Mongo wrote:
307trout,
Thank you for providing additional source data to support the data that I provided. I think we can both agree how out of control our gun violence is, as well as the level of guns in our population, when it results in a level of gun violence that even exceeds that of Venezuela, which is a barely functioning country ruled by a barbaric dictatorship.
Clearly, we want to compare our results to those in other "Advanced Countries", as in the graph I provided below, rather than in countries like Venezuela, Mexico, Columbia, and Guatemala (even though your graph shows we are worse than all of them), right? Right? Right?
I guess it depends on if you consider the US to be an "advanced" country.
I guess by wealth or economic and military power we certainly are.
But culturally in modern times, we're selfish and narcissistic, entitled, tribal, generally competitive to a fault, violent in nearly everything we do, and we use our legal system as a weapon of manipulation for personal gain. Massive wealth disparity, drugs and gangs (which follow the wealth as their primary market), a healthcare system that causes massive anxiety and stress as a byproduct of it's for profit economic system...
I'm not so sure that the US is all that "advanced" and it doesn't surprise me that we're violent and heavily stressed.
Gun ownership and gun murders are both lower in the last decade than several decades before.
Mass shootings is a misleading statistic as it's mostly gang/drug related.
Active shooter events are certainly the media headliner and get all the attention, but actually account for a very small number of deaths per year.
Until there's enough will to amend the constitution to remove 2a, most of these discussions as beneficial as "hopes and prayers".