America’s Path to Fewer Gun Deaths

[SecularMotion]

In 1978, 10,000 American teens were killed in motor vehicle crashes. But American teens now face a 69% lower risk of dying in a car crash compared with 1978.

How did we do it? We didn’t ban cars or alcohol. No, we:

increased the drinking age from 18 to 21,
increased legal standards for sober driving,
increased the odds of being arrested and the penalties for drunk driving,
we held people accountable if they sold alcohol to an underage youth, especially if t contributed to injuries or deaths;
and we required more advanced safety technology like air bags.

These policies worked because they promoted higher standards, greater accountability, and the best available technology. Similar approaches can work to curb gun violence.

http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-gun-policy-and-research/daniel-webster-tedmed-talk.html

[EdwardBernays]

1. no, they can't

Because the pro-gun crowd is monolithic as far as their support for blocking any gun control/safety measures are concerned...

The equivalent measures have been floated repeatedly and die a death...

On top of that, it's not exactly analogous, because none of the equivalent (to your driving regulations) suggestions would curb gun violence by 69%... the MOST (wildly) optimistic projections on the amount of violence that would be stopped by extremely strict screening and loophole closing and background checking is between 20-30%.

To get another 40% without taking millions of guns off the streets is a pipe dream.

[Travis_0004]

2. Our murder rate is half of what it was in 1994

So the US must be doing something right.

[EdwardBernays]

3. no

It's still 4x higher than most of Europe... the highest in Europe is less than 1/2 as high as the US... The US murder rate is similar to places like Niger... back in the bad old days (80s-90s) it was astonishingly high, as high as many of the worst places on the planet are currently, like Zimbabwe, Haiti, Nicaragua... so to come down from those peaks to just 5x that of the UK is no big success...

[Nuclear Unicorn]

6. Europeans like their killing more centralized and state sponsored.

Sure, they may have low crime rates but they love their regional wars every few decades that sweep up a dozen million or so.

[EdwardBernays]

7. eh?

I think that's a bizarre way to look at it...?

Are you saying that the US doesn't kill it's citizens and citizens of other countries via war, because it has more murders??

Or what?

[ileus]

11. That's what is acceptable when you manage to disarm your population.

[EdwardBernays]

19. ehhh... no...

very strange response again...

[librarylu]

4. Compare to Great Britain

http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/United-Kingdom/United-States/Crime

So the UK must be doing something right

[EdwardBernays]

5. Not just the UK

The highest murder rate in Europe is Norway at 2.2. The US is 4.7. Like Latvia and Niger.

Yemen is 4.8. Albania and Estonia are 5.0.

Germany is 0.8, Switzerland is 0.6.

[librarylu]

8. Right, not just the UK

I always think of them first since I have British cyber friends who think we're batshit crazy.

I also think of Australia and Japan.

[EdwardBernays]

9. The sad thing is

You can choose pretty much any country that you'd be willing to visit and discover that they murder rate is significantly lower than ours... which is scary... and BTW I'm a US expat living in Ireland... and yes they DO think we're all nuts...

[Travis_0004]

10. Mexico?

[EdwardBernays]

13. I personally

wouldn't take my family there... due to the incredible amount of violence...

[Travis_0004]

14. And very strict gun control laws too.

[EdwardBernays]

16. laws..

without enforcement are meaningless...

Mexico is also fighting a war with criminal gangs... like an actual war...

Hardly comparable to the US situation with gun control...

[gejohnston]

17. most of their murders are gun free

[ileus]

12. Getting a grip on 5 or 6 major cities would solve the whole problem.

[EdwardBernays]

15. Nope...

Sadly that's not even vaguely true...

If you look at the top 15 Cities by Murder Rate the total number killed is less than 1300.

If you look at the top 15 cities by number killed the total is 3304.

To reduce murder so that we have a murder rate as bad as the worst European country, we'd have to subtract 7300 murders... So, no... it's not a problem with a few cities...

[gejohnston]

18. the problems with cars and booze

are nothing like drug dealers and gang members killing each other. As for Bloomberg's "research" institute, their CT study was a dreadful joke.