Does American gun culture contribute to police shootings?

[Computer Loser]

A) the research shows you're more likely to die if you have a gun.

B) the research shows people living in your home are more likely to die if there's a gun in your home.

Gun Control and Crime

A. Violent crimes

For England and Wales: 775 violent crimes per 100,000
For the United States: 383 violent crimes per 100,000

England and Wales have DOUBLE the violent crime in their society as the United States…And they virtually have no guns

B. Other nations



Norway is near the bottom of list in terms of homicide rate, but France is near triple the rate of homicide rate….

What does all this suggest?

Maybe this has little to do with guns and more to do with the population that is in your country.

This can be illustrated further by looking at

C. Individual States of the United States,

When looking at particular states, there is no correlation between high gun ownership rate and crime rate.

States with lowest homicide rates include New Hampshire, Vermont, Iowa, MA, Utah, Minnesota, Maine, Idaho, Wyoming.

If u visit any of these states there will be virtually no gun violence even though everyone has a gun.

Why?

Because the people in places like Iowa, Idaho aren’t shooting each other. This isn’t that hard to understand

However,

If you go to places like Washington DC and Chicago, places with higher gun control laws…

C) you're protecting yourself by not having a gun.

Not if its an (a)social violent situation (see below)

D) I don't know if you have had many experiencing de-escalating an incredibly violent situation. It works. It's one of the greatest displays of strength and of intelligence I've ever seen. Using a gun is easy and less optimizing.

I agree using a gun isn’t 100% the correct response when dealing with social violence, where the goal is more about dominance than intent to kill (ex: armed burglary), in many cases, it’s better to simply comply with the criminal.

However, when violence becomes (a)social, no amount of de-escalation will help the situation:

--The scariest person at the bar isn’t the crazy buffed out loud alpha male. Rather, It’s the quiet killer sitting in the corner of the room in silence that doesn’t give AF about what u or the bouncer tells him who decides to pull a knife out. No negotiations

--The guy in the hoody who walks towards u. His hands are in his pockets and u tell him to stop. He keeps walking towards u despite that. Little do u know he has a knife and gun.
^^^
Those are real life examples

E) Yes, when one mistakenly says there is no correlation between laws on guns and on a decrease in violence (there is a correlation between gun laws and decrease in violence, as I shared above), that is indicating 'background checks shouldn't be implemented in the screening process of getting a gun' (your quote). You do seem to advocate for and see the use of gun laws.

You don't like the hassle of Universal Background Checks, including familiar transfers...but that's how Dylan Roof was armed. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...-to-get-a-gun/

F) You are a person. You dying at your own hand when you're depressed and just want your pain to go away not to actually die is one of THE GREATEST THREATS to your life. Which I made pretty clear above. It's not 'sneaking in data' like you suggested for me to COUNT YOU as a person when you're talking about making yourself safer.

--Background checks are fine. I think u should screen hard for mental illness and things like being suicidal and make it illegal for those people to obtain guns. Guns should also be locked away from such people or those vulnerable.

--I think we can both agree suicide is horrible though, and measures should be taken to prevent this

AND research shows, AS I SHARED ABOVE, "What surprised us the most was that in states that enacted a combination of universal background-check laws, laws prohibiting the sale of guns to people with violent misdemeanors, and concealed carry permit laws, the homicide rates were 35 percent lower than in states with none of those three kinds of laws."www.bu.edu/articles/2019/state-gun-laws-that-reduce-gun-deaths/

--90% of criminals obtained their weapons illegally, all this won’t deter criminals from breaking the law to obtain the weapons thru whatever means necessary.

[nanashi]

Gun Control and Crime

A. Violent crimes

For England and Wales: 775 violent crimes per 100,000
For the United States: 383 violent crimes per 100,000

England and Wales have DOUBLE the violent crime in their society as the United States…And they virtually have no guns

B. Other nations

Sure. I said die.
more guns = you more likely to die
I also said the international destination of London is enormous and packed---and they dont die there from their murderous violence anything like we die from our violence here. We're dropping like flies

[xerx]

Interesting... I didn't know that all Arctic countries were so closely bunched up. It may be related to all the hunting and/or protection from bears that goes on.

[xerx]

I've been following this story (https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ce-bark-gaggle) about the rise of digital surveillance in schools. Young people are being raised in extremely controlled environments where they're constantly monitored by CCTV cameras, email and telephone scanning, and constant police presence.

School shootings are unquestionably the target of the effort, but the practice has predictably achieved overrun into more private areas of life, by monitoring students for bullying, suicidal thoughts and even failing grades. The article goes on to ask whether children raised under surveillance are more likely to self-moderate and less likely to explore their individuality.

It's not to audacious to suggest that we're raising people, most of whom will reach voting age, that are normalized to (even pleased with) constant surveillance and censorship. Some of them will no doubt grow up to write editorials for the New York Times. The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that SJW and Cancel cultures were largely caused by parental over-supervision.

People, esp. Americans, don't always reckon with the fact that freedoms have massive trade-offs. Whatever the actual causes of school shootings (they could be related to gun culture and the fetishization of violence; or to mental illnesses caused by drugs; or to unconcern over social alienation; or to a weakened social contract caused in part by unaccountability for actions and speech), it's clear, at least to me, that absolute freedom is an irrational concept that accompanies someone else's loss of freedom.

It's probably too late to reverse this anytime soon. The surveillance industry has become a big business with lobbying power. Schools are afraid of getting sued or developing a reputation. Anxious middle class parents aren't going to send their kids to a kill zone because they saw a George Carlin video on Facebook.

[Adam Strange]

I've been following this story (https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ce-bark-gaggle) about the rise of digital surveillance in schools. Young people are being raised in extremely controlled environments where they're constantly monitored by CCTV cameras, email and telephone scanning, and constant police presence.

School shootings are unquestionably the target of the effort, but the practice has predictably achieved overrun into more private areas of life, by monitoring students for bullying, suicidal thoughts and even failing grades. The article goes on to ask whether children raised under surveillance are more likely to self-moderate and less likely to explore their individuality.

It's not to audacious to suggest that we're raising people, most of whom will reach voting age, that are normalized to (even pleased with) constant surveillance and censorship. Some of them will no doubt grow up to write editorials for the New York Times. The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that SJW and Cancel cultures were largely caused by parental over-supervision.

People, esp. Americans, don't always reckon with the fact that freedoms have massive trade-offs. Whatever the actual causes of school shootings (they could be related to gun culture and the fetishization of violence; or to mental illnesses caused by drugs; or to unconcern over social alienation; or to something else caused by a weak social contract and consequent unaccountability for actions and speech), it's clear, at least to me, that absolute freedom is an irrational concept that accompanies someone else's loss of freedom.

It's probably too late to reverse this anytime soon. The surveillance industry has become a big business with lobbying power. Schools are afraid of getting sued or developing a reputation. Anxious middle class parents aren't going to send their kids to a kill zone because they saw a George Carlin video on Facebook.

Freedom is the opposite of Security.

[xerx]

Freedom is the opposite of Security.

Please elaborate.

[Adam Strange]

Please elaborate.

When you are in a jail in a fortress, you are secure but have no freedom. When you are running naked through the jungle, you have a lot of freedom but almost no security.

I'm surprised that you didn't know that these two things are direct trade-offs.

Even in a supposedly secure society like Germany or Canada, you do not have the Freedom to own any weapon that you want. These societies are more secure because they limit the freedom of their citizens.

Likewise, those societies are more free because they don't have certain laws which incarcerate a large part of their populations. In some countries, those laws make many people feel more secure.

[xerx]

When you are in a jail in a fortress, you are secure but have no freedom. When you are running naked through the jungle, you have a lot of freedom but almost no security.

I'm surprised that you didn't know that these two things are direct trade-offs.

Even in a supposedly secure society like Germany or Canada, you do not have the Freedom to own any weapon that you want. These societies are more secure because they limit the freedom of their citizens.

Likewise, those societies are more free because they don't have certain laws which incarcerate a large part of their populations. In some countries, those laws make many people feel more secure.

It's likely that I misunderstood your point, but I *think* what you're getting at is Heinlein's dictum: "You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once."

I don't agree. I think the freedom vs. security dichotomy is too simplistic. Freedom and security are often indistinguishable from each other, with any differences being purely semantic. "Insecurity" is often another way to say lack of freedom. A student's freedom to own a firearm means another student's non-freedom to walk into a school.

I'd also argue that positive liberty is a necessary precondition of negative liberty; that's always been my main issue with libertarians. Knowledge-security — the positive liberty to receive an education, payed for by violating taxpayers' negative freedoms — is necessary in order to understand what your negative liberties even are. Job-security — the positive liberty to have stable employment — is a necessary precondition of the ability to hire lawyers to defend your negative liberties.

[Grendel]

Freedom is the opposite of Security.

Based.