Gravel racer Colin Strickland is said by a friend to have gone to ground until his partner Kaitlin Armstrong, currently on the run after being accused of murdering Moriah ‘Mo’ Wilson, has been caught due to fears for his own safety.
The 35-year-old dated fellow gravel racer Wilson briefly last year after he and long-term partner Armstrong broke up.
However, the pair subsequently reconciled, and while he remained in contact with Wilson, aged 25, he has insisted that their relationship was “platonic and professional.”
Wilson had been in Austin, Texas ahead of competing in the Gravel Locos race which she was favourite to win when the friend with whom she was staying found her dead at home with multiple gunshot wounds at 10.30pm on Wednesday 11 May.
She had been swimming with Strickland earlier in the day, and he drove her home on his motorbike. Shortly after he left, a vehicle registered to the address where he and Armstrong live arrived at the property, and she has been identified as the prime suspect in the investigation with a warrant issued for her arrest.
US Marshals, who are leading the search for the 34 year old, released CCTV pictures earlier this week which led them to believe that Armstrong, who disappeared on Friday 13 May, took a flight from Austin to Houston and transferred onto another one to LaGuardia airport in New York City.
> Moriah Wilson murder: Suspect Kaitlin Armstrong ‘fled to New York’
A close friend of Strickland’s, who gave his name only as David, told the Daily Mail: “None of us can sleep. He’s staying out of sight until she’s caught. I do know where he is but I’m not mentioning where for his safety.
“He’s not in Texas – he’s got completely out of Dodge.”
David, who worked at Wheelhouse Mobile, the vintage trailer refurbishment business owned by Strickland and Armstrong, said: “She was our accounts payable manager for our business and set up the website and things like that.
“She had nothing to do with the building processes or design or anything that was more in my wheelhouse.
“Before the murder, the person I knew was a really sweet and nice human that was trying to make her dream in this world, whatever that was.
“She always had goals she was after and just always kept busy. No red flags for anything that would result in an outcome like this that we were aware of.”
Referring to Wilson’s murder, he said: “After it happened, she [Armstrong] didn’t do what most soap operas would have had her do, which is go back home and kill the one thing you can’t have [Strickland]. It’s dark.
“We think we live in a world where we can see crazy on people’s faces – show up at a gas station and there’s a guy there on drugs and you think, that face has got crazy written on it – I’m going to go to the next gas station.
“With this girl, there was not one red flag. Not one. No rage, drama, nothing. Nothing showed out over the last year and that tells me that there’s something buried so deep that Mo being in town lit the wick to everything that was suppressed prior to that.”
Armstrong, a yoga teacher who besides the trailer business with Strickland last year began working in a real estate office in Austin, where she also owned three rental properties, was interviewed by police following Wilson’s murder but released on a technicality, since when she has gone on the run.
It is thought that she believed that Strickland – who in recent days has been dropped by most of his sponsors, including Rapha and Specialized – and Wilson had rekindled their romantic relationship, and that she tracked their movements through their respective Strava accounts.
David said: “I’m not trying to paint a picture but if it was just jealousy, there’d be so many more jealousy deaths that we’d see every day.
“That’s the scariest part about it – she bottled and suppressed it for so long that she went out and did an act like this.
“It’s just so disturbing. I can’t imagine what that [Mo’s] family’s going through because their daughter just got caught in the middle – the wrong place at the wrong time with a crazy person,” he added.
Wilson’s family have made it clear that they do not believe she was in a relationship at the time of her death.
148 thoughts on “Moriah Wilson murder: Colin Strickland ‘in hiding’ until suspect Kaitlin Armstrong found”
Has anyone figured out how
Has anyone figured out how the detail about Wilson’s bike being found dumped nearby fits into the picture? It was seen being ridden away at the time of the murder, I understand. Whereas the other two people in the picture, Strickland and Armstrong, each had their own transport.
Also, how is Armstrong supposed to have entered the house where Wilson was shot? The door entry code was new and known only to Wilson and the owner we are told.
Not seeing that in any of the
Not seeing that in any of the stories I read. Definitely her bike and not early leads that went nowhere?
As for the door, she probably let her in to talk. Probably either to alleviate her concerns or to show Srickland wasn’t there not realising she was armed.
The bit about the bike is in
The bit about the bike is in the Police report
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22026476-d-1-dc-22-301129
Most people would not invite a stalker into the house; Wilson would realise Armstrong had no other plausible means of being on her doorstep. But possibly she just left the door unlocked?
It’s entirely plausible she
It’s entirely plausible she let her in. Even in hun happy America the majority of disagreements are resolved without violence.
The bike could have been a
The bike could have been a rushed attempt to make it look like a burglary. But without more details of what went on inside the house, its really hard to say.
By all accounts Armstrong had
By all accounts Armstrong had plenty of time and chances to put a bullet in Strickland after she’d shot Wilson.
Maybe Wilson thought the knock at the door was Strickland?
Armstrongs family are insisting she’s had nothing to do with this so why has she run?
Strickland has more than a little culpability in all of this.
Why actual evidence is there
Why actual evidence is there that Strickland had any culpability?
.
.
Evidence? Evidence?!
.
How DARE you, Sir?!!
.
All we know is that both
All we know is that both Strickland (definitely) and Armstrong (probably) were at the scene of the crime about the time of the murder, that both had guns, and that both have since fled. As to who did it, that is pure conjecture at this stage.
He purchased the gun. He was
He purchased the gun. He was hiding his (purely platonic and professional) relationship with Wilson from Armstrong, knowing that Armstrong had expressed a wanting to cause injury/death to Wilson. Armstrong may not have had such a strong urge we’re it not for Strickland’s on-going “relationship” with Wilson.
If he was as clean as can be then his sponsors wouldn’t be dumping him like radioactive poo.
RIP Moriah
RIP Moriah
It’s the sort of murder that may not have happened if it were not for America’s non-existent gun control.
79% of murders in America are carried out with guns compared with 4% in the UK.
Guns make it far too easy for a normally “sweet nice person” with no previous violent tendencies to kill.
Capercaillie wrote:
That 79% doesn’t really tell the story – more useful is that the USA has five times the murder rate of the UK, which in many other ways is fairly similar (rates of mental illness, family breakdown, etc). While the UK does at least have universal healthcare, mental health treatment is very hard to get and waiting lists are very long.
Oddly, Americans are much more likely to claim adherence to a religion that has “love your enemy” as well as “love your neighbour” in its philosophy that British people. But perhaps some read as far as Cain and Abel and conclude that they’ve learnt enough.
Guns are an enabler of the carnage, that’s undoubtedly true. At the heart of this is a dysfunctional democracy with legislators for sale and gerrymandering.
TheBillder wrote:
What I find incredibly offensive about U.S. politics is how the Republicans that receive huge donations from the NRA are now standing up and “sending thoughts and prayers” to the families of the latest school shooting victims. It’s typically considered to be a sin to pray for something that you are not prepared to do anything towards (as opposed to being unable to control).
From what I’ve seen it’s
From what I’ve seen it’s mainly the democrats that have tried to make the current gun related atrocities in to political point scoring. Well, only those committed by a white perpetrator.
Obama even used a tweet decrying one of the atrocities to remind everyone that it’s 2 years since George Floyds death. Fucking deplorable.
sparrowlegs wrote:
I wasn’t referring to political point scoring. It’d be difficult for NRA sponsored senators to make a political point about how more guns makes everyone safer just after a school shooting. Instead they are trying to move it into a religious arena and declare things like “now is not the time for gun discussions”.
I’m not trying to say that the Democrats are innocent as some of them also receive money from NRA-related groups (far fewer of them though and significantly less money). Personally, I think the Democrats are as corrupt as the Republicans – it’s a problem with a two-party system in that it doesn’t matter if you vote for a douche or a turd sandwich.
Here’s a handly little spreadsheet of career donations that U.S. politicians have received from the NRA and related groups: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-7PdCI2NawSgP1QE-cGYVYedetYqepR-4jBweaJyqFo/edit#gid=1782600961
Incidentally, gun deaths have now overtaken road deaths for young people in the U.S.
(Remember, Giro is owned by a significant donor to the NRA)
hawkinspeter wrote:
I applaud you for posting data, even if I suspect you were trying to make the opposite point that your data does. I try to explain this to people frequently, but the NRA is just a near-fictional bogeyman. The NRA simply does not have that much money. Look at the numbers. Only 19 of 533 politicians on that list have received over $1M dollars from the NRA ( and associated groups ) over their entire careers. In some cases, those careers span four decades. That’s a relative pittance compared to the money involved in US politics — on average $16M for a Senate campaign and $2M for the House. And almost exactly half of those politicians received either nothing from the NRA, or the NRA funded their opponents.
By far the biggest spend on that whole list was Independent groups funding ads attacking Obama ( in support of Romney )! And how did that work out for them?
The US has the gun laws we have because about half the country wants them — not because of some relatively tiny, not-particularly well-funded lobby, with only at-most 5M members ( more likely far less ).
sparrowlegs wrote:
Although he actually didn’t, but let’s not let that get in the way of some good outrage.
Rendel just posted it mate.
Rendel just posted it mate.
That’s not ‘a tweet decrying
That’s not ‘a tweet decrying one of the atrocities’ – it’s a tweet about the Floyd anniversary. It’s just prefaced with a recognition that people’s attention is, understandably, dominated by the recent shootings. It doesn’t suggest any link, equivalence, or comparison between the two, even if many people have (mostly, one suspects, intentionally) misinterpreted it as doing so.
sparrowlegs wrote:
He posted a series of moving and well-considered, as one would expect of him, tweets about Uvalde, and then asked that people also remember that it was the anniversary of Floyd’s murder. Pretending that’s fucking deplorable is…fucking deplorable.
What does George Floyds death
What does George Floyds death have to do with the recent shootings? Put that in a completely different tweet, not whilst mentioning the Uvalde atrocity.
sparrowlegs wrote:
It’s perfectly reasonable to say while we grieve for this, don’t let’s forget that. I’m afraid your revolting comments about Democrats trying to make capital out of mass shootings only if they’re white remove any credibility you have and show your agenda.
My agenda? Spit it out Rendel
My agenda? Spit it out Rendel, let’s not deal in nuance here.
Barrack Obama had 8 years to do something about the gun laws in the US. 8 years! He was the President of the United States for 8 years and did nothing about the gun laws.
Think Biden or Trump or whoever else gets in next will do something?
Be fair to The Donald – I
Be fair to The Donald – I believe he has just said he’d do something…
Given the US has the highest per capita gun ownership in the world (also at the BBC) and it’s one of the easiest places to get a gun (with exceptions for a few states)* I’d say that the US needs more guns to fix the problem like a burning man needs more petrol to smother the fire.
Unfortunately for them they’ve lawyered themselves into a corner. Although that’s likely irrelevant given the overwhelming approval for *some* right to have guns. So I don’t see any way through this for them. Like “accidents on the road” it’s now become a terrible “cost of that freedom” they’ll have to bear.
* I now think of Michael Moore as a modern day pamphleteer – kinda Cobbet for the 90s. But a good question in “Bowling for Columbine” is why the US is so much worse on this than – say – Canada. (Not that Canada’s good compared to the UK. Plenty of guns there and not impossible to get them.) I’m sure the metrics and data quality are also debatable but it’s certainly an interesting story. The US stands out in the high income countries – enhanced because the suicide rate. For homicides poor countries in South and central America / Southern Africa top the league.
sparrowlegs wrote:
Your agenda appears to be a fairly rightwing “lefties do nothing” one with a hefty side order of race baiting.
You appear to be confused as to how the US constitution works. The President does not have the power to pass or amend laws, he can only send laws and amendments to the legislature for approval. Obama can certainly be accused of a lack of action on gun control in his first term, as he knew that it could lose him some major states that he needed for re-election. In his second term, after Sandy Hook, he sent a radical (for America) series of proposals to Congress, including more stringent background checks, bans on assault weapons (the ones used in the vast majority of atrocities) and armour-piercing bullets and a limit on the size of magazines. They were all thrown out by the Republicans. He didn’t do nothing, when he tried to do something he was thwarted by the legislature.
So, he only TRIED to do
So, he only TRIED to do something when he thought it could cost him votes and his next term. He then used a tradgedy to again make it look like he wanted to do something, then could blame it others for him not being able to do something?
So, my original point still stands. He did nothing.
As for my “race baiting” you are dead wrong. I see that there’s a narrative in the US that must be adhered to. A narrative designed to split the country along racial lines instead of trying to bring the country together. The democrats used to be a party for the people but lately have become the biggest race baiters going. They used to want to tax huge companies and make them pay their fair share, not any more. They’re all the same though, no matter who gets in, no matter who is running the country because they run it to suit them, not the people who put them there.
sparrowlegs wrote:
Did you actually read what I wrote? I can only assume not, so to recap, Obama sent a radical package of gun control measures to Congress, which were voted down by Republicans. That’s how the US Constitution works, the President has no power to pass laws. This is US democracy 101, it’s not difficult, if you don’t understand it I can’t help you, I’m afraid. Do please tell me what Obama could have done differently to impose gun control?
I read and understood it very
I read and understood it very well.
Instead of requesting tiny changes, something that would probably get passed and start the ball rolling in a “waterfall starts with one drop of water” way, he went balls deep, probably knowing full well (I’m assuming he knew how the constitution works too) that it wouldn’t get passed but he could ride off in to the sunset saying he tried his darnedest.
Was that any closer or are you going to come up with yet more excuses for him having done cock-all to help gun control? As per usual in any democratic society, he only did something when he thought it would directly or indirectly affect his seat on the gravy train.
sparrowlegs wrote:
Given that he proposed the gun control measures in his second term, and that US presidents can’t run for a third term, it was of no personal advantage to himself to propose them. Can somebody please recommend a good basic primer on US politics for sparrowlegs? Because I’m out on trying to explain to someone who can’t listen and is on a repeat loop.
Seems like we both are.
Seems like we both are. Except one of us is a realist.
I have no interest in the minutiae of US democratic workings. All I see is bluster, from both sides. But back to Obama. What he did was allow himself to leave office with what he considered a clear conscience. Nothing more. No amount of you jingling shiny keys in front of me will prove otherwise. But by all means, you carry on proving me wrong by offering nothing but more bluster with a huge side order of arrogance.
sparrowlegs wrote:
AKA facts.
Facts they may be but one
Facts they may be but one fact which is also undeniable, and one it sounds like we both agree on, is that he did absolutely nothing, not one thing to help gun control during his 8 years in office.
This is the part where you fall back on your “facts” now and prove me right. Again.
sparrowlegs wrote:
I give up. He sent gun control measures to Congress. That is the only way a President can have gun control measures passed. Congress voted them down. You say that’s the President’s fault and he did nothing? I am well and truly out, as Professor Dawkins so wisely said, don’t enter into an argument with an idiot, the best you can hope for is to say you won an argument with an idiot. Cheerio.
When you fail to win an
When you fail to win an argument, resort to name calling. That always wins.
sparrowlegs wrote:
sparrowlegs earlier:
Change “did” for “achieved”
Change “did” for “achieved” and I think the pair of you’ll then need to find something else to argue about. I believe Obama said that himself.
I’m sure you will though!
(Meantime have some bonus opining on what the “gun problem” is and why it’s hard for legislators.)
chrisonatrike wrote:
I think you’re right but to be honest I was enjoying winding Rendel up. It’s been a slow day and it helped to pass the time ?
sparrowlegs wrote:
What an empty life you must have if you have nothing better to do than wind strangers up and find it enjoyable (or trolling, as I believe it’s known). What did you do today, daddy? Oh, I acted like an arse on the Internet in order to annoy people, it was great.
Empty? That from the man who
Empty? That from the man who has over 2500 posts on just one site. Yeah, my life is sad and empty doing everything but gatekeep every post on Road.cc
I’ll admit some of it was winding you up but more important was correcting you on how Obama did nothing to change the gun laws of America. You could have said “it’s written in the constitution and is literally impossible to change”. But no, you kept riding the fact he tried to change it just before he went on the lucrative after dinner speaking circuit.
While you’re reading and maybe replying to this, remember, another post may have been posted that you haven’t seen or added to it yet!
2500 posts over multiple
2500 posts over multiple years. How many of your 300 + posts have been on pretty much one topic?
AlsoSomniloquism wrote:
I don’t like this line of questioning
What topic would that be? No
What topic would that be? No doubt, in your opinion a lot of them would be of some intolerable views? This ain’t Twitter hawkinspeter, people are allowed to have differing views without the “pearl-clutchers” asking for them to be banned.
.
.
Please, please, PLEASE – do not wind Trendy Rendy up.
.
If you do, he’ll threaten to ‘keep an eye on your posts’.
.
I know, I know, the horror – it simply doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?
.
Says a child.
Says a child.
I’m no expert but technically
I’m no expert but technically executive order I think. Apparently there are precedents for some major policies being done that way. However these are all subject to review, legal challenge etc. and neither he nor anyone else can alter the constitution (I think…).
Anyhoo it would have been for symbolic value only as – like others have been – I’m sure it would immediately be challenged and overturned.
Yes there is that but they
Yes there is that but they only allow the President to say how existing laws should be enforced, not to introduce new ones without the approval of Congress, and, as you say, any attempt to (allegedly) subvert 2A would be instantly challenged and with a Republican-dominated Supreme Court 99% likely such challenges would be upheld.
The Constitution can be changed by the way, through amendments – it would be perfectly legal to pass an amendment rescinding the right to keep and bear arms, for example (e.g. prohibition, the 18th amendment, was repealed by the 21st amendment) – the trouble is it needs a two-thirds approval from the joint houses of Congress or the approval of two-thirds of state legislatures, which is why there hasn’t been an amendment passed since 1971 (OK, technically 27 passed in 1992, but it was actually proposed in 1791!), despite around 100 amendments being proposed in Congress each year.
As strange as it may sound
As strange as it may sound these things change. For a time in the South at least the Democrats were the face of white dominance and racism. At another point we have Lincoln and the Republicans (him personally increasingly anti-slavery and his party against its expansion at the least.)
So in a sense I’d agree with the label being irrelevant. Although it’s intensely relevant if you’re on the wrong side of any government, whatever name.
TheBillder wrote:
79% of murders in America are carried out with guns compared with 4% in the UK.
Guns make it far too easy for a normally “sweet nice person” with no previous violent tendencies to kill.
— TheBillder That 79% doesn’t really tell the story – more useful is that the USA has five times the murder rate of the UK, which in many other ways is fairly similar (rates of mental illness, family breakdown, etc). While the UK does at least have universal healthcare, mental health treatment is very hard to get and waiting lists are very long. Oddly, Americans are much more likely to claim adherence to a religion that has “love your enemy” as well as “love your neighbour” in its philosophy that British people. But perhaps some read as far as Cain and Abel and conclude that they’ve learnt enough. Guns are an enabler of the carnage, that’s undoubtedly true. At the heart of this is a dysfunctional democracy with legislators for sale and gerrymandering.— Capercaillie
Just for some context, the US also has around 4x the road death rate/head of populatoin of the UK.
OldRidgeback wrote:
Need more cars, don’t they then? Or more roads…
Interesting that two old
Interesting that two old documents (constitution, mostly from C18, and Bible, from C1 and C-40 if you believe the Ussher-Lightfoot-Chronology) drive so much of politics in the US. Equivalents here are few.
Magna Carta has mostly been replaced as we no longer have barons standing up for their rights beyond not wanting to decamp from Westminster, despite the beliefs of those who tried to occupy Edinburgh Castle (hint: Magna Carta never in force there in first place), and the Declaration of Arbroath isn’t much use if the Pope is no longer the international arbiter for disputes and the authenticity of holy relics.
Those who think that some principles can never change need their thoughts challenged, I think.
My personal first step in the US would be either:
1) you can bear arms but only those current in the late C18
2) a ban on sales of ammunition – you can bear arms but loading may become problematic
TheBillder wrote:
How about only allowing people to bear arms at NRA conferences? (NB. guns were banned from the latest NRA conference despite their insistence that more guns makes everyone safer).
https://eu.usatoday.com/story
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/05/27/fact-check-guns-banned-from-trump-nra-speech-over-secret-service-policy/9947390002/
Still being banned though.
Still being banned though. Surely all those 2nd ammenders should be “up in arms” that the federal governement is stopping their legal rights just because one person who “fully supports” that right happens to be there.
I’m sure the Orangina could order the SS to drop that demand or tell them he doesn’t need them anymore. In theory that shouldn’t be the case but he seemed to do that when he wanted to walk to the church which the Secret Service would have overridden but instead also took part in the clearing of the protestors.
Yep. Still being banned. Well
Yep. Still being banned. Well done you ??
Thanks.
Thanks.
sparrowlegs wrote:
Thanks for that – although I just wrote that they were banned, I didn’t know who in particular had banned them. It’s still deeply ironic though and telling that the Secret Service don’t subscribe to the “more guns, more safety” arguments.
Well they’re not needed there
Well they’re not needed there obviously, they’re the good guys. But they need to be armed to the teeth elsewhere because they’re living in a war zone. #gun-mans-burden
I was going to say that mass
I was going to say that mass-shootings with cartridgeless weapons of the black powder era does sound unlikely but of course Ian at forgottenweapons will show the error in that thinking.
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/girardoni-air-rifle-video/
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/lorenzoni/
Capercaillie wrote:
Right — because there’s no way Armstrong could’ve simply gotten in her car and killed Wilson by running her down on a training ride, or while crossing the street in front of her house. Which — ironically — she probably could’ve gotten away with, with nothing more than a slap on the wrist, if she said the magic words “SMIDSY”.
If a crazy person wants to kill you, they are probably going to figure out a way to do it — especially if you are a cyclist who spends considerable time vulnerable in public.
More to the point, Armstrong was a young woman herself. Are you prepared to tell all young women that they cannot possess a handgun for their own safety? Are you prepared to take responsibility for their safety? Even the lowest estimates for incidences of defensive gun-use far exceed firearm deaths in the United States. The highest estimates for defensive uses are orders of magnitude higher than deaths. A person in the United States is far more likely to use a gun to protect themself than they are to be killed by one — and that doesn’t account for the many young women who are killed by other means, generally by bigger, stronger men, who might’ve been able to protect themself with a gun.
So you may want to be careful what you wish for. Taking guns away from everyone is not as simple as you might like it to be.
Macho Australia managed to do
Macho Australia managed to do something about it.
Thing is, most of the many, many ways of killing people are a bit incidental, the car, the kitchen knife, poisons (unless novichec). But guns are actually designed for killing people, especially the military stuff.
I did see a documentary a while back on the Swiss military designing a more humane bullet…
ktache wrote:
How, exactly, does Australia prevent crazy people from killing?
https://theconversation.com/homicide-is-on-the-rise-in-australia-should-we-be-concerned-178320
First off, much like a kitchen knife, a very large number of people use firearms to put food on their tables. Many also use them for protection from animals — both human and otherwise.
Second, draw a clear, legally-defensible line between “military stuff” and non. No such distinction exists. The 9mm handguns that are standard issue for many armed forces are the same ones that are most-commonly owned for personal self-defense.
Thing about guns is… if
Thing about guns is… if “more guns, less regulation” were the solution surely the US would be doing really well on the homicide metric (from here):
chrisonatrike wrote:
I never said “More guns” was a solution, first off. I said that the issue is much more complex than the anti-gun folks here realize, or are willing to admit. I also said that if you are prepared to take personal defense firearms away from women, you also need to be prepared to take responsibility that. How many additional rapes and murders of women are you willing tolerate, to prevent Ms Wilson from being shot? While hopefully realizing that Ms Armstrong would still have been able to allegedly murder Ms Wilson with an array of other potential weapons.
Also, for the record, another explanation for that chart is that societies are complex, and no single issue explains everything that transpires. Maybe more guns do work, but the United States has a raft of other problems that overwhelm that effect?
For just one example, a very large number of those homicides are related to gang activity. The US isn’t the only country with gangs, of course, but it does have the world’s largest market for illegal drugs.
dh700 wrote:
Complex – and yet you also said, in the next sentence:
I’ll question the “guns keep people safe” – particularly women (and children…) – as I did already. And removing weapons is a bad idea because murders happen anyway? That’s not persuading me they’re a good idea.
I quite agree with “it’s complex”. But if you’ve got 35 other places on a similar level of development clustered in one place then there’s one out on a limb there are surely one or two reasons which aren’t that complicated to point to. Bit like not being baffled by noting the high modal share for cycling in The Netherlands vs. most other places with a low modal share. There are certainly details but a major factor (having ubiquitous excellent cycling infrastructure and the systems around it) is easily identified.
As to gangs or drugs – they’re in most places and the market is big enough to fund or incentivise weapons most places. For a comparison – there are gang murders in the UK including some are with firearms. Most don’t use firearms though. Could availability be something to do with that? The particular cluster of social factors in the US are obviously important – race relations, great inequalities of opportunity, disparities of wealth etc. But again lots of those are found elsewhere. As with Chris Rock’s humorous take on this however availability “in the moment” counts for a great deal.
Anyway it’s all moot as the US seems stuck with what they’ve got and it seems unlikely we’d add “more ranged weapons” to the UK’s list of issues.
chrisonatrike wrote:
You seem to have questions, but no answers. How exactly, should a woman be allowed to protect herself, and her children? Why, exactly, do you feel that you have the authority to dictate her options?
I bet you thought that sounded clever, but it didn’t. Gun laws do not work. There is no correlation between gun laws and homicide rates among US States. The factors that influence the homicide rate are socio-economic — basically wealth and population density.
Oh, thank god those poor people were not shot. I’m sure that eased their passing tremendously.
The huge majority of people in the US are not in favor of laws that would’ve prevented Ms Armstrong from possessing a handgun, which is the alleged murder weapon in this case. So they are not “stuck” with that, it’s their preference.
And, back to my original point and where the rubber meets the road in this case, had Ms Armstrong been unable to obtain a handgun, she still could have — quite easily in this case — killed her victim with another weapon, chiefly, her car.
chrisonatrike wrote:
Second response to this post, because it annoys me when people create and/or share bad data. Both axes of this chart are nonsense.
“Guns owned per 100 people” is a meaningless number. Once you get beyond 2 guns per person, you cannot fire them all simultaneously, so there’s no difference between owning 2 ( and for most people, 1 ) and owning a thousand. This is relevant in particular because a small percentage of Americans own an enormous percentage of the private firearms. Contrary to this misleading, junk chart, about 1 in 4 Americans own private firearms. Not that different from, say, Switzerland’s rate.
“Gun homicides per 100k people” is equally meaningless, since as repeatedly pointed out, the weapon used in a homicide is irrelevant — the victim is dead either way. Total homicide rate would be the appropriate number to use, if one is trying to be honest. When using the appropriate statistic, one finds that the US’ homicide rate is the 3rd-lowest in the Western Hemisphere, behind only Canada and Chile (slightly). Yes, even Greenland’s murder rate is higher than the US.
That awful Australia has a
That awful Australia has a fifth of the murder rate of the US.
Your apparent freedom is measured in the number of gravestones of your murdered schoolchildren.
ktache wrote:
And one-twelfth the population density and one-fiftieth of the drug trade — both of which are reliable predictors of violence.
You mentioned Greenland…
You mentioned Greenland…
ktache wrote:
I suggest making a point, or at least an attempt — or discontinuing to waste our time here. Yes, I mentioned that Greenland’s murder rate is higher than that of the US. What of it?
Please try and keep up.
Please try and keep up.
How does Greenland’s population density and drug trade relate to the US, if Australia cannot in anyway be compared to the land of the free. Seeing that I had already brought up Australia and it’s tightening of gun laws after one mass shooting too many.
ktache wrote:
You’ve got enough problems making a cogent argument, don’t waste your time trying to get snippy.
Both are vastly smaller — so the US’ murder rate is far lower than would be expected based on the comparison to Greenland and considering those predictive factors. Apparently the US gun legislation is not so dangerous after all.
If you were trying to make a point, you really do not want to touch Greenland as an example. In point of fact, per some sources, Greenland’s murder rate is 5 times that of the US.
Since that tightening, Australia’s murder rate is climbing. And, for the record, Australia’s rape rate is about triple the US’ rate — and second-highest in the OECD. Their violent crime rate is higher as well.
Both, again, despite vastly lower population density and drug trade. So in context, the relevant statistics are not what you attempted to make them out to be.
dh700 wrote:
A bit rich, given that ‘snippy’ would be a generous description of most of what you’ve posted here.
mdavidford wrote:
Well I’ve made solid arguments, so I’ve earned that privilege — unlike the commenter whose defense you’ve run to, who is blathering nonsense.
Why don’t you make an attempt to illustrate how anything I’ve said is wrong, then? Several other individuals have tried, with no success to date, so perhaps it is your turn.
My points have been, in no particular order:
* Firearm control is far more complex than the commenters here are willing to admit.
* Many people are quoting irrelevant and inaccurate statistics, here and in many other publications.
* The NRA is nothing close to the all-powerful organization that anti-gun folks frequently claim. In fact, its budget is quite small and its election record is mediocre, at best.
* Gun laws do not work. In fact, I’ll go further, and point out that there are almost no examples of free societies successfully banning *anything* that people want.
I’ve made a few others, but those should keep you busy for a while — unless you want to stay on the sidelines taking potshots. Good luck.
dh700 wrote:
The UK effectively banned handguns after Dunblane in 1996 and haven’t had a school shooting in the 26 years since, the US has had 27 so far this year alone. We have 0.2 gun murders per 100,000 population, the US has sixty times that. That’s successful.
Rendel Harris wrote:
No, it’s not successful, because before Dunblane, the UK had no mass school gun murders in its history, as far as I can tell. They have some number of stabbings, though, plus one attack with a flame-thrower since Dunblane.
Furthermore, limiting the question to schools is meaningless, and you are conveniently forgetting about the Cumbria, Moss Side, and Plymouth shootings — probably among others.
You’re quite right. Two in a
You’re quite right. Two in a couple of decades which Rendel totally failed to mention:
That’s your Wikipedia junk of course. I don’t recall any others but then they barely rate a mention in our news, so inured have we become to this. That’s on the “four, not including the perpetrator” definition – so Moss Side doesn’t make the cut (2) but that is indeed 2 people who – as you put it – could have been stabbed instead. (Maybe we should expand the definition as the UK is a smaller place than the US?)
You have a point in that it’s easier to look good if you start from a good place. If you ignore the effects of the situation in Northern Ireland the rate “before” was not huge. If you don’t then indeed the rate looks like around 1 per year. Going back further this is not unknown here however – and you can keep extending that back a ways.
But we still have people dying by gunshot. So our gun laws are clearly a failure. We should look to the US, where by that definition there is slightly more than one “mass shooting” (per above definition) every two days. There are more people in the US though and you have crime there though so that probably explains the difference.
Maybe there are other reasons for having easy access to guns though which make the whole package more acceptable? Freedom, or defence of your country?
chrisonatrike wrote:
Since you brought it up, why didn’t your country simply ban all of the weapons used in the Troubles? Why did they allow 50k casualties when such a simple solution was easily available? Did it have something to do with “Freedom, or defence of country”?
I don’t believe that Semtex
I don’t believe that Semtex is even legal in the land of the free.
I hope you’ve researched that
I hope you’ve researched that – you might be surprised with what you can get away with:
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/106mm-m40-recoilless-rifle-history-and-firing/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zuw7-3nDslE
My favourite – the following is essentially “not a weapon” for (federal) legal purposes as long as you don’t want to run explosive shells. Good example of “bullet control” though – you’d have to be a Bond villain to afford the reloads or get much nefarious use from it. Interesting technology:
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/shooting-an-original-hotchkiss-revolving-cannon/
But wait until BosnianBill
But wait until BosnianBill gets out that lock pick he made…
I can’t remember if the
I can’t remember if the Hotchiss revolving cannon needs to be “rotated counter-clockwise” but I bet the LockPickingLawyer would be up for trying it!
Well … as you’re a stickler
Well … as you’re a stickler for accuracy they weren’t all dying from firearms – they did like an explosion or two. And as I’m sure you’re aware many of those weapons – and certainly ammunition and explosives – “leaked” in from another country where they were much more readily available!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_Army_arms_importation
In a more sorry chapter a common source for the Loyalist side was “accidental loss” by the police and paramilitary. Sadly our politicians weren’t so motivated to stop “inter-ethnic” violence as they were when it came across to England.
You’re right about one thing though – rules were relaxed in what was seen as a “insurrection” situation. “Personal protection weapons” to have during travel / at home were permitted to an army paramilitary group and also the police. Surprising to me apparently this was allowed until recently.
But not the general population, because that might have made things worse, no?
Showing that things were at least made pretty difficult people got into DIY. Very common in terrorist / insurrection / insurgency situations. And indeed in organised crime. Doesn’t suggest to me that trying to restrict these things is a fool’s errand though, rather the reverse.
chrisonatrike wrote:
As repeatedly mentioned, this does not matter. The weapon used in a murder is irrelevant to the deceased — they are very much in the same final state regardless.
Why didn’t you all just ban those explosives, too?
So it’s almost like it’s difficult, well-nigh impossible in fact, to ban weapons, and the use thereof. Especially when the users are already prepared to die — what, exactly, can you threaten such a person with, in order to enforce your ban?
I own most of the equipment necessary to make a firearm and have access to the rest — and arguably have 2 or 3 fairly-serious bombs in my shop right now, although one is technically a science project, and not intended to explode, and the others are just tools. I could also make chlorine gas, were I so inclined — but I try hard not to, because that’s a bad way to go. I have a number of friends who can and/or do manufacture firearms in their shops. And I don’t run in gun circles, so imagine how many there are overall. This is another part of, as I originally said, an enormously complex problem.
What good, precisely, does it do to take firearms away from only the law-abiding? Especially if you cannot also take away the variety of other weapons?
dh700 wrote:
The only comment on that I can make is the Onion’s trope – but you know that one.
Well … lots of reasons! The main one being there’s no test to distinguish the law-abiding from those who are not – until they’ve broken the law! Why do we put locks on things? Most locks are pretty easily bypassed and especially the common kinds. “Keeping honest men honest” maybe? As we know from driving the human “perfect driver” doesn’t exist. Everyone has lapses / makes mistakes, there are temptations to not follow the rules, those who feel that that certain rules don’t apply to them. There are even some malevolent folks. Fortunately for us all the latter share other human characteristics e.g. are also distractible, lazy and sometimes stupid. We do indeed engineer our vehicles and road infrastructure with some (currently not enough) thought given to the fact that it’s humans driving. So even though they should be (!) trained, tested and licenced (“otherwise law-abiding” is a very common comment at trials in these cases…) we still place physical restrictions on how and where people can drive. The number of people who still manage to do things entirely to their own detriment (see the long-running “cars in houses” thread here) points to this being a prudent approach.
In reducing the number and types of firearms – and regulating those which do exist – it does seem like somehow there are fewer being used in crime in the UK. We don’t have a border with Mexico, true. As you point out there are lots more guns in the US currently so at present the principle of “osmosis” will suggest which direction they will flow.
As you know all nations regulate things all the time for crime or harm prevention. Rarely perfectly. As it happens the in the UK, for firearms, we’ve not gone with an “all or nothing” approach. For a bunch of historical reasons – but one was definitely “why not reduce harm somewhere?”
Anyway, in one sense it’s irrelevant debating if something works in theory if it works in practice – as is the case in the UK. “But maybe it’s your history, or your lack of crime(?), or … the Royal Family?” We could argue that – and if the UK ever went back to a worse situation we might wish then we’d delved into the complexities. But at that point we’d be in a novel situation and who knows if that would help us?
You mention DIY and as you suggest a “home-building scene” in the UK too. Rather small, thankfully but the following may be of interest:
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/weapons-as-political-protest-p-a-lutys-submachine-gun/
chrisonatrike wrote:
You seem to be confused about the question-at-hand. At least in this country, the government does not put locks on private property. Nor do they require owners of that property to do so. They certainly do not make locks illegal to own.
Again, you seem to have fallen off the rails a bit here. Accidental shooting deaths, even in the US, are really quite rare — about 1 for every 100 vehicle-related deaths. Or 1 accidental shooting death for every 500 accidental fatal injuries not involving a gun ( which does not even include overdoses ).
If you want to ban things because people aren’t perfect, start with ladders and bathtubs and cars and alcohol.
And yet, the overall death rate in the UK and the US are the same. 10 per 1,000 lately, due to the Pandemic, but previous to that, the United States’ death rate was significantly lower — around 8.5 per 1k, versus 9 for the UK.
So what difference, exactly, does the precise manner of those deaths make?
You seem to be under the misimpression that the US lacks gun regulations. Nothing could be further from the truth, we have tens of thousands of gun laws. The building my office is in, is a gun-free zone. All schools in the US have been Gun-Free Zones for 32 years now. Most government buildings are Gun-Free Zones. Many states require a Federal permit to purchase a gun. 49 states require a permit to concealed-carry. I could go on all day and night — but those laws do not work, so there isn’t much point.
dh700 wrote:
Well that’s certainly a different take. “Death exists, so why care how it comes?” I’d agree with you on a personal level – it doesn’t matter to *you* at that point. Although several popular religions might want to object there!
You might also want to be briefed on likely ways to go – and your chances – before you do, though. And it might be of interest to your relatives. And have broader consequences for society. I think that may be why we bother to measure these things at all, in fact. I doubt “the murder rate has gone up by a factor of 10, but it’s OK because you’ll die from something and we’re still bringing all the perpetrators to justice” would meet with a shrug anywhere.
In the UK most people are recorded as dying of the diseases of old age (dementia, heard disease, cancer). I imagine that’s true – a defining feature even – for most developed nations. We’re especially interested in things which might get us before we get taken out by one of those.
chrisonatrike wrote:
You are reading a little more into my statement than intended — as I suspect you know. You are painting the US as though it’s horrifically dangerous, and still the Wild West, but it’s not. People die in the UK just as often — and to address your final paragraph claim, not at substantially older ages. Before the Pandemic, the UK average lifespan was about 1 year more than in the US — and that was largely due to the US having about 20 times as many drug overdoses, and an obesity rate about 50% higher than the UK’s, not to mention a terribly-unequal healthcare system. Also, for reasons that are unknown to me but would be fascinating to study, the average age of overdose victims in the UK is about double that of American OD victims — the latter being in their twenties on average, and the former pushing 50.
As I said previously, we can imagine many things, but that doesn’t make them true. Official statistics report that citizens in your country do not reach a peaceful death in old age very much more frequently than in mine.
dh700 wrote:
That seemed to be what the statement said (and what you’d said before). What was intended?
I hope I’m not (and I think you know). Hence my points about road deaths and the fact that most people in developed countries die from the diseases of old age. And in noting that we might be a rather more wary when travelling to e.g. El Salvador, Venezuela or the wrong part of Mexico. And indeed that I’ve visited the US without being shot – several times even. (I did have a cop pull a gun though but that was a little misunderstanding about the red light turn rules and then further misunderstanding that you don’t go boldly approach the officer’s car after they’ve pulled you over to ask what the trouble is).
I think we started (days ago) from the point that the US – on the numbers rather than just some euro-perception – is a bit of an outlier amongst developing nations for a particular thing. Again that doesn’t mean that I or most people really (when they’re not bantering on the net) think the US is Tombstone in the 1880s or Chicago of the 20s or that I’d expect to see people going on the nod around the Capitol. Small compared with “total deaths” (like road casualties, or drugs) – but neither insignificant nor meaningless.
I confess I’m mostly still bumping my gums as it’s proved a useful contrast point for looking at attitudes to motor vehicle use here. The “but we can’t get there from here!” when we speculate about making the roads safer or more pleasant for non-drivers. That’s also a lower total / ratio / whatever than cancer etc (and globally low). It’s also something where the wider effects are important, and people keep telling me is complicated. It is – but it’s much less complicated if we can spot the implicit “change – but without any changes for drivers” requirement and examine if we can let go of that.
Yep, I’m pretty sure it’s once each here too *grin*. Maybe more of us are dying at our keyboards if we’re not getting shot or shooting ourselves? I still think that “what of / why?” is a question of interest – more than academic interest.
chrisonatrike wrote:
People in the two countries die at the same rate, and at the same ages — overall. Some of the causes and weapons differ, but does that make a critical difference? In my opinion, no. The alleged epidemic of American gun violence resulted in a death rate that was less than the United Kingdom’s until the Pandemic. I am not finding evidence that one approach is vastly superior to the other.
Well you did blame us for both the Mexican cartel wars and the Troubles.
It is actually quite difficult to get shot in the US, statistically. My family has been here 14 generations now — more if you want to count some native intermingling a long time ago — and while my uncle is the genealogist, I don’t believe any have been shot to death on this side of the Ocean. A couple did go over to help y’all out with the Germans, and one didn’t come back, but that’s clearly a different issue.
It’s an outlier on many issues, though. No other country has 25% of the world’s GDP. No other country is by-far wealthier than the rest of its hemisphere — combined! Few other countries have its impossible-to-secure borders. No other country has its illegal drug trade. No other country has its prison system.
The assumption that gun regulation is the only factor driving that “particular thing”, is naive and unsupported.
Northern Ireland is the size of Massachusetts, with only one tiny land border and no domestic manufacturing to speak of, and the United Kingdom — one of the world’s great Naval powers — still couldn’t keep all manner of weapons out, or from being used there. And it’s not like the IRA had or has the financial resources of even one drug cartel. So it’s nonsense to think that such could be done in the United States, even if there existed the will to do so.
We have an island over here with no cars at all, and it works great. You all should just do that, ban all the motor vehicles tomorrow. ‘Tis easy. Sure, it’s only 11 km^2 and has no industry apart from summer tourism, and not very many permanent residents, but little details like that don’t matter. It’s an island just like yours.
Or maybe it’s a bit more complex than that…
dh700 wrote:
Well you’ll read what you think but nope. Just where a lot of the weapons come from – part of the “wider consequences”. Call that the “complicated” part if you like. You’re correct – in both cases some of those came from military or police sources. But quite a lot come from elsewhere – I was just noting that a major source was indeed the US (which the US government tends to agree with in the Mexican case). If I wanted to accuse the US of causing trouble elsewhere there more direct examples [1] [2] but that isn’t what I was saying.
[ Can’t keep the guns out ]
Interestingly in the UK we did have ready access to guns only a few generations back. We still do, just much less so than the US. We don’t have so many Mexicans or bears though, so there’s that. We don’t have land borders (except the one we have) but we have quite a lot of coast.
[ America is exceptional ]
A common view. And the US has the majority of the world’s Americans… I was just pointing out two ways in which it was.
Lots of your points seem to be “it’s black or white”. Including a silly one about “car issues? why don’tcha ban cars then”.
So I say “potato”, you hear “tomato”. Let’s call the whole thing off.
chrisonatrike wrote:
The U.S. may have the biggest American population, but the majority of Americans don’t live in the U.S. (e.g. Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, Argentina etc)
Good correction!
Good correction! I was obviously using that for “nationality” but the word has both meanings.
chrisonatrike wrote:
Go back and read some of your prior citations. The Mexican government is cooking those books by only submitting a fraction of their recovered weapons for tracing — precisely to fool people like yourself into believing that Mexico would be a peaceful oasis were it not for the US gun trade, and also with an eye on financial recompense.
I’m positive that a former colonial power such as yours can match, and maybe exceed, that record.
And fairly few shooting deaths… so it’s almost like other factors are important.
Less than Florida, but who’s counting?
It ( the idea that America is unique ) is more than just a view.
Well yeah, I talk about things I know. I don’t know if there’s life after death, so I don’t run around making black or white pronouncements on that topic. That said, calling a problem complex and difficult to solve is not really “black and white”.
I thought you would understand the analogy there. You are telling the US that we need to adopt your solution to a problem, while largely ignoring the differences between the countries — I turned that around and suggested a nonsensical solution to your motor vehicle problem which works splendidly here, on a tiny island with almost nothing in common with yours.
Motor vehicles have been
Motor vehicles have been mentioned – that’s an interesting one. Motor vehicles get a pass in the UK – and in most places. Until recently accident figures elicited a sad expression, and maybe something about urging people to be more careful but the general view was “it’s a very sad side-effect but there you go”. We – and notably a neighbor – have started looking beyond that now. In terms of the bare figures (however you slice) the UK roads are globally among the safest. In absolute terms “not many killed / seriously injured” as a fraction of the population. This glosses over things slightly. The effects of pollutants tend to get recorded separately – and until recently some weren’t well-recognised at all. (This may turn out to be a major proportion of the deaths from motor traffic.)
Thing is though the death rate is not equally shared over different categories of people, nor are the benefits of their use equally distributed. There is a lot of dispute about how necessary a car is – or indeed certain trips (e.g. very short distances) – and how we might better incentivise people to choose alternatives. Finally having a car-filled environment and devoting land space to them has a wide range of other consequences for society. For example children’s welfare, old people’s independence etc.
It’s also big business – lots of money lobbying for it.
In the UK we tend to “lawyer the balance back” – but this is always after the fact of someone having a bad day. I think it’s more useful to find out how we can get the safety in from the start and divert people to real alternatives. Maybe not all the motor vehicles / trips are needed?
chrisonatrike wrote:
What the hell are you talking about bikes for, I thought this was a gun site?
I don’t disagree with much that you wrote there, although my background leads me to some different conclusions. While I enjoy a nice bike lane or path, I’m unsure that the answer is still more pavement. I raced cars for many years, and more importantly, instructed many drivers at high-performance, law-enforcement, and new-driver schools — so I don’t believe that driving a motor vehicle safely is all that hard. It isn’t even that difficult while sharing a road with cyclists and pedestrians. Just about all of the road safety problems in the developed world are caused by insufficiently trained and motivated drivers — not by lack of infrastructure. Dedicated cycling infrastructure is nice, but it’s treating the symptom, not the disease.
Any road suitable for a motor vehicle is suitable for a bike — as long as the drivers are properly trained — and we already have millions of miles of those roads.
It would be far cheaper, and more effective, and environmentally-sound to train drivers properly, and discipline them when they fail to meet expectations, compared to building infrastructure everywhere. Admittedly, my opinion on this matter is colored by where I live — where, for example, it took $100M and 20 years to build a 1-mile dedicated bike/pedestrian bridge.
So I favor integration over “separate but equal”.
[not separate but equal, infa
[bikes – not a gun site]
Stick around and you’ll find it’s unpleasantly squirrel-focussed.
“It isn’t even that difficult while sharing a road with cyclists and pedestrians.”
Sadly we find that it is – it shouldn’t be – but it is. All the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time. When that happens the law doesn’t tend to treat the situation with gravity. Yep – getting killed doesn’t happen so much. Having close calls is a much more frequent occurence and very salient when you’re in the vulnerable position. That’s certainly a part of why most people don’t get on their bikes to go half a mile very often.
[ not in favour of “separate but equal”, infra not worth the cost / we already have roads, we’d be better encouraging better driving / enforcement ]
Given where you’re coming from I’m not surprised that’s your perspective. Indeed it’s the majority view here. Even among regular cyclists (most regular cyclists are drive, very few drivers regularly cycle). In fact that was where I started from myself.
If you’re remotely interested you’ll find plenty on that subject here. I think it’s useful to look at the “natural experiments” that e.g. Europe has provided. There are a range of places vaguely comparable with the UK but with much higher levels of cycling (Netherlands, Copenhagen, Malmo, Seville, Berne, Paris …). (I was almost tempted to add New York or Portland there but I’m sketchy about them and generally the US has lower cycling levels and is still the home of the car). Interesting to look at what changes they’ve made over time in how they treat the road space – and the consequences. There’s also a handy (UK-perspective) “bingo” card which covers some common beliefs about cycling and looks at the evidence:
https://cyclingfallacies.com/en/
chrisonatrike wrote:
And those are fixable problems. Not easily, but fixable. The latter much more easily than the former — there is absolutely no reason that law enforcement ( in both our countries ) has gone rogue on this issue, and is refusing to even uphold the laws as-written ( which aren’t often written well-enough, either ).
Another of the problems with addressing this issue via infrastructure is that is a very non-agile solution. Let’s say you and I are elected Kings of our respective countries tomorrow, and our first priority is to build cycling infrastructure. We build it everywhere, and spend trillions of dollars and pounds on it. We put the Netherlands to shame. It takes a decade or two, but we build every bike lane we can think of, and then we think of more.
Meanwhile, technology advances. Specifically, let’s imagine two developments in particular.
First, autonomous driving technology is improved enough such that motor vehicles are required to have impact-avoidance sensors and those are good enough, and integrated with the vehicle controls, sufficient to stop motor vehicles from colliding with things, other road users in particular. This is not all that far-fetched. The current state of autonomous driving is a joke, but it is getting better, and will likely continue to do so. I’m not talking about completely self-driving here, just the ability for cars not to hit things.
Second, someone invents 60-80 mile-per-hour transport devices that people use on our cycling infrastructure. This does not actually require any technology advance — people already drive motorcycles on bike paths here — but humor me. Obviously, mixing 70 mph devices with traditional cycling traffic would be a safety nightmare.
Either one of these developments effectively obsoletes our trillion-dollar investments in cycling infrastructure.
And, for added fun after wasting all that money, we have two redundant infrastructures to maintain, so we get to throw good money after bad for decades.
OK, we get it. USA is so far
OK, we get it. USA is so far down the road of an armed citizenry that it is difficult to see what can practically or legally, given the current supreme court interpretation your constitution, be done to fix the problem. Even suggesting basic background checks is seen as an extreme political opinion.
A sizeable proportion of US citizens are now so terrified of their fellow countrymen that they feel the need to carry lethal force for a simple shopping trip and think they require military grade automatic weapons to protect themselves from home invasion. Meanwhile, their children are taught “active shooter” drills at school and the NRA suggest that teachers equip and train themselves like tactical assault troops in order to protect their classes.
I think on the whole I prefer a different kind of freedom which doesn’t involve me needing a gun to protect it.
Mungecrundle wrote:
All Federally-licensed gun dealers in the US are required to perform a background check before selling to a non-dealer. What on Earth are you talking about?
No, they are not. The entire country only has a few ten thousand active concealed-carry permits. The huge majority of legal US firearms only leave their home to go hunting, or to the range.
Almost all firearms are, or once were, “military-grade”. The standard self-defense handgun for civilians is the same weapon issued to police and armed-forces worldwide, so again, what on Earth are you talking about?
Yeah, we have a lengthy history of panicky drills for school-children — we used to drill them to hide from ICBMs under their desks.
Your Pew centre statistics
Your Pew centre statistics are certainly notable from a UK perspective. But I guess that it’s just us Europeans.
Nearly eight-in-ten (79%) U.S. murders in 2020 – 19,384 out of 24,576 – involved a firearm. That marked the highest percentage since at least 1968, the earliest year for which the CDC has online records. A little over half (53%) of all suicides in 2020 – 24,292 out of 45,979 – involved a gun, a percentage that has generally remained stable in recent years.
Also the usual caveat about covid times etc. but the numbers seem to be fairly stable longer term.
Would – for example – the US suicide rate drop to e.g. the lower UK rate if firearms ownership was comparable? With those numbers alone, no saying – certainly the absolute rate no doubt is most dependent on cultural and socioeconomic effects (e.g. see South Korea and the dramatic shift there over time). Maybe comparing things across the US might be instructive though – or those living in a home with a gun and those not?
chrisonatrike wrote:
Yes, and most of those are gang and/or drug related. And yes, I’m aware that various people have attempted to debunk that claim — doing so usually requires very sketchy data manipulation ( such as only classing as “gang-related” when both victim and perpetrator are known members with records of such ). In most cases, bystanders killed by errant gang fire are not considered “gang-related murders”, which is obvious nonsense.
As already explained elsewhere, reducing a suicide rate on its own is of extremely dubious value. Forcing a non-human animal to live while suffering is considered cruelty, so why would we do that to humans? Now, if you’re going to help those people escape their suffering, that’s another issue. But just preventing people from dying is cruel.
This isn’t a Disney movie. I know many people believe that if you can just stop a person from taking their own life, the sun will come out, music will play, and that person will be transformed into a happy, pain-free individual for the rest of their life. It doesn’t work that way. Some people do not want to live anymore, and it is neither your business, nor mine, to demand that they continue to do so.
And finally, from a purely cold-hearted, pragmatic standpoint, the absolute last thing this planet needs is more people — so suicide prevention should be just about the lowest priority imaginable. Those resources should be spent attempting to make the world such that people don’t want to leave it, not in forcing them to stay.
dh700 wrote:
That’s…. not a thing.
Because I’m not interested in getting involved in this frankly rather unproductive and tedious argument. I’m just pointing out that those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Or discharge firearms, for that matter.
If you want to persuade people to your point of view, then being as consistently unpleasant about it as you have been is probably not a good way to go about it.
mdavidford wrote:
You should’ve stayed out, then, because you aren’t doing yourself any favors right now.
And by “unpleasant”, you mean pointing out the factual and logical errors these comments are rife with. Because if you can read, do so, and you’ll find that’s what I’ve been doing. ( And that, by the way, was an example of being unpleasant, just so you have a control to use for reference. )
dh700 wrote:
Er, I have. I’ve not made any comment on the subject.
No – I mean being insulting, dismissive, and arrogant, as you have throughout your ‘contributions’. It is, to borrow a phrase, not doing you any favours.
mdavidford wrote:
Oh really. One or more of those words do not mean what you think they mean.
I didn’t insult anyone who didn’t start it. Yes, I dismissed many of the dumber comments — exactly as they deserved.
If you’d like to participate in the discussion, make an attempt. If all you can muster is useless sideline potshots, I suggest you discontinue wasting my time. Perhaps go read a book.
Perhaps go read a book
Perhaps go read a book
Perhaps sod-off to a pro-gun far-right website where you belong- although I admit that much of the blame for prolonging this tripe goes to people (now including me) responding
Guilty. Good advice, done
Guilty. I’d just say that this isn’t necessarily “far right” stuff. For pretty much any political / ethnic / other group you can think of there will be a subgroup advocating for / educating about guns in the US. Cyclists, lawyers, mild-mannered democrats, radical feminists… It’s mainstream. As are divisions about the who / what / how of guns there of course.
Anyway good advice, done now.
chrisonatrike wrote:
Damn, I was really hoping we’d get around to you explaining why Scotland’s assault rate is 50% higher than any other OECD country. Or why Scotland’s rape rate is higher than Mexico’s (ibid).
Seems like a few Scots could use a little protection.
High assult rate? We still
High assult rate? We still have the ones who didn’t make it to America!
Looks like the news from that is that Mexico is a place to avoid for murder, then quite a ways back Estonia interestingly and the US. As for sexual violence, avoid Australia, maybe Sweden, then after that the rest of the pack are lower but still following behind the US. Maybe those guns just aren’t there when they’re needed, or maybe the problem is the perpetrators getting ahold of them first. The house gun maybe since the sad truth is it’s more likely to be someone you know and trust?
Hmm… homicide not so much? Since we already have cars, kitchen knives, very hard foreheads and indeed can obtain a shotgun or even a rifle if we only jump through enough hoops, what’s stopping us though?
Again interesting parallels for those interested. The Scottish West coast had a centuries-long history of violence, both “internal” and outside persecution.
As for Mexico – I strongly suspect that although everywhere is under-reporting violence against women it will be even more so there. Mexico may not be a good example for this purpose anyway. Although there are serious limitations on legal weapons purchases there happens to be a ready source just across the border. And while it may be some effort to obtain legally you can indeed legally have weapons, including handguns.
chrisonatrike wrote:
So what do you suppose might happen if the UK had a thousand mile border with Mexico, and 25% of the world’s GDP to spend on drugs?
While I don’t doubt that all manner of contraband flows across the US-Mexico border, the evidence for your “ready source” claim is not found in those links. The main reference is to 2 eleven-year-old stories about the same smuggler — who was caught with (3) .22 rifles and (2) collectible firearms. The famous Project Gunrunner seized a whopping 372 guns over six years. The Mexican authorities are known to be cooking their books to make it appear that their gun problem originates in the US, for political and financial reasons. And, oh by the way, “Stated another way, about one-eighth of the Mexican army deserts annually.” Turns out to be easier for a cartel to buy a Mexican soldier, and his gun, than to smuggle guns across the border and then hire someone to shoot them. ( All per your source. )
So there are actually many sources for the cartels’ weapons — some are made in Mexico, and many are made in South America.
And, just for the record and all, a big part of the reason why there are so many guns in the US is because it is 25% of the world’s GDP — so companies from around the globe are happy to sell guns there.
wtjs wrote:
If you think I’m far-right, then you genuinely do need to go read a book and vastly improve your skills in that area. Or, you haven’t been reading at all, and are just now trolling for attention.
Either way, good luck with that.
dh700 wrote:
It’s you that’s having difficulty comprehending here – you’ve failed to grasp the difference between commenting on the subject of gun laws, and commenting on your approach to commenting.
This isn’t how life works. Believing someone’s argument is weak does not mean that they deserve to be insulted.
And there you go again – keeping on digging.
The only person wasting your time is you – no-one’s making you reply to me. You could just try being nicer instead. If you confuse asking for a civil and measured discourse with ‘taking potshots’, then that’s your problem, not mine.
For myself, since you’re clearly not really interested in a meaningful discussion, I won’t be wasting any more words on you. It’s probably well past time this thread came to an end.
mdavidford wrote:
So you are a proud troll with nothing substantive to offer — got it.
Welcome to the Internet! I try to be extra nice to folks here who are still on their first day.
If you are looking for a space to make dumb comments without being insulted for same, the Internet is not it.
Right, because I’ve written dozens of posts — with supporting data — that no one to-date has been successful countering, while you are standing on the sidelines with nothing to offer, by your own admission.
Thank goodness you finally learned your lesson. Run along now.
Tell me, are you interested
Tell me, are you interested in cycling at all?
Rendel Harris wrote:
I have a dozen bikes, most of which I built myself. You guess.
dh700 wrote:
There was a murder at the end of my street last year; there are around 300 people who live in my street, therefore the murder rate for my street for 2021 is over 3000 murders per million people, making it approximately 50 times more dangerous than the USA. Honestly, there’s no need to argue with you when you do such a good job of proving just how weak your argument is yourself.
Rendel Harris wrote:
While you are puzzling about the mysteries of statistics that you never learned, maybe edit your post to say that the murder rate of that one household was hundreds of thousands per million.
Or, go back to school. Your choice I’m sure.
dh700 wrote:
Not quite. If I have one by my bed, one by the front door, one in each car, one that I keep in my rain jacket, one in my summer jacket, one in my cycling jersey, I’ll be cocked just as soon as you can say “well regulated militia” and ready to blow the bad guys away.
Wow, quite the cherry pick there. The US murder rate isn’t the worst in the world, but much worse than comparable countries. 4 times the UK rate, 5 times Australia, 3 times Canada, etc. And with Greenland, there were only 3 murders in their sample so basic stats knowledge would tell you that the figure may not be indicative of the long term mean.
TheBillder wrote:
Yes quite, because there’s no difference between possessing X guns in your example and just carrying one (or perhaps two if you are a cowboy) with you all the time.
Half the planet is not a cherry pick.
There are different ways to define “comparable countries”. Three of your four counter examples are islands, who by their nature have far more secure borders, for example.
The fact of the matter is that violence is endemic almost throughout the Americas. And due to the trade drug, quite a lot of that violence bleeds across lines on map, so there are excellent reasons why, say, Australia or the UK may not be the best comps in this analysis.
And, for the record, Greenland’s murder rate is almost never less than the United States over the past 30 years. It very rarely is similar, but in many years Greenland’s rate is 3 to 5 times higher. Next time, take a minute and educate yourself, to avoid further embarrassment.
dh700 wrote:
The problem with this argument is that many people in western european countries might need a kitchen knife. Almost no-one in Western Europe or most of the US is a subsistence hunter who needs a gun. Outside of the far north / wilderness north america / Canada you do not need to go “armed for bear”. Plenty people in the US live or pass through bear territory, most are not armed with guns.
“Deterrence” doesn’t seem to work particularly well in the US. If someone’s got literature to show that if private firearms were less widely available civil society would break down, roll it out.
My main issue with firearms is that by design they are easy to use and are often lethal. It’s the speed that something can turn deadly and how quickly and easily one or more people can be killed (UK example). Given humans and their impulsive nature that turns many common situations – suicidal crisis, kids fooling around, a wild argument, some kinds of mental health issues – into deadly ones. For suicide there is indeed evidence that the peak of crises pass fairly quickly. However if you’ve a gun on hand then there is no “it was a cry for help” – the story ends there. See “Lethal-means reduction“.
Also many places – Mexico for one – has found to its cost weapons tend to “leak” from places where they are “properly managed / safely stored”. They tend not to find their way into the hands of the “good guys”.
I agree that “military” and “non-military” is in some ways a blind alley. (Pretty sure no-one’s using miniguns for drive-bys, although apparently there was a bank robbery with with an anti-tank rifle). Having said that compare the ammunition capacity / rate of fire of guns in the US (nothing fancy like actual machine guns, just the basics) and how simple it is to obtain with what you could get here and what you have to do.
So overall it’s a matter of degree – but e.g. US is so different from the UK in this regard it’s almost a matter of different quality.
chrisonatrike wrote:
The glaring problem with this response is that we do not ban everything non-essential.
You would do well to inform yourself before prognosticating. The largest black bears in North America — up to 800-odd pounds — live just a few hours outside New York City, and black bears are endemic almost everywhere in North America except the Great Plains.
I have camped on family land within that area, that is the territory of a family of bears — two of whom are estimated to be around 600 pounds from the trail camera footage. The bears were just up the hill from my camp on the first night, and they let me know it. We managed to avoid interaction, but if you are willing to tell everyone who frequents the woods that they do not need protection, I invite you to have that conversation with a bear. Or a cougar. I personally would not shoot either animal, except with my camera, but that doesn’t mean I can tell everyone else that they cannot.
“Deterrence” doesn’t seem to work particularly well in the US.— chrisonatrike
How often do open-carriers get mugged, raped, or shot?
So are cars, suppose we’ll have to ban them too.
If you are going to drag suicide into this out of a desperate lack of any reasonable argument, we better ban: cars, trains, buses, drain cleaner, alcohol, knives, buildings over 5 stories, bridges, cliffs, electricity, and a whole bunch of other things.
By the way, the garbage Wikipedia page you cite is worthless. It purports to link to “strong evidence” which is nothing but unsupported claims.
And a lot of them find their way into the drug trade in the United States. Which is one of the reasons that people feel the need to arm themselves for protection.
I live in a town that is 4 miles long by 1 mile wide, and has a population of roughly 24,000 people in a county with about 1 million residents. The police station is a bit over a mile from my house. A few years ago — before the Pandemic, and before George Floyd, and before most US Police began their work slowdown protest — I had the occasion to call 911 at 4:30 in the morning, to report a dangerous individual with a deadly weapon. At 4:30 in the morning, my sleepy town has no traffic at all. I have cycled down the middle of the main drag at that time of the morning, just because I could. Despite those facts, it was 43 minutes before an officer arrived. When he arrived, he was in possession of almost none of the information that I provided to the 911 dispatcher.
I reiterate, that was before the police began their current work slowdown, and before any Pandemic. So you are telling me that, for example, my neighbor who lives with only her teenage daughter, should not have the Right to possess a weapon for their defense? In an emergency, they should do what, exactly? Patiently wait three-quarters of an hour for one clueless officer to show up?
This example is not from a rural area, out in Montana, or West Virginia. It’s from a very typical area in the United States, and some 200 million people live in similar areas.
EDIT: And since my anecdote does not constitute data, here are the official US Bureau of Justice statistics on 911 response time. One-third of the time, the response arrives within 11 to 60 minutes. If you are wondering why I’m posting 2008 statistics, it’s because the hard-working folks at the Bureau of Justice have not updated these numbers in the past 14 years.
The police in this country are not reliable, and rarely there when you need them. Their role is mainly to clean up the mess after the fact, and write speeding tickets. For many people, that is an unacceptable state of affairs, so they exercise their Right to have an alternate option. If you are going to take that Right away, I suggest that you need to provide a reasonable replacement.
dh700 wrote:
You would do well to check a dictionary before trying to use the $10 words. To prognosticate means to make a prediction about the future; one assumes the word for which you are groping is pontificating.
Rendel Harris wrote:
And the individual in question was claiming to know that people would never need a firearm. In other words, they were precisely making a prediction about the future.
Try again. Or, actually, don’t waste my time.
dh700 wrote:
No he wasn’t, he was talking about what happens now, not what might happen in the future. Your grasp of grammar and language is as tenuous as your grip on reality, clearly.
Outside of the far north / wilderness north america / Canada you do not need to go “armed for bear”. Plenty people in the US live or pass through bear territory, most are not armed with guns.
Rendel Harris wrote:
The previous commenter was referring to the required equipment for trips that have not yet happened — since at least in the reality most of us inhabit, we cannot retroactively change trips that already occurred.
That’s prognosticating — and much more to the point, the comment was dead wrong whether it refers to past or present.
So die on this hill if you like, but I bet even you could find a less wrong comment to obsessively defend.
dh700 wrote:
I’ve highlighted the three instances of the present tense, just to make it easy for you.
I must congratulate you though on your splendid work regarding gun control in the USA: I don’t think any reasonable person reading your many comments could fail to reach the conclusion that any measures that prevented someone as aggressive, obsessive, arrogant, wrong-headed, ignorant and frankly downright stupid as yourself from obtaining firearms would be fully justified.
Cheerio!
Rendel Harris wrote:
I’ve highlighted the three instances of the present tense, just to make it easy for you.
You missed half the statement — just to make it easy for you.
And it’s still factually wrong — because a majority, or very close to it, of those people who live and pass through bear territory are precisely armed with guns. Which is, to a large degree, the entire point of this discussion.
How, exactly, do you think Americans shoot so many animals? They take around 200M annual hunting trips — and those are just the offically-counted ones.
And again, the last refuge of those with no remaining position to defend — the ad hominem attack.
Better luck next time.
Nope. However you seem to be
Nope. However you seem to be starting from the axiom of “we must have guns” – or maybe just “we have guns and there seems no easy way of changing that” (which I’ll readily conceed in the case of the US). Most people work this way after all e.g. the arguments come afterwards. So the arguments – because “bears” or “subsistence hunting” or “they’re essential tools, like knives” or “OK guns aren’t essential tools but so what – what right have we to ban anything” or “but people kill each other (and themselves) with other things too” or “deterrence” (again – strongly debated – more than one US study) or simply “gun laws don’t work” (?) because “people will get what they want anyway” (you misread me on Mexico – the issue is for the Mexicans, who have lots of US arms coming across their border or so says the US government…) – I’ll not waste further time on.
I believe you said you’re in the US – whereas I’m in Scotland. If you’re in the US then it’s not my country! (I’ve enjoyed visiting – neither the bears nor the bullets got me yet). I don’t think our respective rules will change significantly in the foreseeable future. Despite gun rights concerns in the US – which sometimes appear fairly paranoid from here. That’s an outsider perspective of course; it’s clear that the US government (or agencies within it) – like most – has a strong record of doing what the heck it likes and stuff the people. Which is concerning when you live in the country.
Oh yes – ban cars? Well you could be on to something there… but actually I prefer to look abroad for better examples and favour a “safety / danger control” paradigm rather than a more individualist / legalistic (old testament?) one. I think it’s more… complex. So I’d like to see a comprehensive set of principles to reduce harm but keep – or improve on – the benefits.
So on guns, neither of us has cause to worry as we’re both happy that the status quo “works” where we are.
chrisonatrike wrote:
Not really sure what you are “Noping” there, but the latter part is absolutely true. Banning private gun ownership in the US is largely moot, for a whole raft of reasons. The logistics of forcibly confiscating hundreds of millions of firearms from hundreds of millions of households are just not possible. Even if you could somehow repeal the 2nd Amendment, you’d need to repeal the 4th as well — in order to search every household and many of the businesses in the entire country. The US has around 2 officers for every 500 households, but you’d need much larger teams than 2 officers to have a hope of pulling this off ‘safely’. And by ‘safely’, I mean without tens of thousands of casualties. And most of those officers would quit before accepting this duty anyway. The bottom line is that you could never confiscate the weapons faster than they could be replaced by manufacture and import — and there’s little chance of shutting down either of those ( cf Prohibition and the War on Drugs ). And how long would the political will to confiscate last in the face of thousands of deaths?
Seems like you are relatively familiar with some of the many reasons why private ownership is legal in this country, so I guess this has been educational for you. By the way, your latest “study” is almost as questionable as the last one — it amounts to imagining what might have happened in some fictional states that don’t exist. I can imagine many things as well, but I don’t call those “studies”.
Yes, I am in the US — but when I say “this country” here, I am clearly referring to the subject of the discussion.
That is generally the state of affairs in this country, but it is important to note that on the topic of gun ownership, our government is generally aligned with the will of the people. Gun laws are largely written on the state level — except of course for the overarching 2nd Amendment, and a few others — and they differ widely across the country exactly because the attitudes towards gun ownership differ between Boston and Bozeman.
And again, I stress, those gun laws have no measurable effect, and there’s no correlation to the strength of a state’s gun restrictions and its homicide rate. Maryland has some of the toughest gun laws, and one of the highest homicide rates. North Dakota is the opposite.
And again, an idea that might seem attractive on the surface to some, winds up being tremendously complex. Banning cars in the US would immediately plunge the entire world into another Great Depression. ( The US GDP is about 1/4th of the world’s total, and banning cars would virtually shutter its economy. )
I never said I was happy. I cannot see any logic or defense, for example, in allowing a kid who cannot buy a beer to buy a firearm. I’m just trying to explain to people why the status quo exists, and encourage them to acquire and use better data, and to think harder about that data and their conclusions. And my whole original point here was that this murder was allegedly committed with the perfect stereotypical example of a weapon that a young woman might own for her protection — a Sig Sauer P365 “micro-compact” 9mm. That’s exactly the type of weapon that few jurisdictions globally would prohibit a woman with no (known) criminal record from possessing. The people here who would deny her that right, need to think very carefully about the repercussions of doing so.
Final one from me. This
Final one from me. This reminds me of a conversation with a Texan chap in a crowded bank in York – we were waiting ages because lots of people there. A security guard arrived to drop of or collect cash. My new friend expressed surprise that the guy wasn’t armed. I explained that this being the UK only the military and a small subset of the police carried weapons. The chap thought this was crazy – how would the security guard stop an armed robber taking the cash? Having a (very) basic knowledge of these things I suggested that having two armed people in a room crowded with people might risk much worse outcomes than chasing the money. The would-be-thief would now have good motivation to use his gun. And even if he didn’t shoot the guard and no bystanders were hit in crossfire you still might lose the cash. We also had a very low rate of armed robberies in the UK etc.
From his perspective though he couldn’t see past “but the guy with the gun will get the cash”. “Stop the bad guy” was the first concern. I’d have given more consideration to his view had we been in Texas … but we weren’t in Texas.
chrisonatrike wrote:
Sure why not, I’ll address this one too. The security guard with the cash wasn’t constantly in that crowded room. He had to enter and leave the building, and travel between buildings. Those would be opportune times for an armed robber to make their move.
So it isn’t completely crazy to expect such a courier to be armed. They would be in most of the world, I think.
Ironically, the father of a childhood friend of mine was a bankrobber — and he hailed from your neck of the global woods. Of course, no one knew he was a bankrobber at the time. I received a call from my parents years later informing me that he’d been arrested. Turns out, about once a year or so, he walked into an American bank unarmed, handed the teller a threatening note, and walked out with his loot. You see, American banks do not actually operate like those you might see in the movies. Their priority is to not die, so they will let a bankrobber in and out quickly and if they aren’t too greedy, they can be quite successful. He was eventually nabbed only due to his accent, when he said too much during one robbery.
By the way, the robbery rate in the UK is ~20% higher than in the US.
Even if occasionally a “good
Even if occasionally a “good guy” gets one of the “bad guys”, the “bad guys” and the incompetent and the stupid and the suicidal and those with mental issues, grudges, who are on the wrong end of domestic breakdowns or too young to understand that messing with Daddy’s gun is potentially lethal are ahead on the scoreboard by several thousand every single year.
Mungecrundle wrote:
You are profoundly misreading that “scoreboard”. As previously noted, even the lowest estimates for defensive uses of firearms in the US are around triple firearm deaths ( not including suicides, again, for previously-discussed reasons ). The highest estimates for defensive uses are about 125 times more than firearm deaths.
Reality is somewhere in the middle, but you almost could not possibly be more wrong.
Quote:
Guns kept in homes are more likely to be involved in a fatal or nonfatal accidental shooting, criminal assault, or suicide attempt than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9715182/
Rendel Harris wrote:
What is your attempted point?
One does not have to fire a weapon in order to use it defensively. Merely possessing it is often sufficient. In other words, the ratio implied by that study is meaningless.
Furthermore, the study’s inclusion of suicide lays bare their prejudice and calls their motive and accuracy into question. There is absolutely no way to prevent a free person from taking their own life, and depriving them of a firearm absolutely does not work at all.
dh700 wrote:
So if you banned ammunition, that would help.
Except that there’s plenty of evidence that making suicide attempts more difficult, or less likely to succeed, does help reduce the rate. Somewhere there’s a stat for the percentage of people caught in anti-suicide nets under the Golden Gate bridge who are glad to have been saved. Indeed, the one person I have met who survived his own attempt (at jumping from a tall building) was very, very grateful to have survived as his attempt was made during a single episode of psychosis.
TheBillder wrote:
Indeed, Voltaire had this worked out more than two centuries ago: “The man who, in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week.” Not true in all cases of course, there are many poor souls who are set on the terrible course and will not stop until they have succeeded, but many others, as you say, make the attempt under the influence of psychotic episodes or extreme emotional trauma, often exacerbated by drink or drugs. In such circumstances the availability of a quick, clean and certain means of suicide is inevitably a temptation.
This was proved some years ago in Switzerland: between 1995 and 2003, 39% of all suicides among men ages 18–43 in Switzerland were carried out using a gun. Guns were readily available because every militia soldier had to store his weapon at home during the week, and every soldier who completed his militia service was given the opportunity to purchase his service weapon at a nominal cost, which he could keep with no licensing requirements. In 2003 it was decided to halve the size of the Swiss Army from 400,000 to 200,000 and at the same time the charge levied for retaining one’s service weapon was greatly increased and a strict licence system was also introduced for anyone who wished to do so. This had the effect of significantly decreasing the number of available firearms in the country, and the very next year suicide by firearm rates dropped by 5% and have continued to fall ever since so that they are now around 15% below their previous level; most importantly, this was mirrored by a drop in the overall suicide rate, proving that it was not simply a matter of those who no longer had guns available choosing a different means.
Rendel Harris wrote:
Or, they proved that military service is a factor driving suicide rates. A claim for which there is plenty of supporting evidence from around the globe.
Also, counting suicides at all is notoriously tricky. It is very difficult to ask a suicide victim if their act was intentional. The bottom line is that Switzerland’s overall death rate continued its downward trend largely uneffected by this change in firearm availability. That trend was fairly consistent from the Early 1980s until the Pandemic.
TheBillder wrote:
Please list the items successfully banned by a country. They are extremely few and far between, and I don’t believe any were banned by a country of the US’ size with many thousands of miles of border, and a basically lawless Southern neighbor.
Countries around the world struggle to stop human trafficking, and that’s a lot easier to spot than a 9mm cartridge.
Even if that “evidence” were reliable, and little of it is more than wishful thinking ( because, among other reasons, a person can walk in front of a train or a bus, or OD, and not even be counted as a suicide ), this is not necessarily even a good thing.
We consider it cruel to force a non-human animal that is suffering to endure that pain. For no logical reason, however, we demand that suffering humans continue to bear that pain. Look, if you are helping people escape their pain, that’s great — but forcing people to live through it makes you a psychopath.
If you could magically prevent all suicides, you would prevent some people from making a mistake — but you would also condemn many people to unbearable suffering. I would like to know from where you think you derive that authority.
There is no stat for the people who took their own life and don’t regret it, but pretending that no one fits that criteria is naive.
dh700 wrote:
That one is debated strongly as you might imagine e.g.:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/07/guns-handguns-safety-homicide-killing-study
As is becoming increasingly known for women and children “stranger danger” is overall less of a risk than “abusive within a relationship / by friends and relations”. That alone might suggest being “careful what you wish for” with the idea that having a gun at home is insurance against badness.
Too much on this already but
Too much on this already but for anyone interested in the multi-factor problem with guns (once you have lots available) and ways to help (short of removing them):
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2019/jun/03/gun-violence-bay-area-drop-30-percent-why-investigation
chrisonatrike wrote:
The quoted study is irrelevant. It only examines the rate of people being shot, and ignores all other fatalities. Does it somehow matter to a dead person if they were shot due to a gun being available, or strangled due to one not being available? No, it doesn’t.
it also fails to account for societal factors — it is entirely likely, for example, that many of the guns in those homes are there because those homes are in dangerous neighborhoods.
Quoting junk studies does not further your position.
It is not true that there
It is not true that there were no red flags: Armstrong expressed that she wanted to murder Wilson and was visible shaking with anger when she said this. This has been reported by multiple sources elsewhere. Strickland is culpable because he bought Armstrong the gun. It is possible that Armstrong could not buy a gun because of a warrant out for her arrest. There were red flags.
Seems rather sick that people
Seems rather sick that people would step over the poor woman’s death to rant on with their views about gun laws for a society thousands of miles from their own, of which they probably have very little connection with or interest in, to furher push their political views. I would much rather people just offer condolences to her and her family.
Mitt Romney, is that you?
Mitt, is that you?
Roulereo wrote:
Hard cases make bad law-
Hard cases make bad law- although I may be misquoting. We have one nutter single-issue poster here, parachuted in by hard-right Republican influencers presumably. I was listening to the BBC on holiday and heard that Biden was speaking to Congress (I think) about gun control, and only a few hours later a few people were killed by yet another ‘active shooter’ in Idaho- another religious right survivalist state, a nearby American told me