Posted by tangplay on 8/6/2019 2:29:00 PM (view original):
Posted by dahsdebater on 8/6/2019 12:13:00 PM (view original):
Posted by tangplay on 8/6/2019 10:14:00 AM (view original):
Posted by dahsdebater on 8/6/2019 12:44:00 AM (view original):
Every time we have a multiple shooting we have to deal with this absurd period of the political cycle being dominated by what frankly remains a very minor issue. Don't get me wrong, I've never been opposed to some basic gun control, starting with a reasonable assault weapons ban. But it's not the kind of priority that people try to make it. This is probably the most egregious example right now of the media controlling political priorities and pushing them away from more significant problems.
The reality is that mass murders are still only a small fraction of homicides in the United States. And murders lag comfortably behind auto accidents and suicides among causes of death - to say nothing of heart attack, stroke, and cancer. Similarly, how many people do you think died in school shootings in the past year? I'll give you a hint - you can count them on one hand. How much money has been spent nationally protesting against school violence, defending against it, etc. Close to 3000 school-age and younger children die each year in auto accidents. 350 drown. What do you think is a better allocation of resources - a few million for an informational campaign on the risk of drowning in backyard pools, or billions nationwide to combat school shootings? A 1% drop in drownings would have saved more lives this year than a 75% reduction in school shootings. A 1% drop in drunk driving - about 500 minor fatalities per year IIRC - would blow away stopping all the school shootings.
It's not that it's not a tragedy. I'm not trying to argue that. I am trying to argue that the media presentation of mass murders and school shootings clouds the relative significance of such events as a real threat to the American people. There is much lower-hanging fruit if we want to save some lives.
I completely agree dahs... At the same time, I don't necessarily see a tradeoff between those policies. And Republicans have been blocking other gun reform to stop suicides, such as Red Flag laws.
I'm not trying to make a "Republicans are better" argument. What I am suggesting is that the money and effort being directed towards gun control could probably be better spent. Again, I'd be in favor of an assault weapons ban, but at the same time skeptical of its effectiveness.
I guess tangentially I'm also suggesting that the media are having a distinctly negative social impact here. I know it's slightly off-topic, but closely related, and I'm going to refer back to school shootings here. I haven't seen anybody in the media pointing out that only 4 people died in school shootings during the 2017-18 school year. Not even Fox News. We have kids saying - on TV and in their homes - that they don't feel safe going to school.
In an average year, 450 kids in the United States are murdered by their own parents. About 3000 minor children die in car accidents. Another 8000-10000 die in accidents in the home. Even in the worst school shooting year ever, school is the safest place for our kids to be, statistically-speaking. Much safer than home. Much safer than the commute. Given the importance of school, and of a learning environment that feels safe and comfortable (plenty of research backs this up) I think it's clear that the negative impact of making millions of kids afraid to be at school is the biggest negative impact here. And it's based on an obvious deception generated and perpetuated by the media - that school is a dangerous place to be. It's easy for anybody with an internet connection and 15 minutes to convince themself that school is, in fact, statistically very safe. But not a lot of students and parents are actually fact-checking the media.
I again, agree, although it is still a problem that can and should be solved. People died in Parkland, Sandy Hook, Columbine, etc. Those people should be alive.
Is the US government pending money on gun control? How much? I thought it was activists who were dedicating time to gun control.
The government is not spending money on gun control at the moment. Whether or not that is relevant depends on what perspective you take.
From a political perspective, it does matter whether the government is directly spending taxpayer money on inefficient programs. Gun control presumably wouldn't
have to be expensive in any case. One could argue that some politicians have periodically wasted political capital on gun control issues with no success, but this is still only government time, not taxpayer dollars.
On the other hand, from a social perspective, it actually makes very little difference. There is a finite amount of money and time that people are willing to donate to political causes. There may be some flexibility in the amount depending on circumstances, but it's far from unlimited. In an era where our political system is increasingly dominated by wealthy corporate interests, it matters where individual donors put their money and what issues they press. And I'd be willing to bet that by far and away the biggest pool of individual contributions to issues-oriented (as opposed to campaign-oriented) political funds go to one side or the other of the gun debate. If I were ranking the most important political issues in our country today, guns would not be at the top of the list. Or even close to it. Immigration issues, education issues, healthcare, military spending, corporate regulation, environmental issues - what about more political activism in these areas? I'm not saying there's no activism on these issues, but I bet it lags behind guns. Or what if everyone who donated money to pro-gun or pro-gun control organizations, or spent it to travel to or organize a march oriented around gun issues, donated that money instead to research on any of the 15+ varieties of cancer that kill more Americans every year than assault weapons? How many lives might that money then save? I have to believe there are solutions to pancreatic cancer that could improve the 5-year survival from the sub-20% number we've been stuck at forever.