A familiar horror reached Pooja Kanda first on social media: There had been a sword attack in London. And then Kanda, who was home alone at the time, saw a detail she dreaded and knew all too well.
A man with a sword had killed a 14-year-old boy who was walking to school. Two years ago, her 16-year-old son, Ronan, was killed by two sword-wielding schoolmates while walking to a neighbor’s to borrow a PlayStation controller.
“It took me back,” Kanda, who lives near Birmingham, said about Daniel Anjorin’s April 30 killing in an attack in London’s Hainault district that also wounded four people. “It’s painful to see that this has happened all over again.”
In parts of the world that ban or strictly regulate gun ownership, including Britain and much of the rest of Europe, knives and other types of blades are often the weapons of choice used in crimes. Many end up in the hands of children, as they can be cheap and easy to get.
Before people come in and use this as an argument against gun control, these attacks kill far fewer people per attack.
The US public and Congress have been making a mistake for 40 years by getting distracted by the “how” and not focusing on addressing the “why”.
Don’t make the same mistake.
Okay, what’s the ‘why’ of killing significantly more people during such attacks? Because it seems to me like simply having the ability to do so with a gun when it’s far more difficult to do so with a knife is part of the why.
Buddy, you’re obsessing over the means. Focus on motive.
I’d rehash the same points about how a person can commit mass murder with a car, but for guys like you talking about murder weapons is like being a pig in shit.
You didn’t answer my question:
You can claim people commit mass murder like that with a car, but can you show that car mass murders come even close to events like the Pulse nightclub attack, the Las Vegas mass shooting or Uvalde?
So, again, what is the why?
Yeah, I didn’t answer your question.
I’m refusing to give you what you want.
You’ve been warned that this is an exercise in futility. I won’t engage in it no matter how much you want to.
It is indeed an exercise in futility when someone refuses to answer the question of why after telling that person that they’re not focusing on the why.
You can both engage in immediate harm reduction while also working towards solutions to poverty and deprivation.
Providing for people’s needs will be the most effective way to reduce the violent crime rate… But it won’t go away entirely. Ever. Some people have their heads screwed on backwards. Some people have fringe religious ideologies that encourage violence. Some people are raging alcoholics even with money and security - they’ll commit domestic violence no matter how wealthy they are.
None of them should own guns.
When politicians are looking to score points with the public will they enact expensive social safety nets, or will they push for cheap and quick weapon bans?
Do politicians care about efficacy, or do they care about appearing to take action?
If a person’s goal is to reduce homicides the means need to be decoupled from the argument. It’s highly counterintuitive, but four decades of US domestic policy have proven that if the means of homicide are a part of the discussion politicians will focus on it in order to look like they’re doing something without spending enormous amounts of taxpayer money - efficacy be damned.
Approximately the same number of people die from gun homicides as homelessness in the USA.
I don’t want to solve either/or - I want to solve both.
And while deprivation is a common root they have other uncommon causes that need addressing. The gun craze of America needs to be clamped down on and regulated.
We have the ability to do both. Why would you argue against one?
Because the gun laws in place are about as far as things can go without repealing the second amendment. Further laws are either doomed to fail or make only marginal differences.
Those bills and proposals waste precious political capital that could otherwise be used passing laws that address the root causes of homicide.
It seems to me that politicians on one side in the U.S. are against a social safety net and gun control and the other side are in favor of a social safety net and gun control. So your argument really doesn’t make much sense. Who are these politicians who are pro-universal healthcare but anti-strengthening gun regulations?
You’re missing the point, none of them really want the social safety nets, that would kill the wedge issue. Keeping people arguing about gun control drives political engagement and votes. Both parties have a vested interest in not resolving the issue. Actually solving the problem would be a nightmare for them.
Look, if you want to spend the rest of your life watching your elected officials chase symptoms in order to drum up funds and votes, go right ahead. Just don’t say you weren’t warned when you let them get away with it.
Many bills that have been submitted suggest otherwise.
And how did those bills go?
Congress loves to let issues fester to garner attention and drum up support. They’ve been fucking around with the debt ceiling for decades to do that, and that’s a problem that they create from whole cloth.
The political will of the populace to make real changes to address the root causes of homicide are squandered by focusing on the weapons used. Want to see those bills pass? Don’t buy into the dog and pony show that is gun control.
If you really, truly believe that banning guns is the silver bullet to solving homicides get the second amendment repealed. All the half measures that get thrown out time and time again are usually unconstitutional and doomed to fail, they’re just there to keep the public engaged.
So… you’re saying that because Democratic bills put forward to increase the safety social net get voted down by Republicans, Democrats don’t want a social safety net?
And here is where I know you are not here in good faith. You are conflating the two as if they were the same thing, or that everyone who proposes the former actually wants the latter.
When you are done tripping over yourself to silence those you disagree with consider this, both are treating the SYMPTOM not the disease
The fun thing about the US is that the people opposed to dealing with the symptom are also usually opposed to dealing with the disease.
Right? I’ve long said that Democrats should just pivot and say, “Okay you don’t want to work on getting guns out of the hands of criminals? Okay whatever. You agree part of this is a result of mental health? Okay, then let’s pass Universal healthcare with guaranteed access to therapy and more.”
They’d have my vote, along with probably tens of millions of other independents.
Honestly, gun control is the “poison pill” of the Democratic platform. They’ve got a ton of great ideas and policies but demand one of your civil rights in exchange. Even for people who aren’t into guns, the idea giving up any civil right is problematic to say the least.
I’m fully on-board with a national gun ban and a complete change of the 2nd amendment, but I know we are also decades away from that realistically. Boomers and GenX will have to die off first. Can’t teach old dogs new tricks.
Not making me feel better about my previous statement…
Like I said I’m good with either direction. Pragmatic pivoting to root causes, addressing the hemorrhagic symptoms, or both.
You might not have noticed, but I am a moderator. If I wanted to silence you, I certainly could. I do not use that power to do so just because I disagree with someone. You are free to disagree with me and anyone else in this community as long as you follow the community rules.
Your first thought was to head off an argument against your train of thought, you don’t need your mod powers to do what I described. I do appreciate you having more restraint than more than one Reddit mod I’ve encountered thoigh
Of course I would need mod powers to silence you. I have no other way of silencing you. Your replying to me proves that. You’re not a victim. Your voice is as heard as everyone else’s here.
I didn’t mean physically silence, more rhetorically silence them by assuming an argument before you were ever engaged, it comes across as an attempt to restrict discourse. If that was not your intent I apologize
That is not rhetorical silence either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silence
Assuming an argument someone is going to make in no way silences anyone. Especially when I didn’t specify who I was talking to. All you had to say was, “I don’t agree.” Instead, you decided to point fingers and make this personal by saying:
Notice that the multiple other people who replied to me both did not make a personal attack and did not feel silenced, and if you want to apologize for something, apologize for that.
Furthermore, while I do not moderate discussions I am involved with, personal attacks are against community rules, so I hope you don’t think this is something you can normally get away with.
We could have had a legitimate discussion, but you decided to come in feeling like this was personal. I have no interest in discussing anything with you now.
Last I checked, physicians must treat both symptoms and diseases simultaneously. E.g., the Shock. The bleeding. The excess fever.
Similarly there’s no reason both cannot be tackled simultaneously here as well; for the root cause is often far more difficult to address than treating symptoms.
So yes, address the root causes such as:
… But also address the symptoms, which means that when someone does inevitably fall through the cracks, they’re not given free and easy access to gun that is lethally more effective than a knife.
The homicide rate in the US is about 6-7 times that in the UK per 100,000 population. I’d take our situation any day of the week.
Last time I looked into this properly, knife crime in the US was actually roughly the same frequency as that in the UK. The difference is that knife-based murders stand out in the UK, whereas in the US nobody pays attention because the problem is dwarfed by the much greater problem of rampant gun crime.
The mass stabbing in Australia the other week had a victim count that wouldn’t even make national news in America, but in Australia it was so bad that the pope commented
But if the rate of knife attacks are currently the same, then logically it would make sense that knife attack rate would be much greater in the US than UK if guns were to be banned because some percentage of the current gun crime rate would convert to knife crimes. I guess the US is just a more violent place in general.
Just turn on the tele. In Europe there is a shocking amount of nudity to an American, and in America there is a disturbing amount of violence to a European.
Yes those are both true. What’s your point?
My point is, you don’t even need to look up the stats to see that it is true, just turn on the TV. Entertainment and media is a reflection of culture.