The annual U.S. firearm suicide rate in 2022 increased to the highest documented level since at least 1968, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
I got downvoted real bad when I pointed this out to someone who said "making guns illegal just takes them away from people who need to defend themselves."
The defense excuse of gun ownership is a myth. It causes way more harm than good.
That aside: the easier it is for good guys to get a gun, the easier it is for bad guys too.
And: where does that idea of a good guy stopping a bad guy come from even? If the bad guy is the better shoot, he still wins the fight. If he catches the good guy by surprise (which is likely given that bad acts are an action and not a reaction), he also has the upper hand.
So more guns solves exactly nothing, it only increases risks everywhere.
Could have guessed as much. Bullshit propaganda that could be debunked with an ounce of critical thinking. But people who defend that shit are probably too dumb anyway.
Ironically there is likely a large overlap between these people and people who deny covid, climate change etc with "tHiNk CrItIcAlLy".
Not a gun nut. But these studies don't actually test any hypothesis about defensive gun use.
It is easily probable that it is simply the case that people obtain firearms for defense against an existing threat or are the threat themselves( i.e are susceptible to far greater violent events than the norm). In order to test that guns actually are ineffective in self-defense you need to compare it to actual incidents of violence towards the gun user.
Yes, because the CDC is the only source of academic research in the US. Activist talking points are unfortunately rarely accurate. The Dickey Amendment reduced research into gun violence, but under no circumstances did it eliminate; it's also been changed since it was first passed.
The real reason why gun violence research is often poor quality is the same as why most social research is poor quality: high variability, unaccounted variables, differences in interpretation of questionnaire's, unreliability of self-reporting, and the fact that most studies are conducted by parties interested in a specific result.
Because it's just another scare tactic. We know there are some dangers having firearms around.
That's why we want to make sure the goverment isn't the only people allowed to have them. First comes registration, then confiscation, then the tyranny.
Andy Weaver, the Branch Dividians, the Black Panthers, Native Americans, Mexico, the Philippines, Hawaiians, Germany, Japan, Spain, England, Canada, and Italy have all resisted the US government with arms.
But OK, you're going to keep 'em in line with you're pew pew pew. Meanwhile that danger that you acknowledge is real.
The Black Panthers one is particularly ironic given the NRA's full-throated support of gun control laws in California (passed by good ol Ronnie R. when he was governor) that happened once black people started arming themselves.
And nothing has changed. Never forget Philando Castile. The only reason they feel empowered is because the ones who actually want to take guns from "certain people" happen to agree with them ideologically.