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Well.. that's not to say a rate of 3.2 is a good rate. The U.S. still is far above most western countries, which typically have something like 0.x or even 0.0x homicides per 100.000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...
And, wow, look at US's suicide rate.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732471250457813...
from December 8, 2012 provides some perspective on falling absolute numbers (and thus a falling rate) of gunshot deaths.
"Crime experts who attribute the drop in killings to better policing or an aging population fail to square the image of a more tranquil nation with this statistic: The reported number of people treated for gunshot attacks from 2001 to 2011 has grown by nearly half.
. . . .
"After a steady decline through the 1990s, the annual number of homicides zigzagged before resuming a decline in 2007, falling from 16,929 that year to an estimated 14,722 in 2010, according to FBI crime data.
"At the same time, medical data and other surveys in the U.S. show a rising number of serious injuries from assaults with guns and knives. The estimated number of people wounded seriously enough by gunshots to require a hospital stay, rather than treatment and release, rose 47% to 30,759 in 2011 from 20,844 in 2001, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-All Injury Program. The CDC estimates showed the number of people injured in serious stabbings rose to 23,550 from 22,047 over the same period."
Emergency medicine for gunshot victims has improved enormously in the last twenty years, and many people who are shot by criminals now survive for a lifetime of permanent disability rather dying on the street. A crime can only be classified as a "homicide" by the uniform statistical methods if someone dies, but a crime can still be very serious and harmful to the victim if it involves a gunshot by a criminal.
Of course it is. All violent crime is down. That has nothing to do with the fact that kids are still accidentally getting shot. I propose a new law; if a child (under 18) is found in possession of a gun the gun owner is fined $50,000. If the gun's ownership cannot be established, the parents or legal guardians are fined $50,000 instead. People might be a little more serious about locking up their guns and not letting…
I'm not sure you understand how common a diversion target practice (even shooting tin cans) and small-game hunting is for rural American youths.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Deaths by handguns in US 2011: 6,220 [1] Most people aren't really bothered by rifles (which are mostly used for hunting), but handguns (which really have no purpose except killing humans) [1] http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/c...
Rifles (especially AK47s) are very popular with gangs for drive by shootings.
But criminal-on-criminal violence is a disproportionate share. Are we supposed to think that the presence of guns is what drives the violence, or is it possibly that you've got millions of young men with no jobs and nothing constructive to do, with parents who don't care to bring them up right (or who can't control them), running drugs and fighting turf wars, cooking up ways to make bank? There's an argument that for some people, access to guns creates an opportunity; but there's a lot more at work here than that.
There's a social rot underneath it all -- and I'd venture that gun violence in the US is a symptom of the rot rather than guns being a cause. It seems remarkably dangerous to me to demonize the mechanism by which someone murders another person in the name of progress; politicians feel like they're accomplishing something, even though we still have a bunch of people willing to kill someone, if only they had the means.
There's significant collective cognitive dissonance in American society on this topic, I think.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
'Fear is a powerful weapon' - exactly. The media and bureaucrats want you to be afraid of your own shadow, when in fact you should be afraid of McDonalds and not wearing your seatbelt.
I don't eat McDonalds and I wear my safety belt. Other people having guns is not something I can control though, hence the justified need to control who can be given them. I don't worry about my freedom to gun people down, it's not a freedom I really want.
More importantly, I don't think your interest in particular freedoms should arbitrate which ones others receive. I can understand that you don't wish to exercise your 2nd amendment rights. No one is force-handing you a gun.
Freedoms are about choices for people. "I don't want this freedom, so no one should have it," is misguided. Plenty of others are minimally interested in freedoms you enjoy. Support freedom.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also worth noting that while blunt objects such as hammers and baseball bats find uses in construction and non-violent sports, guns do not necessarily share such innocent use cases. Sport shooting is the major exemption (I'm quite a fan, myself) but at the end of the day guns are designed to put holes (some messier than others) in objects very far away. When a gun is pointed at a living organism and the trigger…
> When a gun is pointed at a living organism and the trigger is pulled, its chances of survival plummet. When a hammer is raised above someone's head and lowered with force, chances of survival plummet. Guns are a far more useful tool than baseball bats. Guns have a non recreational purposes as functional tools, baseball bats do not. The number of deaths per baseball bat are far higher than the number of deaths per "…
Wait, are you really claiming that a baseball bat is deadlier than an assault weapon?
The focus on "gun violence" or "gun homicides" instead of just violence or homicides strikes me as very strange.
But if you talk about gun violence, people will generally have an opinion regardless of the facts, and won't tend to ask questions. That's why everyone has a strong opinion but few know that it's actually a declining problem.
Well.. that's not to say a rate of 3.2 is a good rate. The U.S. still is far above most western countries, which typically have something like 0.x or even 0.0x homicides per 100.000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...
Interesting data. Thanks. And, wow, look at US's suicide rate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> selectively choose which crime stats to promote For example, FBI homicide stats last year show 350 killed by rifles of any kind, assault or otherwise, while 750 killed by hammers. I keep waiting for the groundswell of public support for hammer control.
Deaths by handguns in US 2011: 6,220 [1] Most people aren't really bothered by rifles (which are mostly used for hunting), but handguns (which really have no purpose except killing humans) [1] http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/c...