Shard

No need to look, I've just provided it.

Lion in Winter

So is part of the answer that this country is still very new (as a political state, not counting all the people who were already living here when the Europeans got here)?

I sort of get this with respect to personal weaponry, but why are we still ok with the level of violence that we have?

Lion in Winter

It may be part of it, for sure.

But what else? This is a country of immigrants, and at this point most of them have arrived long, long after this founding story was operative. Why/how are they influenced by it?

Shard

They buy into it (present company excepted).

civilservant

Majority apathy I suppose. These deaths are not happening in the areas where the people that make political contributions live. Added to the fact that a Constitutional Amendment is a very heavy lift.

I haven't seen any polling recently on 2A, but my guess it that it still commands majority support, people are just for regulating it harder. Congressional inaction on the regulation is a fait accompli with the NRA and Republicans around.

Hiro11

It's hard to identify one cause. My opinions, which are of course biased by my experiences and limitations:

- A major cause is certainly the large number of guns in the country, it's hard to shoot people if you don't have a gun. How you lower the number of guns in the hands of people with criminal intent... that's a tough question to answer.

- A refusal to discuss the issue honestly. I believe we have spent an insufficient time honestly discussing the causes of violence and defining solutions. We spend a disproportionate amount of time discussing fringe cases like police brutality and school shooting and essentially no time talking about low level crime in the US. People are actively disincented from discussing much more common gang-related or what I call "BAU" violence. The data is readily available, let's discuss it openly.

- Lack of opportunity. Too many people in the US grow up in an environment with few prospects. It's terribly unfair to children caught in this situation. I don't excuse people who grow up in a tough situation and turn to crime, but it's easy for me to point the finger when I've had plenty of opportunity handed to me. How you fix this problem is, again, very complicated. Offering opportunity needs to be accompanied by an expectation of excellence and accountability. You can't have one without the other.

- Lack of strong families and strong role models. I recognize that this is easily dismissed as a boilerplate white guy from the suburbs argument, but I believe that if you can't find love, belonging and support in your house, you will search it out and find it from wherever you can. This often will result in bad outcomes. Perhaps controversially, I think Daniel Patrick Moynihan was prescient in 1965 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ne...ational_Action ). Moynihan isn't perfect, but I think Moynihan's critics have too often resorted to ad hominem attacks and nonsense because his conclusions are sound. I also think the issue goes beyond just black families. Regardless, the data on this is clear and many people on both sides of the political spectrum have spoken clearly about the issue: outcomes of people raised in two parent families is shockingly better than those not raised in two parent families.

- Lack of education and lack of breadth of experience. Terrible schools are part of this, but there are broader issues of insularity and ignorance. A lot of violence is not from hardened criminals, it's just dumb-ass kids who don't know any better.

- Lack of second chances. I believe the criminal "corrections" industry in the country has many, many problems but the high rate of incarceration has undeniably resulted in lower levels of violent crime. I also believe that once you wind up in the system, you're screwed for the rest of your life. Of course, any solution relies on both corrections officers and convicts making an effort. Still, if you are making an honest attempt to turn your life around, there should be strong support... with strong expectations.

ddsrph

I looked up that incident I mentioned in the above post where the neighbor shot the neighborhood bully after years of abuse. It happened in California
google “bullets for the bully” the Navy commander shot him 12 times and got 8.5 years in prison.

Shard

What is BAU violence ?

civilservant

Business As Usual? Maybe?

Shard

Ah ok. Seems to fit.

Hiro11

Yeah. I call it that sarcastically because it's (ridiculously, offensively even) background noise in the US. I look at something like this:
https://heyjackass.com/

... which shows a this horrifically unacceptable level of every day violence here in Chicago. Too many Americans seem to assume it can never be stopped and thus it's not worthy of discussion. Progress has clearly been made, after all the overall murder rate in the US is half what it was 25 years ago. Still, there's a huge problem we need to solve.

scrubbedexpat091

When you have generations grow up exposed to violence you kind of become desensitized to it, and it becomes normal in a way and no longer seems abnormal.

I have been guilty of not paying much attention to gun shootings anymore, they happen so often and for so much of my life, its just the way its always been, I know for the area I grew up in, gun violence is down, but I understand this differs place to place.

Only real meaningful change will be amending the constitution, that wont happen anytime soon, not worth the effort, there is 0 chance of sufficient support in congress or states to even get it off the ground.

Shard

So true. We have a microcosm of that in Britain with (different domain) Covid. Our infection/death rates are astronomical, and yet the general public is habituated and accepts it as BAU.

Hiro11

It's worth noting that, unlike a pandemic, incidence of violence is highly localized in the US. Take a look at the map in the site I posted, the vast majority of even a "dangerous" city like Chicago is very safe... punctuated by small neighborhoods that have absurdly high levels of violence. I think the "general public" in the US is "habituated" to violence in those neighborhoods and only appropriately shocked when it comes out of those neighborhoods. This really bothers me.

Shard

Why does it bother you ?