Why doesn’t the USA have gun control?

[THIEF]

(If this topic is too sensitive the mods can close it)

I saw a lot of youtube videos about school shootings and pictured what it would've been like if I experienced a school shooting myself when I was in elementary school. Mass shootings seem to be exclusively an usa problem and rarely happen elsewhere so I want to know why americans love guns so much

 

[Xiahou Ba]

The USA DOES have gun control (and yes all states do, even the most lax state does have gun control to some degree), but it all depends on the state you live in. California for example has very strict gun laws and it's coupled by a relatively low household % gun ownership rate, while more rural areas have higher gun ownership (I think this statistic is actually consistent worldwide where urban dwellers own less guns than rural folk). The problem with enforcing gun control in California though is that a lot of gun violence that does happen there are because of guns imported from bordering states that have more lax laws, the most extreme example is Chicago's very high gun homicide rate despite strict gun laws, because many of the guns used there are outsourced from Indiana.

A reason Americans are stereotyped as gun fetishists this is deeply entrenched in our Constitution's second amendment (and the Revolutionary War -anti-government attitudes stem from that- + rural hunting lifestyle if we were to go further) which was part of the original bill of rights and thus inherently tied to an abstract concept of freedom that we love to also fetishize, though I think our modern gun obsession actually stems post Civil War, where, in the South, now having zero government, guns became a source of strength against recently emancipated black people. Our gun lobby is also huge here and I wouldn't say advertisements and our entertainment of this big machismo dude holding a gun didn't help with our wanting to be badass just as our media portrays it.

I'm American btw, and personally I believe owning a gun just really amounts to deeply entrenched bloodlust under the guise of self-defense but that's just me.

 

[TheBlueCatMenace]

uhhh should we be talking about this on a Mario forum

 

[Farrah Goodfairy]

uhhh should we be talking about this on a Mario forum

It is in Off Subject Discussion to be fair, and we do talk about non Mario stuff very frequently in Off Subject / Ask threads / MJ

 

[MegaBowser64]

Eh, I mean there seems to be a correlation between lots of shootings happening in cities and not many people owning a gun in cities, and also not many shootings happening in rural areas, but also many people owning guns. So I wouldn't agree with the "If you give someone a gun, they're gonna run into the first school they see and shoot everyone" position. As a matter of fact, self defense is NOT a very common reason to own a gun in a rural area like mine. As it turns out, the most common reason to own a gun in a heavily forested area crawling with wildlife is... can you guess it???
Hunting! (surprise) So the argument up here is "If you implement heavier gun control, you will make hunting less accessible". Just something to think about. As for me, someone who lives in an area where the homicide rate is very low, I might have a biased opinion, but I think heavier gun control should be placed in urban areas, maybe a little heavier in rural areas, but it's definitely not needed as much.

As for why mass shootings are exclusively a USA problem, people get murdered all the time by all kinds of people all around the world, it's just that for some reason America gets their killings more publicized

 

[Xiahou Ba]

As for why mass shootings are exclusively a USA problem, people get murdered all the time by all kinds of people all around the world, it's just that for some reason America gets their killings more publicized

It's because the absurd rates of gun homicide is uniquely American, just as people dying from falling from open windows is Russian.

 

[Roserade]

uhhh should we be talking about this on a Mario forum

Topics like this are ones that require we maintain an eye on them, but they are not inherently banned on the forums. As long as respectful conversation can occur without a spread of misinformation there's no need for locking

The reason why there's mostly mass shootings that happen in cities is because that's where we find the mass. It's much harder to commit a heinous crime in an area where the people are heavily spread out. I don't know if this means that gun control needs to be less heavily enforced in rural areas, though - that might just cause more business to happen there. I'm not an expert so I currently don't have the sense of how gun sales get localized, but certainly in some areas it is much, much easier to buy a gun than in a big city, and at that point it's just as possible to go to the city with said gun. BLOF spoke to that earlier

The form of the gun is important too. Although I'm ultimately not a fan of people owning guns as a general vibe, owning a hunting rifle is much different than owning a more militarized weapon. If the concern is that gun control legislation would make hunting less feasible, I imagine there are ways in which a lower-stakes weapon for hunting can be less restricted than the weaponry we see used in mass shooting events now

 

[Princess Viola]

Gun control already does exist in the US, but as was previously said, it's enforcement and how much there is really does depend on where you live.

Personally I have mixed feelings on modern gun control in this country, as (being a member of multiple minority groups) I am a firm believer in the notion that armed minorities are harder to oppress and that queer people like myself should, at the very least, learn how to handle a firearm (even if you don't personally want to own one. I myself am in the latter case and much prefer carrying a knife with me), especially so with how much anti-queer (anti-trans especially) sentiment and violence there is in this country nowadays.

Especially so because we have a history in this country of groups that are normally against gun control suddenly supporting it when the 'wrong' people are participating in their Second Amendment rights.

Case in point: the Mulford Act, passed in 1967 in California that prohibits the public carrying of loaded firearms without a permit. This law was literally passed in response to the Black Panther Party, who had formed the previous year and their core practice at the time was their open carry patrols in order to protect black citizens from police brutality and police violence.

The NRA supported the Mulford Act.

And I am going to be completely honest here: I don't think there's any way to describe the Mulford Act as anything other than a racist law - one of many in the history in this country (even going back to colonial times) designed to disarm black people, Native Americans, and other minority groups.