“Guns aren’t even the most lethal mass murder weapon. According to data compiled by Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, guns killed an average of 4.92 victims per mass murder in the United States during the 20th century, just edging out knives, blunt objects, and bare hands, which killed 4.52 people per incident. Fire killed 6.82 people per mass murder, while explosives far outpaced the other options at 20.82. Of the 25 deadliest mass murders in the 20th century, only 52 percent involved guns.
The U.S. mass murder rate does not seem to rise or fall with the availability of automatic weapons. It reached its highest level in 1929, when fully automatic firearms were expensive and mostly limited to soldiers and organized criminals. The rate dipped in the mid-1930s, staying relatively low before surging again in the 1970s through 1990s. Some criminologists attribute the late-century spike to the potential for instant notoriety: Beginning with Charles Whitman’s 1966 shooting spree from atop a University of Texas tower, mass murderers became household names. Others point out that the mass murder rate fairly closely tracks the overall homicide rate. In the 2000s, for example, both the mass murder and the homicide rates dropped to their lowest levels since the 1960s.”
Oh, come one CAR. You can’t be serious. I love all your other posts because they are balanced and well reasoned, but you’re clutching at straws over this one. The US has, by a long stretch, the highest rate of per capita gun ownership in the world. Second place goes to war-torn Yemen. Excluding Mexico, the US has the highest murder rate using firearms. Japan, which has the strictest gun laws has a minuscule amount of gun related deaths. Yes, there are other factors involved so it’s not that straight forward, but to deny this very fundamental truth is damaging to everyone.
In the past, you’ve explained that personal experiences have shaped your views. I respect that and would probably feel the same way, but sometimes you need to step back and accept that others, who may have suffered worse experiences, arrive at a very different conclusion. I saw the only real outpouring of emotions from the father of one of the Isla Vista victims. It wan’t the usual staged, weepy, emotionally restrained, official press-type announcement. It was raw, highly charged, and very condemnatory of the fact that nothing is being done to prevent these incidences. The man had all but fallen to pieces. Watching this poor man in utter despair was gut wrenching.
Whatever your beliefs about gun-ownership and mass slayings, don’t we owe it to him to do something. Nothing is being done, and I find it despairing that people aren’t on the street demanding change. From the outside it appears as bordering on extreme selfishness.
