Wyobohunter, I dont know you so I apologize in advance if this comes off wrong, but I do want to take issue with one thing you said that I think is important. Yes, both political parties have been guilty of targeting guns, and the fact is that we have to do something about it or guns will continue to be the scapegoat whether they are actually “responsible” or not--If I'm understanding you correctly then I do agree with some of what you wrote and probably some of the solutions as well. But, I have a problem with framing the problem as "guns are the common denominator" because I think it plays into the standard narrative and the same "non-solution" (i.e. if we take the guns away the problem will go away), which I don’t see as being at-all definitive or effective. Because I think every day we keep blaming guns is one more day that we AREN'T actually addressing these problems.
The media and those who would like to take away Americans right to own a firearm would have us believe the common denominator of all of our problems is the gun, as you said. But if we keep reducing the multitude of different issues involved in “gun deaths” to guns, we will never get to the root causes that are behind them, and they will not be fixed. I’m talking about murder in urban areas versus suicide in rural areas versus mass shootings, and probably also teasing out domestic violence, all lumped together into “gun violence”, and all under the banner of active shooter incidents. No one ever reads about the fact that as rates of firearm ownership have increased, rates of murder have actually DECREASED (
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/), which to me calls the “guns are the common denominator” narrative into serious question. We also don’t hear about the rates of violent crimes using other implements in countries where their citizens have already been disarmed, we only hear "gun violence decreased after guns were banned"—google “knife crime” or “acid attacks” and it becomes clear to me that the data says large numbers of violent offenders will simply move on to the next implement when guns are not obtainable. (
https://www.statista.com/statistics/864736/knife-crime-in-london/#:~:text=The number of knife or,there were 9.75 thousand offences ). Again, this does not make it appear to me that guns are the common denominator.
Additionally, we definitely don’t hear about what the societal COST will be if we make access to firearms more difficult—after all, it’s relatively well established that
“Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008"…and
"Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies (Kleck, 1988; Kleck and DeLone, 1993; Southwick, 2000; Tark and Kleck, 2004)." (at least as long as you think the National Academies of Sciences is a reputable source:
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/18319/chapter/1 --see p 15 and 16)
So no, I reject that “guns are the common denominator”, because 1) I don’t see where it is actually established that guns are the cause of any of these problems, so it seems like a gross oversimplification that doesn't accomplish enough, while also taking away part of my agency to keep myself out of trouble; 2) I want to do something about these problems because they are huge problems, so I need to see the causes of the problems talked about and addressed, and one of the short-term solutions is allowing people to have agency in preventing violent crime—the evidence tells me that gun-free zones are not cutting it, and 3) I think there are a multitude of other things we could point to that are ALSO common denominators just as much or more-so than guns, that seem to be more closely tied to the root cause of these issues. I’m talking about topics like developing and maintaining in-person social skills, realistic ideas of what success and healthy values look like, learning to deal with failure, and teaching personal agency and responsibility. No silver bullet here, and nothing will happen quickly, but it took a long time to get into this pickle and I think it’s unrealistic—no matter what rights we trample—to get out of it quickly. I think we can start by demanding that our media and our political parties and politicians pick up an agenda that actually acknowledges and differentiates between the real various aspects of “gun violence” and addresses the causes of them and the realistic timeline for solutions, and acknowledges that in order to make a serious dent in these problems individual people are going to have to step up and take responsibility for the solutions, both proactively and defensively. I think we can also hold the dept of justice responsible for prosecuting more straw-purchases and illegal gun sales to people who are already barred from ownership--those are laws already on the books that everyone supports and are weak or ineffective because there is very little enforcement in many cases (
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2018/p...raw-purchase-violations-depends-on-state-laws).
there. apologies for the rant, but I feel much better now.