Recent polling suggests that Americans are very worried about gun violence. A Quinnipiac University poll taken from Oct. 26 to 30, right after the Maine shooting, found that 46 percent of registered voters worried about becoming a victim of a mass shooting themselves. That matches a high set in July 2022 in the wake of the Uvalde, Texas, shooting at Robb Elementary School, and is 9 points higher than a low of 37 percent in December 2017, the year the survey began asking the question.
Americans also feel pessimistic that anything will change. Indeed, 68 percent don’t believe the federal government will do anything to reduce gun violence within the next year, per the Quinnipiac poll.
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Article starts with a question, the answer is no
I feel like the biggest chance we had to change was after Sandy Hook Elementary. There were 26 dead kids and teachers. This should have been the moment that kickstarted a discussion and movement on gun control legislation.
Instead, we got a lot of “thoughts and prayers” and politicians (along with groups like the NRA) killing any gun control efforts. And that’s not even getting into guys like Alex Jones spreading conspiracy theories and harassing grieving families while saying that they were lying about their kids being dead. (I really hope Jones fails at hiding his money, gets every last dime seized by the families that won lawsuits against him, and ends up penniless.)
The answer to “Will x change public opinion on guns” is always no. Everyone’s mind is made up. We’ve collectively decided dead children is simply the cost of doing business.
Our gerrymandered, billionaire-backed minority rule legislative branch has decided that. Not “everyone”
Nothing will change.
Getting worse is a change.
Indeed
Something will eventually change. The question is how many people will get hurt before it does.
If Sandy Hook didn’t change things, why would anything else?
There is no upper limit as to how many have to die first. If there were, we would have reached it years ago. Things will change, for the worse. The biggest and most horrific mass shooting this year, is still about to happen. And it will only continue and continue and continue until at last, only the most sadistic monster with the biggest gun is left standing and the rest of the world has become a cemetery.
No
I think the joke is old, like from the 80s, but the best way to get gun control would be for blacks and other people the right wing dislike to start arming and organizing. As long as guns remain almost exclusively a power fantasy and fetish of the right, especially certain kinds of men, changing anything is going to be difficult.
That’s what got Reagan to sign a gun control bill
The Constitution EXPLICITLY allows me to shoot people! It also EXPLICITLY allows MY God to rule the Country! I’m Pro Life and LOVE the Constitution!
Sir. This is a Wendy’s.
Americans also feel pessimistic that anything will change. Indeed, 68 percent don’t believe the federal government will do anything to reduce gun violence within the next year, per the Quinnipiac poll.
A decent fraction of that percentage are not pessimistic, but rather optimistic that the government will not do anything to infringe upon the right to keep and bear arms. I count myself among that number.
Because as we all know, your need to show everybody how big you think your dick is by using an AR-15 to shoot prairie dogs absolutely supersedes the rights of children to actually go to school without being turned into a bloody splattermark in their seats when yet another whackjob comes in and starts shooting up the place.
The fuck do you think you need an AR-15 for there, Rambo? You got a beef with a Columbian drug cartel or something? You a doomsday prepper who thinks that your AR 15 is going to help you when the apocalypse happens? You got Canada’s entire moose population camped out in your backyard and trying to break in?
There are no situations where an AR-15 is going to help the average person any more than a regular handgun can.
The funny thing is the vast majority of gun-related deaths involve handguns rather than AR-15-pattern rifles. And prairie dogs? That precisely the kind of creature the .223 Remington or NATO 5.56 intermediate cartridge the AR-15 traditionally fires was designed for. It could be effective against a Columbian drug cartel, but if I were facing down a population of homicidal moose, I would want a much larger caliber, such as the .30-06 most commonly used for battle rifles prior to the introduction of the less powerful NATO 5.56.
There are no situations where an AR-15 is going to help the average person any more than a regular handgun can.
You sound like a passionate proponent of gun control. I would advise you to educate yourself on the subject of firearms so as to be more effective in your activism, rather than merely spreading misinformation and FUD.
I have a BiL that said he would rather a crazy person be allowed to have a gun than ensure his 4yo can be safe in school or in public. You sound like him.
ETA: Libertarianism is when you can’t be bothered to think of the consequences or follow the evidence.
I mean… the evidence is there. The Holocaust. Maoist China. Stalin’s Soviet Union. British tyranny over the 13 American colonies.
There is a reason the Second Amendment exists. It provides a physical wedge between the rights of the people and the government, which always seeks to restrict those rights. The consequence of disarmament? See the list in my previous paragraph.
I mean… the evidence is there. The Holocaust. Maoist China. Stalin’s Soviet Union. British tyranny over the 13 American colonies.
And I’m sure that when the armies of the largest empires in the world show up to invade America, we’ll all be safe due to your unlimited heroism.
Not if you have anything to do about it, surely.
Those atrocities occurred after the groups to be victimized were disarmed: Jews, Russian people, Chinese people. The American War of Independence was started when the British army attempted to confiscate weapons.
There really is no legitimate reason for a government to disarm its citizens.
So the people getting shot on the regular are what, sacrifices to patriotism? Soldiers dying in defense of the American way? The tens of thousands of deaths by suicide each year are the price we pay for freedom?
And are you seriously okay with that?
I don’t see firearms as the cause of those deaths. No data shows more than a correlation between firearms and firearm-related deaths. I believe there are other issues that are causative.
Additionally, I don’t see firearm-related deaths as worse than deaths in other categories. Are we more concerned with firearm-related deaths than with deaths with known causes, such as unaffordable healthcare, heart disease, or unsafe driving? Firearm-related deaths accounted for 1.5% of all deaths in the United States in 2022. Rifles, including AR-15-patterned rifles and other types, accounted for 0.02% of deaths that year, while handguns accounted for 0.25%. Meanwhile, 21.88% of deaths were caused by heart disease, 19.53% were caused by cancer, and 5.47% were caused by strokes (these percentages are approximate).
Instead of addressing the 1/50th of one percent of deaths by illegally infringing upon an enumerated right, we should address real causes of mortality by increasing access to affordable healthcare, solving the affordability crisis, and improving access to mental healthcare. Those truly concerned for the safety of children in schools should do away with “gun-free zones” (I call them “Shoot here without fear” zones) and insist upon modern physical security standards and better funding for schools. We have awful schools! Millions of taxpayer dollars are wasted attempting to legally defend indefensible Second Amendment infringements that could otherwise be spent improving our schools and the education of our children.
If you really think that guns are a problem and you really want to address the problem, why the AR-15 “assault weapon” fetish? Why do you gun grabbers focus on everything except for facts?
Data sources in this comment:
I would buy that if gun lovers voted like they cared about schools, health care, and affordability. But you don’t. You pay lip service and post screeds on the Internet and vote with people who will make things objectively worse on all those fronts.
Nothing has changed since Columbine, and nothing will, because you don’t act like you honestly care people are dying.
I would buy that if gun lovers voted like they cared about schools, health care, and affordability. But you don’t. You pay lip service and post screeds on the Internet and vote with people who will make things objectively worse on all those fronts.
How do you know what gun owners vote for? You’re making an ignorant assumption about what gun owners vote for. Gun owners exist in every single demographic. There are Black gun owners, Indigenous gun owners, Jewish gun owners, Latinx gun owners, LGBT gun owners.
We own guns because we desire the ability to protect ourselves and we understand the history of gun control in this country: To disarm and victimize undesired groups, in particular, Blacks.
I see the push for gun control to be hand-in-hand with the movement to criminalize self-defense. This is reprehensible.
In the United States in 2022, 48 percent of Republicans reported that they owned at least one gun, and 66 percent said that they lived in a household with a gun. In comparison, only 20 percent of Democrats owned at least one gun, and 31 percent lived a gun household.
This conversation was old after Sandy Hook. You’ve already answered my question: You don’t honestly care that Americans aren’t safe anywhere because of guns because that’s the price of freedom. Thanks for at least being honest.
The second amendment doesn’t exist to fight the government. It exists to have militias to protect the US in the event of an invasion (which is about as likely in the modern era as North Korea becoming a democracy).
Local militias would not have been able to stop any of the things you listed, and it still does absolutely nothing to solve children dying from guns, now the leading cause of child death.
Restudy the history of the Second Amendment. You’ll find that it was insisted upon because the signatories were uncomfortable with the potential for tyranny by the federal government.
Irrelevant to my point. The people who signed on to the Second Amendment did not have to deal with mass shootings at the rate we experience today or guns becoming the leading cause of death in children. Meanwhile, when has “protecting yourself from a tyrannical government” ever come to pass? (Don’t say the Civil War, which was about owning slaves, not tyrrany).
I’m for gun ownership, with common-sense regulations. What mechanism do you propose that is better than regulation and restriction that would better prevent this senseless loss of life?
Meanwhile, when has “protecting yourself from a tyrannical government” ever come to pass? (Don’t say the Civil War, which was about owning slaves, not tyrrany).
That’s precisely why tyrannical governments disarm their citizens first. If people willingly give up their arms, they are more easily subjugated.
I’m for gun ownership, with common-sense regulations.
Gun control advocates have proven that they are unable to write common-sense regulations. If they hadn’t broken trust with all the talk of “assault weapons” and inaccurate or false descriptions of firearms to exaggerate how dangerous they are, there would be more “common-sense” regulations in place today.
What mechanism do you propose that is better than regulation and restriction that would better prevent this senseless loss of life?
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Use modern physical security practices at schools. If the government is going to make it illegal to carry weapons there, then it has a greater responsibility to protect the defenseless children who are forced to be there. And don’t give me that “oh, that shouldn’t be necessary” crap. If you’re going to force kids to attend school, you have a responsibility to protect them. Period.
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Improve access to healthcare of all sorts and fix the affordability crisis.
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Get rid of Fifth-Amendment-violating red flag laws. If it doesn’t have due process, it’s illegal and tyrannical and shouldn’t be a law. If you want to disarm someone, you should have to prove that their rights need to be taken away first. Additionally, damage to one’s confiscated property should be reimbursed. Confiscating someone’s arms after proper due process does not infringe upon the Second Amendment.
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those ‘68 percent’ that don’t believe the feds will do anything, should… maybe… i dunno… sounds kinda too radical for some to accept… do ‘something’ themselves, like vote for persons that will do something.
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It slays me that they have to poll people to find out that Americans are very worried about gun violence. It’s like all the wailing and gnashing of teeth just goes unnoticed until an “official” poll makes it reality. Of course the Maine shooting will change things - the NRA will double down, gun nuts will insist arming everyone is somehow an answer to rising gun deaths, and more politicians will receive huge kickbacks from arms manufacturers. Makes one long for the good old days when a butcher knife was all you needed to “divorce” your wife or get rid of your kids. People are by nature monsters, and the one thing that never changes is that absolute fact.
People are by nature monsters, and the one thing that never changes is that absolute fact.
This is the best argument against gun control. It’s harder to victimize someone if that someone is armed.
It definitely could be read that way. Although I’m staunchly against guns for the reason that people are monsters and are trigger happy, I’m starting to see (especially as a targeted demographic) that carrying a weapon maybe the only sensible thing left in a ridiculously monstrous world. If it’s gonna be them versus me, I’m gonna make damn sure I win that battle. Let the last man with the last gun reap the rewards - a blasted earth that’s no more than a nuked cemetery and a few bits of contaminated food and water here and there.
I don’t see the world quite as nihilistically. I believe the majority of people aren’t violent or monstrous, but I do believe that the current structure of our society encourages people to be that way. Look at the state of our politics: We are told that if we aren’t outraged by one thing or another, we must be ignorant or apathetic at best, evil and complicit at worst.
That’s good though, I hope you never do see it as nihilistically as I do. At least you have some modicum of hope, and that’s something that I hope you can hold onto.
I’m reminded of the passage from “Lost Horizon” where the elder priest says “look at the world today. Is there anything more pitiful? What madness there is! What blindness! A scurrying mass of bewildered humanity crashing headlong against each other.”
That was published in 1933. And not much has changed in the world of politics or people.
