if you read that comment and didn’t realize I knew perfectly well that an increase in access to guns results in an increase in gun violence, I don’t know what to tell you. That whole comment was about balancing the needs to the individual against the needs of society.
By your own data, the rape rate in the US was seven times higher than in Europe. Surely we would be talking about how common rape at gunpoint was in the US if that crime was increased by access to guns. The study you cited makes it very clear that direct, unqualified comparisons of crime rates between nation is a bad idea, since there’s a million factors that influence crime.
One of those factors is access to guns, but so are things like poverty, population density, education level, pollution, social services, community engagement, access to green space, noise pollution, after school programs, etc. And the thing is, I want to fix and improve all of those things, something which seems to be lacking among hardcore gun nuts. I also want to fix and improve our relationship to guns, I’m just unwilling to restrict access in a way that can become a civil rights issue on a hurry.
Without regard to the rest of your comment, somehow the lack of guns works ok in Europe and they aren’t all exactly equally sized.
So, two things:
if you read that comment and didn’t realize I knew perfectly well that an increase in access to guns results in an increase in gun violence, I don’t know what to tell you. That whole comment was about balancing the needs to the individual against the needs of society.
By your own data, the rape rate in the US was seven times higher than in Europe. Surely we would be talking about how common rape at gunpoint was in the US if that crime was increased by access to guns. The study you cited makes it very clear that direct, unqualified comparisons of crime rates between nation is a bad idea, since there’s a million factors that influence crime.
One of those factors is access to guns, but so are things like poverty, population density, education level, pollution, social services, community engagement, access to green space, noise pollution, after school programs, etc. And the thing is, I want to fix and improve all of those things, something which seems to be lacking among hardcore gun nuts. I also want to fix and improve our relationship to guns, I’m just unwilling to restrict access in a way that can become a civil rights issue on a hurry.