Quote:
Originally Posted by oldschoolcalgary
no offense dude, but that rationalization of "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" is the NRA's meme... and is as ridiculous as blaming the girl for getting raped because of what she was wearing.
Look at the facts - deaths by guns in the US vs any other western democracy - and then come back and tell me that's the case.
31 school shootings in america since columbine. The rest of the world combined? 14.
So its either access to guns, or Americans are turning into a country of barbarians, psychopaths and murderers
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I believe if you just look at the number of guns and access to them, numbers alone don't do much to explain the situation. Finland has tons of guns and they're not really that hard to get either, and it took a long while before we got our first school shooting.
I support strict gun control both here and in the US, but if you're looking for reasons for these shootings, I would look elsewhere than
just the number of guns and access to them.
I once saw an argument made that the US has almost the same relationship to guns as the japanese have to swords. Which I thought was interesting. Maybe there's something to that.
Also, the US media is possibly the largest anywhere, and very violence-oriented. Mass murderers seem to get a ton of personal attention. Maybe that's a problem. But how different is this from some other countries? I have no idea.
What I do know, that just going for gun control will propably not do much. (Although, it might change people's attitudes towards guns...) Personally, I'd call it a good place to start anyway. Although there's the huge problem that there are already so many guns around...