Quote:
Originally Posted by nfotiu
First, it's not real, the sign on top was a prank.
Second, I'd guess that rifle ownership in Alberta is probably way higher per capita than in the United States.
Third, other than the mass killings, rifles are very rarely used to kill people. Handguns kill people at 20x the rate and for some reason everyone focuses on rifles:
Deaths by handguns in the US: 5,562
Deaths by any kind of rifle:248
Deaths by knives:1,567
Blunt objects:435
Hand,fists,feet:660
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s...tables/table-4
Edmonton had a rough year in 2014, when 35 people died of homicides in Edmonton. Per capita that would translate to 12,000 in the United states.
Calgary had 26 in 2014, which would translate to 7,280 in the US population.
Both of those numbers are way above the per capita rate that people are murdered with guns in the US, and are probably on par with the murder rate as a whole in the US.
The point? US's gun problem is hand guns. Guns in general need to be eliminated to make any kind of difference. Mass shootings get the headlines, but they are not even registering as a significant risk of death, nor are the weapons of choice used in those crimes. |
These rifles are used to carry out public massacres with such frequency and efficiency that keeping them all straight is an exercise in self flagellation. That in and of itself is a problem. Widespread access means that anyone can just have one of these things, and they are not things that just anyone should have.
I have a friend who owns an AR. I'm incredibly unnerved by that. But as he explained to me in detail the process he had to go through in order to be able to acquire it, it seemed like a process that was really well designed to prevent incels from turning classrooms into Fallujah. I've lived in Alberta for 25 years - the only school shooting I can ever recall occurred in Taber around 2001, I believe. We do not appreciate that enough.
It is an enormous problem that just anyone can buy weapons like the AR over the counter like they're cigarettes. Someone who wants that sort of weapon needs to tell someone else why. Preferably several people. They need to go through a series of protocols to ensure they're not a danger to the public.
There is a crisis involving massacres with rifles. We know this because they don't happen anywhere else. Because as you say, mass shootings get the headlines. They aren't hiding all the massacres in Munich. Those just aren't a thing. They happen in America as a matter of course, because nobody is controlling who has access to obscenely powerful semi automatic rifles.
A man on Twitter asked how he was going to deal with 30-50 feral hogs without an AR 15. Sir, if that weapon can easily dispatch THIRTY TO FIFTY FERAL HOGS, what do you imagine it does to a room full of ninth graders? That's the sort of thing just anybody should have. Why? So some ####### can share a foxhole with the next Adam Lanza in a failed attempt to overthrow the Warren administration?
At this point, mass shootings are an entirely separate issue from handgun control. People are being slaughtered at random by rifle fire. I don't see how 'stopping the rifle massacres' is not enough of an incentive to everyone. Get rid of the widespread access to these insanely overpowered death machines. We can deal with everything else later. But this needs to stop.
How is everyone not scared ####less of this all day every day? How do they send their kids to school in the morning? Imagine praying your children come home alive every morning when you drop them off at school. How is anything worth that?