Republicans

[Forty Two]

'It Doesn’t Matter Why [Shooter] Did It'

The only hope for preventing mass shootings is to treat guns like any other public-health threat and build a strong body of research — but the Republican Party has seriously hamstrung any efforts to do that.

Because we can’t predict who will commit a mass shooting, our only real hope of reducing the number and deadliness of such shootings is to better understand how guns “work” at a public-health level, and finding out policies that will reduce the odds of dangerous people getting guns, or at least getting the most deadly types of guns.

This is exactly the sort of task the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be well-suited for in any other situation. After all, it has a $7 billion annual budget and its entire mandate is to study threats to Americans’ health and well-being. And the CDC did, for a while, study gun violence. That changed abruptly in 1996, when the National Rifle Association, as part of its remarkably successful decades-long effort to keep just about any meaningful national-level gun control off the table, successfully pressured congressional Republicans to strip the CDC of its gun-research funding and to effectively ban the agency from studying gun violence, or disbursing funds to researchers who want to do so.

I wonder if they would write that if he targeted a hip-hop concert, primarily populated with minority Hillary supporters? Doesn't matter why he did it.

[Tero]

What minority Hillary supporters? You mean the ones with a higher IQ than Trump?

[Scot Dutchy]

Guns have killed more Americans in last 50 years than all US wars put together

More Americans have died in firearm-related incidents since 1968 than in all wars in US history.

More than 1.5 million US citizens have died as a result of guns in the last 49 years, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Around 1.2 million Americans have been killed in conflicts in US history, NBC reported, citing data from the Department of Veterans Affairs and a database on iCasualties.org.

And they are proud of this? : :

[Forty Two]

I don't think people are proud of that.

It seems the 1.2 million sounds close, although I think it's a bit of an understatement - understatement, because in the civil war we had about 660,000 military deaths, not counting civilians, and in WW2 about 425,000, and Vietnam we had like 55,000, and WW1 about 116,000, so just those get us past 1.2 million, and I haven't included the Revolution, War of 1812, Barbary Wars, Mexican Wars, various Indian wars, Spanish-American War, Korean War, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. But, that's a bit of a quibble, because the rest of the wars were low casualty affairs. Only the Civil War and WW2 involved significant American casualties by world standards of casualties in warfare.

The civilized countries in the world tend to kill each other off in higher numbers in wars.

[L'Emmerdeur]

The data on military war deaths come from the US Department of Veteran Affairs. The number they give for military dead in the American Civil War is considerably lower than the most commonly cited number of 620,000. The NBC story has an infographic based on the Department of Veteran Affairs data:



I substituted the 620,000 figure and got the total of 1,318,682. Using Forty Two's 660,000, the total comes to 1,358,682. Still fewer than the cited number for 'firearm related deaths.' You can go ahead and use the highest estimate for Civil War military deaths (750,000) as PolitiFact did, and the CDC number is still larger.

[JimC]

An amazing statistic...

[mistermack]

It is amazing, but what people are forgetting is that firearms don't kill people. People kill people.

In a way, there's a grain of truth in that. If the US had no firearms available, they'd still be killing each other in high numbers. Not so many, but still very big numbers.

[JimC]

It is amazing, but what people are forgetting is that firearms don't kill people. People kill people.

In a way, there's a grain of truth in that. If the US had no firearms available, they'd still be killing each other in high numbers. Not so many, but still very big numbers.

There would be a major drop, not a small one. Automatic weapons let you kill at a vastly higher rate than hand weapons such as knives.

[Tero]

Poll finds GOP useless.

The party does not actually do anything. Unless
-you are the 1%
-you work making military stuff
-guns babies and Jesus

[JimC]

Absolutely! The GOP will defend to the death the right of baby Jesus to bear arms!

[mistermack]

It is amazing, but what people are forgetting is that firearms don't kill people. People kill people.

In a way, there's a grain of truth in that. If the US had no firearms available, they'd still be killing each other in high numbers. Not so many, but still very big numbers.

There would be a major drop, not a small one. Automatic weapons let you kill at a vastly higher rate than hand weapons such as knives.

Yes but most gun deaths happen one at a time. Even in the US.

[L'Emmerdeur]

True; the commonly cited number is 60% of gun deaths in the US are suicides. So of that 1,530,000 approximately 918,000 were suicides.

[mistermack]

Even though the numbers of deaths are horrible, for me the biggest reason to get gun control is quality of life.

In the US, you always live in the knowledge that the person next to you, or the person in the next car, might be carrying a gun. You really do need to fear other people. Even your own family. In fact, ESPECIALLY your own family.

Would I feel safe having a blazing row with my brother, if I knew he had fifteen guns round the place? No, I wouldn't. And I certainly wouldn't feel safe intervening, if I saw a man beating up a woman on the street.

I know they could have a knife, but the gun introduces fear of a different level.

Even dumping your girlfriend could get you killed. You'd need to keep it in the back of your mind.
Any stressful or conflicting situation has an extra layer of danger.

[Hermit]

What minority Hillary supporters? You mean the ones with a higher IQ than Trump?

I think it's an ironic reference to Hillary getting almost 3 million more votes than the manchild. At least I hope that's what it is. If it isn't, 42 would have sunk further than I thought it was possible for him, by believing in Trump's large scale voter-fraud fantasy.

[L'Emmerdeur]

What minority Hillary supporters? You mean the ones with a higher IQ than Trump?

I think it's an ironic reference to Hillary getting almost 3 million more votes than the manchild. At least I hope that's what it is. If it isn't, 42 would have sunk further than I thought it was possible for him, by believing in Trump's large scale voter-fraud fantasy.

My understanding of that post is that Forty Two was presenting a hypothetical in which the shooter had targeted a festival where the most of the attendees were minorities. Apparently he believed the hypothetical would have greater piquancy if he further described these minority concert-goers as supporters of Clinton. Because, you know, that's just how Forty Two rolls.

Of course, his wit (such as it is) was wasted, because he missed the point of the article entirely.