Two factors explain this discrepancy – one, misclassified shootings; and two, overlooked incidents. Regarding the former, the CPRC determined that the FBI reports had misclassified five shootings: In two incidents, the Bureau notes in its detailed write-up that citizens possessing valid firearms permits confronted the shooters and caused them to flee the scene. However, the FBI did not list these cases as being stopped by armed citizens because police later apprehended the attackers. In two other incidents, the FBI misidentified armed civilians as armed security personnel. Finally, the FBI failed to mention citizen engagement in one incident.
Never let your government disarm you. They dont have your interests at heart.
This is a nice idea, unfortunately it’s not generally realistic. It’s very ivory-tower idealistic.
Between rational people like you and I- yes I agree, violence is a failure. But not everybody is rational.
The fact is there ARE people in society who would harm their fellow humans, either for fun or for profit or because they just don’t know any better. I wish that wasn’t the case, but it is.
Ignoring this fact does not prevent such people from harming others, or protect those victims. And saying we should remove the means of self-defense because violence is failure is like saying we should remove airbags and seatbelts from cars because crashes are failures. Sure crashes and violence are failures, but sometimes failures happen and you are either prepared for the consequences or you’re not.
The other issue is that ‘remove guns entirely’ is simply not possible. You can disarm the law-abiding, but that will NOT disarm the criminals and those with no respect for the law. If you feel the law will prevent them from obtaining guns, then please explain why an anti-gun law will be any more effective than anti-drug laws (which we’ve been trying at for 30+ years, with little or no success).
Australia successfully disarmed their populace. This argument does not hold water in the actual world we live in.
Apples to oranges. Australia doesn’t have the same society as us- nowhere near the levels of drug problems and drug cartels, and they are more likely to treat addicts like patients who require treatment than criminals who should be punished by locking them up with even more violent criminals. Australia has WAY better mental and phyiscal health care and better protections for workers. It’s much closer to a socialized society than the USA is.
As a result they have significantly different problems, specifically, they DON’T have anywhere near the same level of drug problems and violent crime. Their culture doesn’t glorify violence as much as ours does, and we don’t have that mixed in with a much more ‘FU you’re on your own’ type socioeconomic policy.
THOSE changes are why much of AU is a safer society. I strongly advocate for making many of those changes in USA. Specifically- health care should be a human right (including mental health care), we should treat drug addicts like patients not criminals, and we should otherwise reform our society for the benefit of the people rather than the benefit of the corporations in the economy.
At this point you are arguing that gun reform can’t work simply because Americans are special. You are incorrect, and your position isn’t supported by anything other than propaganda.
Don’t be obtuse. I’m arguing that because America is different than Australia, what worked there isn’t guaranteed to work here, and that the causes of our gun issues run a lot deeper than guns. Therefore, rather than taking a simpleton answer of ‘it worked for them it’ll work for us!’ it makes sense to actually think about what are the underlying causes of our problems and if that solution will work or not.
I am absolutely not the one being obtuse here. Nothing you have claimed here is supported by actual evidence, unlike the pro-gun control position, and I’m not prepared to base our gun policy on vibes alone. You can spend all day saying ‘that’s different!’ but the facts are not on your side.