Comment on Anon is a statistic

• KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  that’s actually a better argument for me ironically.

  Europe is more densely populated, among a smaller landmass (if we explicitly refer to western europe) making it MORE likely that any mass violence events hurt more random people.

  Where as the US has LESS people, across MORE space, making it even more unlikely for you to be involved in these attacks, because people are simply less likely to be in those places, at the time of the attack.

  Of course the US has disproportionately more acts of violence against other people, than somewhere like europe, but there are a variety of reasons this could be the case, but it’s questionable whether this makes you “significantly” more likely to experience an attack, considering you also spend “considerably less” time around other people in general.

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  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    You need to look at how they classify “mass shooting,” because a massive number of these are gang violence, since “mass shooting” usually means at least 4 people involved. Those tend to happen in dense cities, like Chicago or LA, not in the middle of nowhere.

    So if you’re not in the bad part of a large city and aren’t involved with any gangs, your chance of being involved in a mass shooting is incredibly rare.

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    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      yeah im not even touching that, because honestly, i have no idea what the numbers look like, but i’d guess that’s the case for the majority of violence in most places (cities especially)

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      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        True.

        My point is that the numbers are incredibly misleading. If you look at the numbers for “gun violence,” most are suicides, and a large number of the rest are accidental discharge. Very few are homicides, and an incredibly small number are random shootings.

        The random ones get a ton of press coverage because they’re rare and because they’re so unpredictable. The everyday homicides are rarely reported on outside the local area.

        What’s even crazier is that most of the gun crime wouldn’t be stopped with proposed legislation because:

        • most of the firearms involved are stolen
        • they’re mostly handguns (esp. gang violence and suicide), and gun legislation targets "assault weapons"
        • criminals are usually first time offenders, so restrictions wouldn’t apply

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  • rtxn@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    There’s also the matter of guns not being tossed around like candy at a Willy Wonka publicity tour in most of Europe.

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    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      that’s true, and theres probably some truth to it, but it’s not a direct 1:1 comparison, so it’s not just fair to say it’s only gun control laws, when there are about 10 reasons it could be actually influencing it, though realistically a few of those are probably gun control related.

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