It's Cultural Deviancy, Not Guns

[Chris]

Some I would agree. On the other hand this was a pretty violent country many times in our history. Pre Colonial was pretty rough with the Indians. The Wild West was pretty messed up. I think basically people have too much time on their hands today and fill that time with some pretty $#@!ed up $#@! from the entertainment industry. Needless pressure of modern society triggers some violent behavior I believe also. Booze and legal as well as illegal drugs doesn't help. I read a study once on how nutrition, as strange as it sounds, can really $#@! a person's mind up. So in the end I don't think we are a more violent society as compared to other epochs of history but I think the triggers are different in terms of cause.

Jack (Assassian)

Conley's post certainly supports that. But I'm not sure, I tend to agree with Williams that our society exhibits a pervasive sense of permissiveness, a sense of accepting such behavior.

[Conley]

The central point Williams is making is that certain segments of American society have a problem with gun violence.



It's not about guns. It's about culture. I tried to explain this to the anti-gun fanatics on this website but it put them in a difficult ideological position and I admit I knew it would.

But aren't handguns more easily accessible to those certain segments of American society than they used to be?

[Mister D]

But aren't handguns more easily accessible to those certain segments of American society than they used to be?

You used to be able to order a Thompson from the Sears Catalog back in the day so I would say that firearms were generally far more available in the past.

[Private Pickle]

But aren't handguns more easily accessible to those certain segments of American society than they used to be?

No. Much harder actually.

[Conley]

No. Much harder actually.

I'm not saying for law abiding citizens...I'm talking about criminals in inner cities with mass produced cheap handguns available. I could be wrong, often am it just seems like over decades the number of hand guns in circulation has definitely increased (some are destroyed, some wear out, but at the rate they're being made it must be net positive?) so it's not a crazy assumption. Cheap and plentiful drugs obviously contribute a lot to the plight of the inner city so couldn't cheap and plentiful hand guns?

[Conley]

You used to be able to order a Thompson from the Sears Catalog back in the day so I would say that firearms were generally far more available in the past.

Are you and I talking about the same segment of American society?

That's a very interesting point...but you can say rifles are available in lots of WalMarts, sporting good stores, etc. I'm not talking about the law abiding part of the population, so different segment I think.

[Conley]

I thought this:

What percentage of murders, irrespective of race, are committed with what are being called assault weapons? You'd be hard put to come up with an amount greater than 1 or 2 percent. In fact, according to FBI data from 2011, there were 323 murders committed with a rifle of any kind but 496 murders committed with a hammer or a club..

Was very interesting in the OP...I had no idea

[Conley]

This is old, from the Economist in 94

Every ten seconds a gun is made in America; every nine seconds one is imported, adding over 6m guns annually to the estimated 212m already in private circulation, nearly one per citizen.

Of the 212m firearms in circulation, about 67m are handguns. Three-quarters of the handguns produced in America are now semi-automatic pistols (that is, pistols carrying up to 12 rounds, where a bullet is expelled with each squeeze of the trigger), which until the 1980s were used mainly by soldiers. Handguns now figure in about 60% of firearms homicides. By contrast, semi-automatic rifles account for a mere 1% of homicides; there are around 3m in circulation. Opponents of semi-automatic rifles, which are widely used in hunting, say they can easily be converted for fully automatic fire, so that one squeeze of the trigger produces a stream of bullets. This makes them into machine-guns, banned by federal law. Their defenders say that conversion is difficult, needing a machine-tool shop and a supply of scarce or restricted parts.

http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~...the-range.html

And from 212 million guns in 1994 to almost 300 million today

"The biggest problem for gun control today is a number: 300 million," Winkler said. "That's roughly the number of guns there are in civilian hands today. Any new law you pass confronts the reality of 300 million guns already in circulation."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/OTUS/contro...ry?id=18008013

Seems like an awful lot to me.

[Mister D]

Are you and I talking about the same segment of American society?

That's a very interesting point...but you can say rifles are available in lots of WalMarts, sporting good stores, etc. I'm not talking about the law abiding part of the population, so different segment I think.

Well that's just it. Something has changed and it isn't the availability of firearms.

[Conley]

I like Williams, tells it like it is.

Bottom line: "Today's Americans accept behavior that our parents and grandparents never would have accepted."

I don't know what our grandparents and parents would and would not accept but it does seem like American society doesn't really lose too much sleep over the inner city homicides. So in a way I guess that is acceptance...the Taliban shoots a girl halfway around the world and it's front page news but kids getting shot down in Chicago barely makes a blip.