so if your dad commits suicide with a gun we shouldn't mourn him? got it. the numbers don't lie. you're part of the "drunk on guns" culture that the whole world abhors and mocks us for. it's idiotic and part of our universal decline.
I'm done here. For the record I've known very closely someone who committed suicide and tried to take someone with them and also someone who was shot to death randomly. this country has a problem with guns. there are millions out there affected similarly if not worse than I.
You're done? But you never really even started. You just said guns are bad and left it at that while pointing to a completely irrelevant series of numbers.
Let's start by being honest about your latest comment. Your argument isn't about "mourning." It's about a supposedly rampant gun problem. So let's stick to the issue and not cloud it with tangents.
If 15,000 people want to commit suicide, the issue of gun control is so ancillary that you needn't even bring it up. If they don't use a gun they will use some other method. Maybe jumping off buildings, which I'm sure you would agree would mandate a maximum structure height of 10 feet to combat the runaway problem.
And the point here is that no one is "drunk on guns." You just refuse to admit it, and you're pointing to arbitrary statistics and schewed numbers (ie lies) to demonstrate that.
Americans own lots of guns, as do many, many other societies around the world. There is no shocking decline in our nation, nor is there a need for the government to immediately ban all weapons in order to save us from ourselves. In fact, as I've already pointed out, the leading criminal bodies (the ones who are immune to the pressures of lobbies due to an utter lack of decision and policy making ability and whose job it is to simply enforce existing policy and report crime statistics) all agree that violent crime in America has drastically diminished over the past few decades. So at best your crusade is misguided and probably the result of regurgitating kneejerk news stories and politically charged campaign soapbox issues. At worst it's just flat out incorrect.
14,000-ish gun murders in the U.S. in 2010. Most experts agree that around half of those involve poor black people and most of those involve people who know each other. So it sounds to me like guns aren't really the issue here. Why don't we focus on combating poverty and the reasons family members annoy each other so much?
Americans pride themselves on their freedoms. Of course we all know that, because we live here. One of those freedoms is the fact that we are able to protect ourselves and our loved ones with our own private resources. Without reliance on others, especially the government. And we recognize that our nation was forged through war and violence to get us here and free us from the yolk of tyranny. (No offense Carys and DJ). So not only are guns practical, they hold a certain sentimental value to us. An unfortunate drawback of having our level of freedom is that the freedom can be abused, and our weapons can be used for ill instead of good. But if you think we will ever shrug off that freedom simply because someone somewhere decided to off a family member then you are hilariously deluded.
Stranger on stranger murders are relatively rare in America. Despite what you've convinced yourself, we don't actually have a problem with random violence and death. And the statistics bear that out. Most people in America are untouched by violent crime. And that's testament to the fact that we are, in fact, a good and stable society.
That having been said, violence has always been committed, throughout all of human history. Before guns people were hacking each other up with knives and swords. Before that it was clubs and rocks, and fists and feet (people still use knives and fists to murder one another). In the future you will probably declare a state of social emergency because you're tired of hearing about all the laser murders.
The point is that guns, or even weapons, aren't the issue and they never were. People are the issue. We will always innovate ways to murder one another. So instead of focusing on such fringe issue as one particular type of murder weapon (while curiously ignoring the thousands of other murders for which alternate weapons were chosen), maybe try coming up with a more socially responsible and relevant solution. Such as teaching people to value each other more.
Pretending like suicide is just for the weak.
