We haven’t had AR15s for 200 years. The real answer though is more likely cultural, because there are plenty of countries with permissive gun laws who have much lower rates of gun homicide than the US.
While we haven’t had AR15s for that long, full autos were legal for private ownership prior to 1986
And ARs go back to the 50s-60s IIRC
Hyper-sensationalism of the violence and its impact gave those seeking revenge and suicide a convenient two-in-one option.
Maybe don’t give guns to mentally unstable people.
A lot has been said already, but it’s worth mentioning that modern guns are much more capable of killing than guns 200 years ago. Back then, guns were very inaccurate and had to be reloaded one shot at a time and packed by hand. Now we have automatic weapons with large magazines that can be swapped out in seconds. They have less recoil and greater accuracy. Regardless of cultural and political issues, guns are just more capable of killing than they used to be.
Has nothing to do with 200 years, he literally said in the title “the last 30 years”
As another pointed out, we had “dealdly assault weapons” like the AR15 since 1956
blackpowder rifles were actually really good just hard to use. Modern reproductions are interior copies and modern black powder is worse (it’s optimised for different things) .
For example many mid to late 1800s guns could hit point targets out to ~300 yards.
My wife is really into this shit and apparently being a first grade rifleman required something like being able to shoot accurately from a field position to 1000 yards. It was very hard to get that good but many did.
Keep in mind by this time they had all sorts of bells and whistles. Basic cartridges, specialised bullet geometries, progressively narrowing rifling etc.
They were quite slow to fire, but loading a cartridge wasn’t that slow. you basically either breech loaded it or just pushed it down the end and lightly packed it (bullet expands when fired to lock with rifling).
how the hell are you going to shoot a big bunch of people with a musket?
The AR-15 was designed in 1956…
Not sure the point you’re making…
Reporting and tracking. Before the automatic weapons ban you had prolific bank robbers that shot their way out of many situations, but it wasn’t generalized to mass shootings.
Rico was created to combat organized crime in the 70s. Lots of people were killed, but it was presented as an organized crime problem not a mass shooting problem.
Since Columbine you have school shootings. One of the biggest predictors has become media reporting of a shooting. That’s obviously not the sole cause though.
Essentially the US has always been violent, it just hasn’t always been lumped into a single mass shootings bucket. Rival gangs fighting is totally different than a school shooter, and a murder suicide is also entirely different.
Part of the problem is also the silly definition of “mass” shooting as any event witnessed by at least four people.
No the most common definition is the one used by gun violence archive, as an event where four or more people are killed or injured (not including the shooters). Different organizations may have different definitions. How many people “witness it” isn’t used by any to the best of my knowledge.
That may be what it has morphed into. It’s still silly. No common meaning of the word “mass” contemplates only four people.
America’s greatest export is war. we’re a very violent nation. every generation since the founding has had a major conflict to attend - but most of our wars in the last 30 years or so havent involved a lot of “boots on the ground”. that pent up rage requires an outlet. mass killings/shootings/etc are a direct result.
adding to that, handguns are very easy to obtain - you can legally purchase them easily enough but there’s also a very active black market where cash is king and questions are not asked, backgrounds are not checked. since Americans are legally permitted to own/carry firearms (as enshrined in our founding governmental documents), the system cannot change. it’s not politically acceptable to request a change. no career politician is going to burn their entire life’s work in something that is destined to fail. even considering is is borderline insane.
dont expect things to magically get better.
I love how all the people talking about how semi auto guns have been around for X years and blah blah blah completely ignore the massive uptick in production, sale, and distribution of those guns in the past 30-40 (or so).
People have more or less been able to buy assault style semi auto rifles for a long time, but they only “recently” (I guess 30-40 years might not be so recent?) started actually buying them in large numbers. Mostly thanks to the NRA, if I had to point a finger.
The problem is that a really angry or disturbed or whatever person with access to a high rate of fire weapon and lots of ammo (because they’ve been told that next election Jack Johnson or John Jackson will be taking their guns) can literally just pick it up and go kill half a dozen or more people in 30 minutes. There’s nothing we can do to intercept that. (And “good guys with guns” have a terrible track record, including cops.)
We even had a little experiment in the 90s where people were buying a lot of these and then we banned them. Mas shootings (4+ victims according to the FBI if I recall correctly) had been going up but then they went down until …
W and his Republican stooges (or maybe he was the stooge?) let the ban expire, mass shootings started ticking up.
The drivers that lead people to mass violence probably are the “root” of the problem, and I would guess hypothetically that if we could snap our fingers and solve those it wouldn’t matter how many or what type of guns there are out there. The problem is that we aren’t even trying to fix those problems, and the Republican Party is actively making them worse, AND we’re making these literal weapons of war easily available to everyone.
Australian here. We had one really bad mass shooting and then our government (who was also one of the most conservative governments in the last 50 years) banned guns. Haven’t had one since. Guns just aren’t a thing here and we kind of think you’re a weird country for being so obsessed with guns. I also personally think it’s weird that guns are like the symbol of your freedom, yet you don’t have universal healthcare. Universal healthcare offers so much more freedom than guns do.
In saying that a lot of countries have guns and don’t have the same problem with mass shootings. What the US has is a cultural problem in terms of your relationship with guns and violence. Unfortunately, doing a mass shooting is now a normalised way to deal with your problems. Not all of you, obviously. But enough of you that it’s gotten completely out of control. In Australia I don’t think it was just the banning of guns that has reduced mass shootings. We have a culture in Australia of ‘don’t be a dickhead’. I think when we had our mass shooting we all collectively just said yeah nah mass shootings are next level dickhead behaviour.
Except that when a revolution becomes necessary we will all be fucked. Citizen’s most important duty is ensuring the State stays true to democracy
Revolutions are fought with torches, pitchforks and guillotines.
Guns are far from necessary.
They had guns in 1789. That was the main reason they took the Bastille. Everything changed after that day
We do have guns though, they are protected behind proper background checks and licences. And we dont fetishish them the same way many Yanks do. Definitely far fewer semi-auto and full auto guns though.
If you keep your eyes open, there are a number of gun shops around, often in quite unexpected locations. There is one near my local kebab shop, and its very subtle, so many people dont even notice it.
The Au and NZ experience with guns and pop culture vs the US is vastly different.
NZ is up there with gun ownership (in the top 20 per capita), but we have a very different culture around them, they are a hunting tool and not a misogynistic tool here. There was a bit of backlash with our last tightening of our laws - but to be frank, I got my licence after the law change with little difficulty, and who needs a semi auto AR style rifle other that those that can apply for for the appropriate licence?
Conservative media probably has a lot of blood on its hands. Pumping people up with fear of outsiders. Fox news is a relatively new entity.
Rough image. And here in Western Europe I’m concerned about wealth distribution from bottom to top.
But maybe that’s different, because this chart says income distribution.
Bush let the Clinton assault weapon ban expire and then assault weapons began to flood the market over the next two decades.
This is simply wrong. Many of the worst mass shootings in the last decade were committed with low power rifles and handguns. I’m actually pretty sure the two worst mass shootings (by count of those who were killed) in the US were done using .22 ammunition. Those weapons were not covered by whatever ban you’re talking about
It’s not about “assault weapons” and it’s not even about guns. It’s about the inability of our government to pass meaningful legislation around gun ownership and mental health and especially where those two topics intersect
The problem is that human suffering is normalized because the wealthy political class and those who fund them are not going to let things change for the better if it means less money for them.
WBUR actually did a podcast on this recently… It’s called the Gun Problem iirc
I think at the high level it’s the military industrial senatorial complex, the deregulation and reagonomics under Republicans, the neoliberalism under democratic, globalization, de-industrialization, the modern banking/credit system, the modern media complex, and personalized engagement algorithms… Downstream of that is a high rate of poverty, debt, illiquidity, a poor healthcare system, reliance on jobs for affordable healthcare, a lack of access to robust mental health treatment, modernization of weaponry, a radicalized and angry society, collapsing social cohesion, division along small tribal lines, lacl of patriotism, and upregulation of the average amygdala. Downstream of that you have homelessness, addiction, mental health crisises, violence, suicide, murder, and the institutional inertia that makes these intergenerational problems.
We need a modern Robespierre. A charismatic leader to lead the public by uniting them rather than dividing them, who will make such massive changes that they’ll come for his head.
You’re either an exceptionally well-read moron or a great satirist.
I prefer the term idiot savante
Australia had a problem with guns too, until the government stepped in. They had a program where people were paid for giving up their guns.
Limiting access to guns is such a simple thing to do, and has such a huge impact… It’s not going to solve crime, but it will make crime less deadly.
SIMPLE?
by all means, go right ahead. lol
Exactly. Around the world, western countries seem to be enshittifying. The only difference is that the US has widespread access to guns which seems to lead to lots of shootings of all flavours. We don’t have that shit here.
