St Valentine's Day and gun violence

[Warrigal]

We've all heard of the St Valentine's Day massacre but how many people know how many people were shot and killed in 2023 up till February 14 in US?

The total number is chilling.
That number is 5,232 which includes 2,262 homicides and 2,970 suicides.

26 were children and 191 were teens up to age 17.
128 were defensive, 177 were unintentional

Mass shootings 28, mass murders 6

All that in just 45 days.

Source - Gun Violence Archive

 

[Warrigal]

Sometimes statistics are too abstract to take in.

One or two examples of lived experience can be more revealing.

From Twitter -

Emma Riddle

14 months ago I had to evacuate from Oxford High Schol when a fifteen year old opened fire and killed four of my classmates and injured seven more. Tonight, I am sitting under my desk at Michigan State University, once again texting everyone “I love you” When will this end?

Shannon Watts
A survivor of the Sandy Hook School mass shooting in 2012 is a student at Michigan State University: “I am 21-years-old and this is the second mass shooting I’ve lived through. We can no longer allow this to happen. We can no longer be complacent.”

There are more like the above but if two are not sufficient to cause a rethink, then two thousand won't make any difference.

Perhaps this sentence would cut through -

"No one should have to be school shooting veterans, that trauma has to be horrific."

 

[Disgustedman]

Yet whose crying for the suicides? Those gun free zones sure work great don't they?

 

[Alligatorob]

Those gun free zones sure work great don't they?

Where would those be?

 

[Warrigal]

Yet whose crying for the suicides? Those gun free zones sure work great don't they?

You are right to ask who should be crying over the suicides.
Suicides are worth crying over, but tears do little.
Action to reduce the number is more important.

Here are some statistics about suicide by firearm per year* by country.
The figure is given as number of firearms deaths by suicide per 100,000 of population.

Australia - 0.72
Canada - 1.40
France - 1.64
Germany - 0.91
Greece - 1.02
Italy - 0.72
New Zealand - 0.92
Norway - 1.40
Sweden - 0.96
United Kingdom - 0.16
United States - 7.32

* not necessarily the same year.

List of countries by firearm-related death rate - Wikipedia

Can you see where action is most desperately needed, even more than thoughts prayers and tears?
Which country?

 

[Disgustedman]

How about drugs? The one the kids are fed daily? How about where the most shootings take place?

I notice you didn't admit those "Gun free zones" don't work. That's smart since signs have shown to be a useless deterrent.

I've never been one for "Thoughts and prayers" but more for teaching, better law enforcement and for training. But instead, people want to ban guns ASSuming that will end the problem.

 

[Warrigal]

How about drugs? The one the kids are fed daily? How about where the most shootings take place?

I notice you didn't admit those "Gun free zones" don't work. That's smart since signs have shown to be a useless deterrent.

I've never been one for "Thoughts and prayers" but more for teaching, better law enforcement and for training. But instead, people want to ban guns ASSuming that will end the problem.

I'll try to answer your points one by one.

How about drugs? The one the kids are fed daily?
Not sure what drugs you are talking about. Do you refer to legal or illegal drugs?
Either way, do you believe that other countries are very different when it comes to use and misuse of drugs? Is that what you are claiming makes the US statistics on firearm suicides so much worse than other similar countries?

I notice you didn't admit those "Gun free zones" don't work.
I didn't admit it because we don't have special gun free zones in Australia.
They are unnecessary. No-one walks into a supermarket carrying a loaded firearm other than a policemen. Ditto a school.

It just doesn't happen. Why would it?

That is not to say that some small businesses like service stations don't get held up late at night but since EFTPOS was introduced there is usually not very much cash in the till. The robbers have to be satisfied with cartons of cigarettes. Hold ups are now rather rare events.

I've never been one for "Thoughts and prayers" but more for teaching, better law enforcement and for training.
As a former high school teacher I am all for teaching and training. We trained the students to safely evacuate buildings in case of fire. We never had to drill them in Run, Hide, Fight strategies.

Let's not go there when it comes to law enforcement. First you need better laws for the police to enforce such as national background checks before being granted a licence to possess a firearm. As a volunteer working with children at my church I have to have an up to date working with children check that looks at a national criminal data base to make sure I am not a threat to the kids. Nurses have to reregister every two years to demonstrate that they are not a danger to the patients. Need I go on?