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Gun violence in the USA


Marka Ragnos

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Chicago is experiencing a savage spike in gun violence, but there was an especially appalling -- although not unusual -- example last night.

When you see headlines like this, it makes you wonder how America is so different from Kabul or eastern Ukraine or the favelas of Brazil, you know? Horrifying ... one **** night!

Four people were killed and eight others, including an 11-month-old boy, were wounded in shootings across Chicago in less than seven hours from Monday night to early Tuesday.

Most recently, two people were killed and three others were wounded in a shooting at a South Side park during a barbecue in the Fuller Park neighborhood.

 

Edited by Plastic Man
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It's been done to death on this forum so I'll get in early with the obvious reply to the many Brits on here who think it's a simple solution of banning guns to stop people shooting each other:  It's quite difficult to ban guns in a country where they have been legal since day one, some 300 million are currently in circulation and the industry is worth some $6bn a year.  The USA has got a problem that it basically cannot solve. 

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Chicago is just a really bad town or at least a few parts is. I lived in Los Angeles and there was a lot of gang violence there, but it stayed in east LA. You just have to know where to avoid. Even in a state like California where it is extremely difficult to get a gun, gun violence still happens. Interestingly Texas has a low gun violence rate despite being so openly gun friendly. You can walk into a store and walk out with a gun. 

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The irony is that Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. It is a very difficult problem to make progress on. You could ban all firearm sales today, and it wouldn't solve shit, at least in the short term.

It's not really a short term problem though. I think banning firearm sales would be a start. 

America has this weird problem with history that affects it's culture - for a nation that doesn't really have a huge history, it has decided that certain things are enshrined and need to be maintained no matter how stupid they are - the idea that the constitution might be out of date and should change is massively resisted, even though it can seem obvious from outside. The British and the Injuns aren't coming back, all that's happening is thousands of Americans are being killed every year - and what's more, it's hard not to think they deserve it and it's what they want - the urge to inflict 19th century thinking on a 21st century culture. Guns, God and good teeth, yee-ha! In an ironic echo of the words of the NRA, it's not guns that are Americas problem, it's Americans and their insane gun culture.

 

 

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If that baby had been given the gun it has a god given legal right to as an AMERICAN! (**** yeah!) citizen, it could have defended itself.

Low tax, low state intervention, poverty and lack of prospects, readily available guns, a culture where guns are cool, 'everyone else' has a gun.

Not sure there's much can be done as a short term fix ( i.e. next 50 years), with that current scenario. Best of luck.

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It's been done to death on this forum so I'll get in early with the obvious reply to the many Brits on here who think it's a simple solution of banning guns to stop people shooting each other:  It's quite difficult to ban guns in a country where they have been legal since day one, some 300 million are currently in circulation and the industry is worth some $6bn a year.  The USA has got a problem that it basically cannot solve. 

We could just ban Americans instead  ..

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I don't believe a statement such as "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is true in America. Gun culture is what kills people. They have it rammed down their throats by the gun nuts that it's your god given right to own a gun and protect yourself and your family with it. Stupid people are able to stretch that rationale to cover shooting their family members over trivial arguments.

 

People shoot each other because the gun culture over there tells them that they can and should.

 

I'm a policeman in Australia, and it would be an absolutely nightmare to own guns over here. The hoops you'd have to jump through to get, keep and use them means only people that are really passionate or really need them bother with it. And then they can be seized at a moment's notice for something relatively minor that makes a Police officer believe they aren't fit to have them.

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and we would have arrived for World War 2 nice and punctual

but we would never have won the war without them, they captured the enigma machine! I have seen the film with Bon Jovi in it........ :ph34r:

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The Grauniad are keeping a tally of police killings in the US.

Rather dramatically they're calling it The Counted.

If the descriptions of events are true, you can see how many of them ended up dead, but there's some in there that raise questions.

Some unarmed unfortunate got shot on his birthday night out.

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When the red mist descends and you have a deadly weapon to hand bad things are going to happen unfortunately. You can say what you want about gun culture and whether its cool to own one or your god given right but most of that goes out of the window when people act in the heat of the moment.

I agree with making punishments harsher for having unlicensed firearms but how harsh do you make them? When the punishment is too harsh and it makes killing people more viable to ensure you get away with it, then we are no better off.

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It's been done to death on this forum so I'll get in early with the obvious reply to the many Brits on here who think it's a simple solution of banning guns to stop people shooting each other:  It's quite difficult to ban guns in a country where they have been legal since day one, some 300 million are currently in circulation and the industry is worth some $6bn a year.  The USA has got a problem that it basically cannot solve. 

This is it. Further gun controls - including not allowing the sale of guns to lunatics,  will barely help, As the incentive here is just  to tick boxes, the same nutters will still be buying guns. 

Given it's enshrined in that archaic thing they called the 'constitution', there's really no recourse to ban them completely, will never, ever happen.

Finally, as you point out, there's so many of the damn things in circulation, both legally and illegally, that even if there were a blanket ban on guns in homes and on the street, there will still be mass shootings and there will still be gun crime. 

Edited by Dr_Pangloss
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