Show me an advanced society that has the same amount of killing and mass shooting as the American society. And even if you do which you can not. That does not change the fact that Americans are violent and use lethal force more then any other society.
Well no kidding. You have a penchant for stating the obvious. But yet all four have been used for killing people regardless of primary uses. The difference doesn't matter. The person who chose to use said object does. The person is the common denominator. So just because an objects original purpose wasn't meant to be used for killing, it is less of an issue when they are used for killing.
Apples and Oranges, Australia had 650,000 firearms, we've got over 300 million. Not to mention we're notoriously bad at banning anything, Guns, Drugs, Booze.
I think this is changing and violence is on the increase. I hate to sound like doom day around the corner but human history prove a trend is on the move and it is moving in a different direction. We are not a steady line that goes in on direction and facts are changing on the ground. This is not an assessment against one group , race or religion. But a human trend.
(Oh, gotcha...seemed too soon for a smilie.) We are so fucking ourselves, then deflecting the responsibility. I wonder how many movies can be blamed for irrational acts of violence and behavior? Along the lines of G's arguments about restricting things to prevent access or whatever, there is the MPAA's film rating system, but ignorance knows no age limit. BTW, I bet the rest of the world that knows nothing about America from personal experience, and is ignorant enough not to know any better, thinks that what they see on our TV shows and movies is real and happening. As an example, I actually met Germans in the mid/late-70s that thought we all lived like South Fork on Dallas. Highlighting this type of ignorance, "Galaxy Quest"... "I mean certainly you don't think that Gilligan's Island-" "Oh.... Those poor people...." This level of ignorance exists for real...not just in fictional media.
Once again you just made my point. It's the drug and gang culture and the inner city black culture. It's not the guns. But yet the state of Illinois and Chicago want to make it about guns. They are trying to make guns and gun violence the topic so they don't have to address the real issues that are the actuall causes. Like years of their failed democratic lib social programs. Or black high school drop out rates five times the national ave. or single black mothers three times national ave. the don't want to admit their failures so they turn the conversation towards guns while using gun violence as a scapegoat of their own failed policies. They are more than willing to turn a blimd eye towards the underlying causes so they can continue to keep their stranglehold on the city and remain in control while not having to admit any of their own wrong doing. It's certainly not guns that are the issue.
Media certainly plays a role. Look at the most popular video games: Call of Duty, Modern Warfare, Assassin's Creed, Halo, etc. My favorites are the movies. How many people do they kill in the Expendables movies, and Stallone has the nerve to call for gun control!.
Funny you should post this example. Shall we compare the reaction to the Dylan Roof church shooting to the reaction to the recent church shooting that faded from the news in two days because the shooter being a black immigrant and the victims being all white didn't play well in the news at all? Quick, name the gunman in that shooting. The left-wing press has buried that story, while we're still experiencing a lot of social turmoil over the Roof shooting. No riots in the streets over the white folks shot by the black immigrant, though. No White Lives Matter marches. Nothing at all.
Give and take. Add all the murders up for the last 5 decades and you don't remotely touch what has happened in place like Russia or China who have killed off millions of their own people. So I'll take the freedom and lack of state sponsored killings thanks.
That Australian chart indicates nothing but total numbers. How many were massacres, murders, self-defense or accidents? Besides, fuck any other country's opinions or ideas about how to do things, and fuck any American that thinks any other country has a lesson to teach us about guns. Guns are in our Constitution. Take 'em away, good-bye America.
I'm glad you posted this. Can we agree that the run-rate of 350 homicides seems to have been reduced to 300 homicides recently? (it's a rhetorical question, it has). Interestingly enough, that decrease of ~50 homicides per year dovetails nicely with the chart below - as you can see, from an average of ~75 gun homicides in 1996 (trailing 4 year average) down to ~25 gun homicides recently (most recent 4 year average). Said another way, the entire drop in homicides has been caused from the decline in gun homicides.
i don't think it is changing really. i think as a society we just have more immediate real-time exposure to the events versus just a news paper back in the day. unfortunately, i feel the exposure just tends to fuel much of the same..
What is backing up your thinking? That you see it more on the news? History has it's ups and downs, I don't see any doom and gloom on the horizon, I see life here being better every year and occasional bouts of nasty. I see the media playing what little bad stuff there is up because the public at large gets their jollies from Jerry Springer show level news.