David Frum: "It's the guns."

[kpete]

The Parkland shooting earlier this year seemed at last to ignite a public movement in response to these terrible crimes. Yet even the cumulative impact of slaughter after slaughter has not softened the harsh divide of the American gun impasse. Back in 2012, Nate Silver observed: "Whether someone owns a gun is a more powerful predictor of a person’s political party than her gender, whether she identifies as gay or lesbian, whether she is Hispanic, whether she lives in the South, or a number of other demographic characteristics.”

More than 70 percent of Trump voters in 2016 described guns as “very important” to their vote, versus only 40 percent who described abortion as “very important” to their vote and only 25 percent who felt that way about gay rights. With the slow fading of battles over same-sex marriage and abortion, and the rapid collapse of other aspects of conservative ideology, guns may now rank as the single most important political dividing line in 21st century America.

Only 30 percent of Americans own guns. Thus far, that minority has sufficed to block substantial federal action on guns. But a one-third minority—and especially a non-urban one-third minority—may no longer suffice to shape American culture.”

“According to a Pew survey, only about one-quarter of gun owners think it essential to alert visitors with children that guns may be present in the home. (Twice as many non-gun-owners think so.) Only 66 percent of gun owners think it essential to keep guns locked up when not in use. (Ninety percent of non-gun-owners think so.) Only 45 percent of them actually do it.

This carelessness and disregard is taking lives and breaking families. The first step toward correcting a social wrong is opening people’s eyes to see that wrong. America has now tallied still more victims and broken the hearts of still more mourners. It’s a horrible price to pay for a moral reckoning and awakening—but the history of the nation promises that while the awakening may often come tragically slow, it does come in time, with all the power of justice delayed but not denied.”


the rest:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/its-the-guns/560771/

[Desert grandma]

1. I totally agree

with David Frum on this issue. It is the proliferation of guns and the easy access to them in our "gun culture" society today that is a direct cause for these shootings.

[Mc Mike]

2. "It's the guns, comma, stupid."

[thucythucy]

3. According to this data it looks as though

non gun owners are more responsible about guns than many of those "responsible gun owners" we are forever hearing about.

“According to a Pew survey, only about one-quarter of gun owners think it essential to alert visitors with children that guns may be present in the home. (Twice as many non-gun-owners think so.) Only 66 percent of gun owners think it essential to keep guns locked up when not in use. (Ninety percent of non-gun-owners think so.) Only 45 percent of them actually do it.

We see the same story again and again. Fox News consumers, who are the least politically informed among us, believe themselves to be better informed than anyone else. Gun owners, who in general according to this survey are actually LESS responsible about guns than the rest of us, are forever lecturing us about "responsible" gun ownership.

[aikoaiko]

4. The guns have always been there. In more households in the past.

It's an inconvenient truth that is not easily assimilated into the "It's the guns" narrative.

I will admit that if you snapped your fingers and all the firearms were gone, there would be no gun deaths.

Get snapping.

[gratuitous]

6. Australia seemed to figure it out

But here in the land of the High Church of Redemptive Violence, our national religion requires, nay demands, human sacrifice on a regular basis. You won't see the level of faith people have in violence anywhere else. Some backwoods snake handler is a piker compared to gun advocates when it comes to blind, unreasoning faith.

[aikoaiko]

7. I think you are essentially correct. Americans are different from other European-based societies

Last edited Sat May 19, 2018, 12:46 PM - Edit history (1)

But our murder rate is like most other western hemisphere counties with horrible histories of annihilating first peoples and slavery.

Australians don't want to kill their children. They've had mass shootings since 1996, but not in schools.

[randr]

5. There is a solution

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