be an American. Some of us are quite happy with our country of origin. The truth is not bias, sailing the "Good Ship Ostrich" down denial, is not working. Many Americans recognise this, and are working hard from within to change things. Anger, you bet! We all should be angry at the repeated massacres of the innocent. The xenophobic, outside malcontent argument is a straw one, and does a huge disservice to those Americans who are crying out in the wilderness, trying desperately to halt this epidemic.
 
The list below shows the congressmen that have received the most from gun lobbyist in the last 6 years...all republicans..


Money and Politics: Illuminating the ConnectionSign in | Register Search MapLight:
Search MapLight
U.S. CongressChange
GuideBillsLegislatorsInterest GroupsContributionsCompaniesTopics
Pro-Guns
ContributionsBills supported and opposed


Top Senate Recipients Funded


Recipient Amount
Cory Gardner $92,934
Ted Cruz $89,329
John Cornyn $82,475
Marco Rubio $76,089
Mitch McConnell $72,300
Dean Heller $71,556
Steve Daines $70,680
Patrick J. Toomey $66,360
Tom Cotton $56,340
Bill Cassidy $50,303




Top House Recipients Funded


Recipient Amount
John A. Boehner $57,790
Paul Ryan $49,700
Ken Buck $41,858
Kevin McCarthy $26,400
Alexander X. Mooney $25,591
Ken Calvert $25,000
Mike Coffman $24,800
Martha McSally $21,232
Jody B. Hice $20,882
Michael K. Simpson $20,450

http://maplight.org/us-congress/interest/J6200
 
How much effort, time and money is being allocated to fighting terrorism? Enough? Too much? Too little?

Consider your answer in the light of this graphic that show terrorism deaths in the US from 1970 to 2014 and gun deaths in USA so far in 2015.

gun deaths#2.jpg

How much effort, time, money is being allocated to minimising gun deaths? Enough?
 
Terrorism deaths are expected to be low as we have our police all on enhanced types of watch. Our airports are really locked down compared to free as they once were. Our ports, railways, subways, public transportation are all heavily watched. We have undisclosed folks that ride on our airplanes, and other public transportation to watch for terror types of events. Hopefully our efforts to quell these foreign driven attacks will remain successful.

Gun deaths in the US. We are not the worst on a 'per capita' basis at all and are slowly improving in spite of the way our news folks report things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

Links to this source and the chart will have all countries listed alphabetically. Click on the title 'Homicide' and the chart will reorganize and by per capita the US move up quite a bit. With many other large and small countries worse than the US.
 
QuickSilver said:
Debating this with you Bob will be as hopeless as the "Socialism" thread... Just believe what you wish..
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It all depends on the receiver of my posts has an open mind or locked image of what is right or wrong.

It appears that for some reason you can not even open a dictionary to see what socialism really is. Pick any dictionary.
 
I think the WRITER of the post has the real problem with that... not the receiver. As I said bob.... believe what you which... even if it's wrong...
 
QuickSilver said:
I think the WRITER of the post has the real problem with that... not the receiver. As I said bob.... believe what you which... even if it's wrong...
Click to expand...

I am not debating at all. It is you who has no courage to open a dictionary and see what socialism is and it is not what the US is doing at all. This post is about murder, no questions here but how some determine to think about it when stats show different results. The US is not the worst in the world with guns or just plain murder.
 
You keep blathering on and on about the dictionary when we are NOT debating the definition of Socialism... only stating that the US has a lot of socialist programs. That's it... plain and simple bob.. Now I am done with the conversation.
 
WhatInThe said:
Big difference there is that Arizona doesn't require those with a restraining order against them to turn in their gun, that's not just a 'gun' loophole that's poor domestic abuse control.
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No doubt the NRA logic there is that the woman should also have a gun to protect herself (he said with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek). Because the only thing that stops a stalker with a gun, is a stalkee with a gun.

Never forget that the NRA first and foremost is a lobbying organization for gun manufacturers. Their job is to do whatever it takes to further the business interests of gun manufacturers.
 
Bobw235 said:
No doubt the NRA logic there is that the woman should also have a gun to protect herself (he said with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek). Because the only thing that stops a stalker with a gun, is a stalkee with a gun.

Never forget that the NRA first and foremost is a lobbying organization for gun manufacturers. Their job is to do whatever it takes to further the business interests of gun manufacturers.
Click to expand...

And the more profit the Gun industry makes the more they can contribute to the NRA... and the more the NRA can contribute to the campaign funds of the legislatures voting against gun control..
 
BobF said:
And here is another way to look at it. This time by murders, regardless of guns or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Again, you can see it in alphabetical order of click on the heading 'Rate' to see how they all line up. In this case the US is 108 and Australia is 34. So once again the US is not the worst in the world at all.
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It's not a competition Bob. The US homicide rate is 4.7 per 100.000. The UK rate is 1.0 per 100,000. To me this says that the US is a much more violent society than Britain. Nearly 5 times as many people are intentionally killed in the US than is England, Wales etc. Are you content with this situation? Would you like it to be less violent?

Or are you just feeling smug because Russia is so much worse?
 
Warrigal said:
The US homicide rate is 4.7 per 100.000. The UK rate is 1.0 per 100,000. To me this says that the US is a much more violent society than Britain.
Click to expand...

I wonder if the way the homicides in the UK are reported makes a difference? It seems like only homicides where the killer was convicted, etc. are reported, is that true? http://crimeresearch.org/2014/03/comparing-murder-rates-across-countries/


UK — Homicides in England and Wales are not counted the same as in other countries. Their homicide numbers “exclude any cases which do not result in conviction, or where the person is not prosecuted on grounds of self defence or otherwise” (Report to Parliament). The problem isn’t just that it reduces the recorded homicide rate in England and Wales, but what would a similar reduction mean for the US.




If taken literally, and there is significant evidence that in practice the actual adjustment is no where near this large, a simple comparison can be made.

In 2012, the US murder rate was 4.7 per 100,000, a total of 14,827. Arrests amounted to only 7,133. Using only people who were arrested (not just convicted) would lower the US murder rate to 2.26 per 100,000.

More information on the adjustment for England and Wales is available here and it suggests that while many homicides are excluded it isn’t as large as it would appear (in 1997, the downward adjustment would be about 12 percent).


 
So the other people didn't really die?

Convictions often lag the event by several years. Eventually they must appear in the statistics of another year.

Still, to address the point you have made, SeaBreeze, the discrepancy in the UK figures caused by not including deaths without a conviction is 13 - 15 %, which means that the UK figure could be taken as 1.15 instead of 1.0. Comparing that with 4.7 for the US, I think my point about the relative levels of deadly violence still stands.

The biggest problem we have over here is women (and sometimes children) being killed by their intimate partners or ex partners. We are seeing a surge in these killings and the rate is now roughly two women killed each week (2015). Money and resources have been allocated to addressing the problem. Not enough - it is only 100 million which is less than 11 days of bombing operations in the Middle East - but it is a start.

Domestic violence has gone from being something that no-one talked about to being something that everyone is aware of and wanting something to be done to prevent it. Our previous PM cut the budgets for women's refuges and support for domestic violence sufferers but the new one is much more receptive. I do believe that there comes a moment in time when entrenched problems can be addressed, but before that happens, a lot of talking has to occur. The problem must be recognised and named. And owned.

This past year, the Australian of the Year is a woman whose husband beat their son to death in front of her using a cricket bat. This happened in a public park in front of all the other children at cricket practice. Rosie Batty has done nothing else but talk about domestic violence this year and people have listened to her. That is the other end of the equation - there must be people who speak out but there must also be ears, minds and hearts open to hearing the message.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_Batty
 

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