Notices by RRB (rrb@qoto.org)

@thatguyoverthere @DutyBard @freemo @pj Having lived in Europe and the USA, my main take away is that the US health insurance companies are abominations.

@thatguyoverthere @DutyBard @freemo @pj It was illegal for CDC to collect gun violence statistics at all until recently.

@thatguyoverthere @DutyBard @freemo @pj I never mentioned government. I am actually a bit more concerned about fear mongering and marketing guns for self defense. I think that is inciting people to carry guns around in a state of panic. I know when I was growing up the men in my family really looked down on pistols as being inaccurate guns and not very useful. The idea of carrying around hidden pistols would have not been seen favorably at all.

For example, you would not have road rage shootings if people were not driving around with pistols.

@thatguyoverthere @DutyBard @freemo @pj

Stats from 2017: https://www.healthline.com/health/leading-causes-of-death#liver-diseases

More recent stats I saw seemed to be only medical data.

@thatguyoverthere @DutyBard @freemo @pj Diet. Health care system. Poverty. Guns. Suicide. Alcoholism. Addiction. Overdoses. All play a part.

Does not paint a pretty picture. No doubt there are many interacting factors.

@thatguyoverthere @DutyBard @freemo @pj

Stating the stats per capita would have been better and more effective.

I see comparing the death rates of say auto fatalities, diseases, and gun violence in the same regions eye opening. Since it is in the same geographic location, that gets rid of a lot of extraneous factors.

The declining life expectancy in the USA is shocking and worrisame.

@thatguyoverthere @DutyBard @freemo @pj It is an opinion piece. He cites statistics to bolster his argument. Both are legit. He is not falsely claiming his opinions are facts, but opinions should be interpretations of facts.

@thatguyoverthere @DutyBard @freemo @pj Those comments are quite reasonable. One could do it per capita. I would suspect that overall violent death still higher in USA. We have a declining life expectancy, which is an OECD anomaly.

@pj @freemo @DutyBard

Curious about reactions to the stats in this:
ttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/22/opinion/american-shootings-guns.html

@pj @freemo @DutyBard Seems reasonable, although, I would posit that defensive gun use is pretty objective. If I see kids on my lawn and brandish a firearm to scare them, for me it may seem to be defensive gun use for them it is aggression.

In any case, gun violence is now the #1 cause of death among young people in the USA. Gun deaths are higher in states with laxer laws. They are increasing over time. If you compare the USA with, for example, Australia which is culturally pretty similar, some conclusions seem pretty clear.

@pj @freemo My understanding is that this concern goes back to the founding of the USA and that the 2nd amendment “well regulated militia” refers to concerns of white Southerners about their ability to respond to slave rebellions. Like Harper’s Ferry.

@freemo @pj Sources for my comment:

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002107670/historian-uncovers-the-racist-roots-of-the-2nd-amendment\

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/opinion/second-amendment-slavery-james-madison.html

I take that view from the publications of these historians.

The often stated view of individuals being armed against the government seems to me to be a bit shakier in view of how the fledgling US government responded to things like the Whiskey rebellion. If they sincerely wanted individuals to be able to shoot federal agents, they would not have responded so strongly to those attacks.

@freemo @pj Slavery was definitely not the only factor in drafting the 2nd amendment.

Also, the colonies were more rural at that time than most of the USA is now and the country as a whole was in a more precarious state.

I feel that a lot of the division on gun rights in the USA is a rural/urban divide. Living at my uncle’s ranch in West Texas, you really need a gun for pest control, etc. In the college town where I live now, a gun really has zero utility. So residents of those two regions will have a legitimate difference of opinion.

Finding that guns provide a “sense of meaning to your life” as stated in the Scientific American article is not something I would be able to accept anyway. Neither do I get a sense of self from my car, house, etc.

@freemo @pj Registry would be useful for tracking guns used in crimes. Which I see as a positive use case.

@freemo @pj @DutyBard Failure to read is not paywall, it was my inept cut and paste. Sorry:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/22/opinion/american-shootings-guns.html

@freemo @pj Most gun sales are not record. Only 40% of sales are recorded:

https://www.aap.org/en/advocacy/state-advocacy/universal-background-checks-for-gun-purchases/

Most (60%) are not recorded with no background checks. This does not deal with 3-D printing of guns

@freemo @pj How about laws mandating safe storage?

Currently 1/3 of guns stolen are not secured in parked cars. Secure boxes for parked cars are inexpensive, as are trigger locks.

@pj @freemo @DutyBard Reliable data is hard to come by. Johns Hopkins Center on Gun Violence:

https://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-gun-violence-prevention-and-policy/

and Adam Winkler:

https://law.ucla.edu/faculty/faculty-profiles/adam-winkler

are the ones I would trust. The NRA got laws passed forbidding the federal government to keep statistics on gun violence. Which kind of makes the case that they are afraid of the data.