Comment on RFK Jr. Blames violent video games for Mass Shootings.
ALLGLORYTOHYPNOTOAD@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Only someone completely disconnected from the rest of the world could take this argument seriously. Every country on the planet has access to violent video game, but somehow we have the most gun violence outside of a war zone in the world. But clearly it’s the video games. 🤦♂️
we have the most gun violence
If we look at “intentional homicide rate” (choice of weapon agnostic), the US is 66th and just above Greenland. I think this statistic is better than “gun deaths” since it excludes suicides and accidental deaths and looks at intentional murder.
The number is way higher than it should be, but probably way better than most assume given the news.
why should we exclude suicides and accidents?
Because those are separate problems with separate solutions.
If people use guns to kill themselves, will they stop killing themselves if we take the guns away? Maybe some will, if the alternatives take so much more time, but the impact won’t be massive. Instead of making suicide harder, we should be treating the root cause of suicide, which is desperation (i.e. have a decent social safety net) and depression (make mental health resources widely available).
If people get hurt due to gun accidents, I highly doubt they’d be happy if we took their guns away, since that’s like solving traffic deaths by banning cars. The better solution is to improve safety features on guns and teach people gun safety so they can use them safely, or in the car example, we should be improving road design and driving education (and making cars less necessary, but that’s a separate point).
Suicides and gun accidents are certainly interesting statistics, but mixing them with homicides just makes it harder to see what’s going on and arrive at effective solutions.
Generally yes, Suicide tends to be a spur of the moment decision to go through with it and having immediate access to a very easy very lethal method increases the rate significantly. There have been numerous studies that show that putting up barriers at bridges etc that are commonly jumped from dreastically reduces the suicide rate from them without raising it elsewhere e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19440880/
Instead of making suicide harder, we should be treating the root cause of suicide
Or… both?
If people get hurt due to gun accidents, I highly doubt they’d be happy if we took their guns away, since that’s like solving traffic deaths by banning cars.
it’s not even remotely the same thing since cars’ primary purpose is not killing.
Suicides and gun accidents are certainly interesting statistics, but mixing them with homicides just makes it harder to see what’s going on and arrive at effective solutions.
it doesn’t really. what does make it harder to arrive at effective solutions is making any excuse possible to avoid gun control.
Fair enough, but still this is a bull shit argument.
Absolutely. There have been so many studies trying to prove a connection and failed. It’s a completely debunked argument.
acosmichippo@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s straight disinformation. Nevermind that everyone else plays the same games, let’s cherry pick the one western nation that has a comparable number of guns per capita and not think about that any further.