Tbf, this paints the picture that the issue isn’t “the guns.” If we also have more knife attacks, “guns” can’t be “the reason” Americans are more violent than their oft compared counterparts. I’d wager it’s something in the absolutely well known cocktail of economic disparity, general hopelessness, social isolation, instability abound, the pollution from chemical plants that led to our past serial killer problem (no really), and all the other factors that we know can contribute to more violence in a region.
It’s also more helpful to compare a country to itself, it’s possible factors other than “guns” can be the real reason. For instance, Japan may be less violent because they don’t have guns, or they may be less violent because they’re quietly an authoritarian police state that has police in your district inspect your house once a year “just in case” and they can hold you indefinitely if you’re simply suspected and can force confessions leading to a suspiciously high conviction rate (spoiler: false convictions). Without being able to force people to confess to crimes they didn’t do (legally, it does happen but it isn’t allowed), who knows how that’d work here.
So with that in mind, comparing America now to America then, violent crime in the US has dropped steadily since 1993; and gun ownership has only gone up in that same time, in 2004 our “assault weapons ban” expired and violent crime is still falling, despite public perceptions fueled by 24/7 news media and their “if it bleeds it leads” scaremongering for ad revenue, of course.
The UK has fewer knife attacks per person than the US.
It’s just that there’s so much gun violence, no one talks about it.
Tbf, this paints the picture that the issue isn’t “the guns.” If we also have more knife attacks, “guns” can’t be “the reason” Americans are more violent than their oft compared counterparts. I’d wager it’s something in the absolutely well known cocktail of economic disparity, general hopelessness, social isolation, instability abound, the pollution from chemical plants that led to our past serial killer problem (no really), and all the other factors that we know can contribute to more violence in a region.
It’s also more helpful to compare a country to itself, it’s possible factors other than “guns” can be the real reason. For instance, Japan may be less violent because they don’t have guns, or they may be less violent because they’re quietly an authoritarian police state that has police in your district inspect your house once a year “just in case” and they can hold you indefinitely if you’re simply suspected and can force confessions leading to a suspiciously high conviction rate (spoiler: false convictions). Without being able to force people to confess to crimes they didn’t do (legally, it does happen but it isn’t allowed), who knows how that’d work here.
So with that in mind, comparing America now to America then, violent crime in the US has dropped steadily since 1993; and gun ownership has only gone up in that same time, in 2004 our “assault weapons ban” expired and violent crime is still falling, despite public perceptions fueled by 24/7 news media and their “if it bleeds it leads” scaremongering for ad revenue, of course.
big if true
Just to an another source to the other comment: www.datapandas.org/ranking/stabbing-deaths-by-country
Numbers from elsewhere in the conversation.
https://feddit.org/comment/14251305
Where does this false confidence come from?