this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
137 points (96.6% liked)
Asklemmy
44152 readers
1052 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I thought the last few school shootings were from legslky owned rifles?
That's what you hear about. You don't hear about the other 40,000 gun deaths (almost half suicides) anymore than you hear about the 40,000 vehicular deaths.
Kis shoots up a school and kills 5? All over the media for a solid week. Asshole ripping down the interstate takes out a family of 5? Meh. Quick local news blurb.
OP's point is that rifles, legal or not, aren't what's doing all the killing. It's the pistols. Nobody will talk about it because there's no way in hell for a pistol ban to pass. But words like "assault" and "military" get traction.
Remember Virginia Tech? Worst mass murder at the time? Kid did most of his killing with a .22 pistol.
They were. They were horrific tragedies. They are also the outlier of outliers. And any legislation targeting them is either a) going to have zero effect on crime, b) only going to harm law abiding citizens or C) both
isn't it specifically going to rein in the outlier of outliers that school shootings are? I think people would be really happy with that, even if the average crime rate doesn't go down
I doubt it If they cant get an ar they'll just go get a black market pistol for $100. And besides, the way to curb school shootings isn't through firearm restrictions. It's through actual proper mental health programs and funding. Something that the US government refuses to fund because it'll actually fix the problem instead of just being a feel good gesture.
The only shootings where mental illness plays a major factor are suicides. When it comes to gun violence, only 4-5% of perpetrators have a severe mental illness. When it comes to school mass shootings specifically [ source ]:
And with regard to school shootings generally:
If we could reduce bullying and do a better job at making students feel like they have value and matter, that would go a lot further toward reducing school shootings than anything involving mental illness (aside from, perhaps, efforts to reduce the stigma associated with it).
Substance abuse - drugs, particularly those that are illegal, and alcohol - as well as poverty and inequality is much more strongly linked to gun violence.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t continue improving our available mental health resources (the majority of deaths from guns are by suicide, after all), but we shouldn’t use mental illness as a scapegoat.
Huh well alright then. I thought mentally illness played a bigger part. Now I know. Thanks!
No, because 91% of school shootings were performed with a handgun.