Concerning America's mass shootings epidemic

[Shrugging Khan]

A bit envious of you. I wish I were closer to nowhere, really. Gotta be in a town of 160k people to study, which is far too urban for my liking. But rural spaces are rare in densely populated Europe, and they're growing smaller daily. I expect that I'll be emigrating in a few decades.

On the issue of America and crime: Doesn't Chicago have pretty strict gun control laws?

[crazyroosterman]

I'm a country bumpkin with a distaste for high population density

Hah, you're not the only one.

Bloody middle of nowhere myself.  I live way south of the city of Chicago, on what I always describe as "the boundary between civilization, and infinite grass".   And by "civilization" I mean "exactly one road that I find annoying, a mall, and some stores" which is about as exciting as it gets here.

The city itself, I refuse to enter.  NOT a pleasant place, and there IS alot of crime there.  Far as I'm concerned it's a hellhole and a murder factory, which is a term I came up with just now, I too have had too much caffiene.

I know some people prefer big cities over "middle of nowhere".   I tend to think they are missing a few screws.   But, I'm sure they think the same of me, so that works out well enough.  Balance is achieved.

cant  argue with you there even though I don't live in the middle of no were(I live in the south of the isle of man which is in between Briton and Ireland) and I only go to the closest thing we to a city(called Douglass) to get my hands on things I cant really get down at the south but an actual city apart from Liverpool which I like to visit (and even then just less than a week at most) is really were I draw the line cities tend to be depressing miserable piss holes(once you go out of the parts that are prettied up for tourists) that I think id rather die than be forced to live in. ps pretty much agree with what's been said here on the isle of man gun crime is honestly non existent at as far I know Britons a different matter entirely of course though.

[Misery]

A bit envious of you. I wish I were closer to nowhere, really. Gotta be in a town of 160k people to study, which is far too urban for my liking. But rural spaces are rare in densely populated Europe, and they're growing smaller daily. I expect that I'll be emigrating in a few decades.

On the issue of America and crime: Doesn't Chicago have pretty strict gun control laws?

I have no idea.

But murders and gun-related crimes (often gang-related, too) are common there. Sometimes just gun-related accidents too, but not as often. It's on the news all the freaking time.  Just adds to my desire to avoid it like the concrete plague that it is.  If there are strict gun control laws there.... they dont work very well.  And the less said about the traffic, the better.  I drove through there once.  Exactly once.  An absolute freaking nightmare. Never.... again.

Mostly though I just hate over-populated areas.  As an autistic, I get overwhelmed by places like that.  Doesnt exactly lead to fun times.

Downside of the middle of nowhere though:  It really is the middle of NOWHERE.  As in, there's nowhere to go.  Unless I want to go walk around the stupid Walmart or something...

[eRe4s3r]

I can't talk about US issues, but I can tell you one thing, you know what scares me more than Daesh bombs? 3000 new legal and approved weapons applications this year in Saxony.....  An increase of 1000% to the previous year)

To me, a Saxon with a gun is far more dangerous and scary than Daesh or indeed the police (Isch Hab Polzei ,p). And to get this you probably only have to google NSU or hey.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Underground you can just go there

I am not a country bumpkin.. I hate nature and the lack of civilization, actually ;P

Anyhow, point being.. you Americans gotta figure that out for yourself, but for Germany I know that I'd rather not see Saxons with guns. 1 NSU was more than enough, thank you.

[Shrugging Khan]

Alright, disarm the Saxons but gimme back my Great-Grandfathers arsenal down here in Franconia, please!

And even though I'm against unchecked immigration, I'd still rather see every turk, slav and arab in arms and able to protect themselves from nazi terrorists than disarm everyone. Sure there's idiots, violent idiots, and violent idiots who try to get guns - but either decent people are in the majority, or we're just a people of violent idiots hiding their nature. Either way disarming everyone  seems wrong.

Edit: Eep, I forgot to talk about what I actually intended to. Namely: is there perhaps just a natural difference between urbanites and country people? Living shoulder to shoulder with thousands or millions of others probably necessitates more collectively-oriented behaviour and reliance on public, common institutions.

[wwwhhattt]

Edit: Eep, I forgot to talk about what I actually intended to. Namely: is there perhaps just a natural difference between urbanites and country people? Living shoulder to shoulder with thousands or millions of others probably necessitates more collectively-oriented behaviour and reliance on public, common institutions.

Isn't the stereotype usually the opposite - country people always being really friendly and helpful, while city people live in bubbles and ignore everyone around them? Certainly around Tokyo people don't seem to act collectively at all, unless you mean collectively as going with the flow, functioning smoothly without getting in each others way?

[mrhanman]

The study, released Wednesday by the Violence Policy Center, found there were 258 justifiable homicides involving civilians using firearms in 2012, compared with 8,342 murders by gun. Even if a criminal isn't shot down, the study found that civilians rarely use guns to protect themselves. "Intended victims of property crimes engaged in self-protective behavior with a firearm" only 0.1 percent of the times they were targeted by a crook."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/17/guns-self-defense-study_n_7608350.html

You're citing a story from an anti-gun website citing a "study" done by and anti-gun lobby using data from anti-gun researchers.  That holds absolutely no weight in my estimation.  I even went to the source they say they got their data and was unable to come up with the same numbers, though this might be caused by my own ineptitude.  Consider instead this paragraph from a study ordered by Barack Obama's executive orders in the wake of the Sandy Hook masacre.

Estimates of gun use for self-defense vary widely, in part due to definitional differences for self-defensive gun use; different data sources; and questions about accuracy of data, particularly when self-reported. The NCVS has estimated 60,000 to 120,000 defensive uses of guns per year. On the basis of data from 1992 and 1994, the NCVS found 116,000 incidents (McDowall et al., 1998). Another body of research estimated annual gun use for self-defense to be much higher, up to 2.5 million incidents, suggesting that self-defense can be an important crime deterrent (Kleck and Gertz, 1995). Some studies on the association between self-defensive gun use and injury or loss to the victim have found less loss and injury when a firearm is used (Kleck, 2001b).

And this from the CDC WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports

In 2010, unintentional firearm injuries caused the deaths of 606 people.

The number of incidents involving gun defense DWARFS the number of accidental deaths caused by firearms.  Compare that with the following from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety:

There were 30,057 fatal motor vehicle crashes in the United States in 2013 in which 32,719 deaths occurred.

I don't understand why gun accidents are even being talked about in light of this.

------

Anyway, I realize that studies and statistics can be twisted to promote whatever view you have.  I've tried to be as impartial as possible with the evidence I've presented, but I am admittedly biased.  The bottom line is, it's unlikely I will come up with a single, unassailable fact that will convince anyone here that guns are awesome, but the people using them aren't necessarily the same.  Likewise, I doubt anyone else can come up with a similar fact to change my mind.

All that to say, the only thing that will change from this conversation is an elevation of blood pressure, so I'm bowing out.  Just don't start a similar thread about abortion and we'll be cool.

Khan said it better than me anyway:

I don't trust the police to protect me, the government not to abuse its power, our neighbours' neighbours not to harbour aggressive intentions, or those criminals we do have to be peaceful and rational people. I don't care about careless people who manage to hurt themselves with tools, no matter what those tools were meant for.

[Misery]

Edit: Eep, I forgot to talk about what I actually intended to. Namely: is there perhaps just a natural difference between urbanites and country people? Living shoulder to shoulder with thousands or millions of others probably necessitates more collectively-oriented behaviour and reliance on public, common institutions.

Isn't the stereotype usually the opposite - country people always being really friendly and helpful, while city people live in bubbles and ignore everyone around them? Certainly around Tokyo people don't seem to act collectively at all, unless you mean collectively as going with the flow, functioning smoothly without getting in each others way?

That's certainly always been my experience.

I dont mean just in big cities.  I mean even in "towns" compared to a spread out rural tangle like where I am.

It almost seems like the more compact everything is, the more likely people are to just get really irritated about... anything.

[Misery]

[Anyway, I realize that studies and statistics can be twisted to promote whatever view you have.  I've tried to be as impartial as possible with the evidence I've presented, but I am admittedly biased.  The bottom line is, it's unlikely I will come up with a single, unassailable fact that will convince anyone here that guns are awesome, but the people using them aren't necessarily the same.  Likewise, I doubt anyone else can come up with a similar fact to change my mind.

All that to say, the only thing that will change from this conversation is an elevation of blood pressure, so I'm bowing out.  Just don't start a similar thread about abortion and we'll be cool.

Fah, nobody's going to get angry here, I think.  Not the kind of forum for that.  I wouldnt even have stepped into this conversation if I thought it'd happen here.  I'm often the CAUSE of flare-ups like that just by being there.

Anyway, just to add a little something:  I dont think that guns, themselves, are wrong somehow.  As in, the existence of them. I've no problem with the concept of the things (though you'd never get me to try firing one, because they're REALLY LOUD and loud sounds shut me down heavily, I cant handle them). Neither are people with a real, *GENUINE* interest in them.  Like, people who go hunting, or who go to shooting competitions (or whatever you want to call those), or... you know, stuff like that.  People for whom it is truly a real hobby, or those in the military or whatever.

I just think they're simply TOO EASY TO GET.  Way too easy.  That's my one huge problem with this.  And too many people are just too damn stupid about them.... and those people shouldnt be able to own one.

Anyway, just clarifying a bit.

[Shrugging Khan]

Isn't the stereotype usually the opposite - country people always being really friendly and helpful, while city people live in bubbles and ignore everyone around them? Certainly around Tokyo people don't seem to act collectively at all, unless you mean collectively as going with the flow, functioning smoothly without getting in each others way?

Well, yeah. In the city, you don't need to cooperate with others - everything is already provided by institutions greater than yourself. So just go with the flow, rely on those mechanisms already in place, and don't try to do anything yourself because that'll just conflict with group harmony.

In the countryside you need to be friendly and helpful, because there are few to no overarching institutions taking care of everything, you need to do a lot yourself, and when you're in trouble you're more likely to get help from people you personally know or have helped in the past.

In a city, this kind of behaviour is both harder to sustain - because there's so many more people that most of them will be completely anonymous to you - and far less likely to pay dividends, because there's always a public of private institution that can help you out so you don't need to burden others.

You also have a lot fewer opportunities to do anything on your own in a city, simply because of the lack of space. You really can only move, build, live, work and generally exist in places that are expressively meant for any given designated purpose. I don't want to get too deep into my theories of how that affects people psychologically, but I suspect that's one of the reason for the differences between urbanites and country people.

I just think they're simply TOO EASY TO GET.  Way too easy.  That's my one huge problem with this.  And too many people are just too damn stupid about them.... and those people shouldnt be able to own one.

Sure, stupid people shouldn't own dangerous items. Stupid people also shouldn't speak out loudly, vote, or breed.
I'm skipping a bunch of steps here, but can you see why I'm hesitant to support legal restrictions?
The idea of wanting people to know what they're doing is good, but when you try to enforce it you'll quickly run into ethical problems. So my stance is that idiots will be idiots, and we're better off not trying to legislate that away. Because more laws are almost never a good thing.

[Wingflier]

http://news.yahoo.com/thoughts-and-prayers-san-bernardino-backlash-152811604.html

"But the New York Daily News pushed back with a provocative front page condemning yet another brush with American gun violence, mocking the responses of several Republican presidential candidates. The headline: "God Isn't Fixing This.""

Provided this story in the original post, but I'm glad we agree on this topic.

As a German with a history fetish, I'll tell you that our lower crime rates are such because all the more aggressive, individualist and independent people, who make both better entrepreneurs and more likely criminals, emigrated to America. Germans, proving that some clichés are true, are a people of followers. Germans obey. It's a cultural thing. We also have next to no notion of individual responsibility. On the other hand, this collectivism and obedience does make for a more quiet, pacifist society. Until someone higher up tells us to go and grab some Lebensraum in the East, of course. History, history.

Personally, let's just say that if I didn't have family here I'd be offering to trade my place with an US-American any time. To me personally, individual responsibility, freedom, and the ability to protect me and mine are of far greater importance than someone else's liability to shoot himself in the foot, or criminals' propensity to commit crimes.

I'll admit that I'm incredibly jealous of you. Perhaps (for both of us) it's just one of those "grass is greener" scenarios, but the society you're describing sounds so much better than this one.

Neuroscience is proving again and again that individuality is an illusion. The human brain is complex, it produces the illusion of individuality (or of a single person in control of the whole operation) as a survival mechanism, making the human being in question feel as though they are in control. However, one has to think very little about this (even without considering all the scientific evidence against it) to realize it's all a sham.

First of all, where is this little boat captain inside your mind, calling all the shots? Wouldn't that just be your brain? But everything you know, everything you have experienced, and everything you believe has only been a product of what you've learned from the day you were born. All of your beliefs and actions are only influenced by your experience, and every given decision "you" make is simply based on the past data you've collected. In other words, "you" are only a product of your society. If nobody had taught you language, for example, you couldn't even think, because all thinking happens within the context of words. Even your thoughts are only a product of a language you've been indoctrinated into, and so the entire experience that makes you who you are, including the feeling that you're in control of all of it, is just a finely crafted social and biological illusion.

It unfortunately happens to be a social illusion that causes quite a bit of damage. For example, here in the U.S. we have the highest jail rate of anywhere else in the entire world. We also have one of the highest crime rates in the civilized world. When you take individuality out of the equation, the reason is clear: Punishment doesn't work. The recidivism rate of crime for jailed offenders is extremely high. But we do not punish because it works, we punish because we believe THE INDIVIDUAL DESERVES JUSTICE. Aha, you see? The individual made a free choice in a vacuum, and were not influenced by their society, and thus they deserve to suffer. It's an unbelievably stupid mentality.

If you take individuality out of the equation, punishment is almost entirely illogical, being a far inferior behavioral reinforcement technique than rehabilitation. There are many places in Europe that have begun to trade out their traditional jails for rehabilitation escapes, with great success.

Actually, the fact that the U.S. is so religious is part of the problem in this equation. Religion reinforces the notion of individuality in a negative way. See, religious leaders and philosophers see the dilemma of the fact that individuality is an illusion, and thus they insert the soul as an alternative. The soul, being separate from the body and the mind, allows free will because it is not a direct line to God and it is not influenced by experience or biology. It is also, an extremely ridiculous proposition, being invisible, undetectable in any way, and because we have no evidence of any kind of claim. Well, it's wishful thinking, because modern theistic religion relies on the notion of individuality to have any kind of power. After all, *you* are responsible for your eternal soul and all that. Take individuality away and it's completely arbitrary.

Unfortunately this illusion of individuality, as SK noticed, is a big cause of the gun problem we have today.

[Misery]

If nobody had taught you language, for example, you couldn't even think, because all thinking happens within the context of words.

Okay, this might seem a really odd thing to focus on, but I dont really get this part.

Is this how most people actually think?  With actual words flowing through their conscious mind?

Or am I reading this wrong?

[Wingflier]

For normal people, conscious thinking consists of words flowing through your mind, yes. Subconscious and unconscious thinking usually consists of words and beliefs flowing beneath the surface of what is consciously known. For example, "I'm fat" "I'm ugly" "I can't do this" "I'm going to fail this test", or alternatively the positive versions of those thoughts. Modern psychology, in large part, is an effort to target those subconscious thoughts and beliefs that influence a person's actions without their knowledge. Still, all these beliefs are just a result of experience, and even modifying them is only the result of experience.

[mrhanman]

"Is there a self?" asked the inquisitor.

"Who's asking?" said the wise man.

The "Self as an Illusion" philosophy is one I've tried to understand, but it's completely incoherent to me.  The rebuttals I've read make a lot more sense and match what I've personally experienced.  My "self" is just my personal experiences and therefore an illusion, though, so what do I know?

[Shrugging Khan]

It's a really good illusion though, isn't it?

Yes, the self is not a discrete, atomic entity. Perception is an illusion of reality. The individual is the consequence of past circumstances.
None of that matters to me, though. Because why would it? It doesn't change me or my behaviour, because my instincts and priorities as well as my means have not changed.

Besides, what's the alternative? Total collectivism? Ignoring the self in favour of the group? What group, then?