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by lax4ever
1482 days ago
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This is, well, sadly quite a lacking declaration. 1) While the Dickey amendment may have made gun research more difficult, it was still done, and there have been numerous studies and analyses that have placed the number of defensive gun uses somewhere between 500,000 to 1.5 million or more (Things like the 2013 CDC study, the 2019 National Crimes Victimization Survey, the 2021 National Firearms Survey, etc. have all produced relative consistent results. There was an outlier NCVS survey from earlier in the 2010's that placed it around 70k to 105k but that survey never actually asked if the gun was used in one's defense while they were victimized. That information was only recorded if it was volunteered unprompted). 2) To say that most gun-related deaths are homicide related is untrue. Consistently, the gun death tally in the US has been majority suicide, with suicide by firearm ranging anywhere from around 54% to 75% depending on things like the year and where the numbers are coming from. However, firearm related homicide has not been the majority cause of firearm related death in the US for many years. 3) I am a gun owner but I am not a fan of the NRA. It has more than a few skeletons in it's closet. That being said, there are plenty of quite reasonable (and could be argued, onerous and over-reaching) restrictions on purchasing a firearm. Maybe we should consider a) blaming the person and not the tool, and b) having a serious discussion about the degradation of community values, responsible parenting, and mental health concerns that would seem to play a far larger motivator in these young men who decide to commit crimes than the tool with which they choose to commit them. I don't see people rallying to completely ban cigarettes despite smoking being the cause of 1 in 5 deaths in the US or the fact that the average person starts smoking at the age of 15 despite needing to be 18 to buy them. |
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