Oh wow.

[luzribeiro]

If you think that mansplaining about "not assault weapons" and "assault weapons" in light of today's events in Las Vegas is going to be helpful in discussing the huge gun violence problem the USA has, you are the problem.

50+ dead, 400+ taken to hospitals.

Save us all the wisdom you need to share about the bullshit you believe.

This is how these guys handle everything - by dragging us out into the weeds of the mansplains rather than actually addressing the issues.

Don't be a dick.

Comments

[airiefairie]

If you're willing to rank yourself among the Third World, by all means, be my guest. But then you'd relinquish your moral high ground to lecture people about "freedom and democracy". So which is it?

Do you think someone priding themselves about ranking above Colombia and Afghanistan in terms of violence levels should be taken seriously? But honestly.

[garote]

"In terms of violence levels" is a completely different kettle of fish.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-06-27/map-here-are-countries-worlds-highest-murder-rates

The story told there is, the US has more gun crime, but isn't a much more violent place in general.

On the other hand, the scale on that chart you're looking at bottoms out at 4.9, which is not informative. The city of New York alone has 8.5 million people living in it, and a murder rate of 3.9 per 100,000 (2016). Compare that to London, with 8.7 million people and a murder rate of 1.3 per 100,000 (2015).

In relative terms, the murder rate in New York is TRIPLE that of London. In absolute terms, that's not much of a difference. Approximately a 0.0039% chance versus a 0.0012% chance of being murdered in a given year.

That is a not exactly convincing evidence that the US is a fundamentally different place in terms of violence.

[airiefairie]

A three times more likeliness to be killed is not much of a difference.

Ehm... I think I'm gonna slowly waddle away from this debate. It is evident that no one is going to change anyone's opinion, as we are approaching it from entirely different premises.

[garote]

We might be.

I do not own a gun, and will never own one. I think they are, on balance, a terrible thing for a private citizen to own. I find American culture's fixation on guns to be tiresome, and senseless. I'm all for tightening the noose around ownership of any firearm that isn't purpose-built to hunt game, and I'm sure you know my position on gun manufacturing by now.

So, you and I are probably not that different in terms of the direction we'd like things to go.