Comment by skinkestek

5 years ago

About the gun part: I grew up in a gun owning family. On the other hand my dad wouldn't even let is have toy guns or water guns as he was afraid of us picking up the habit of pointing guns at fellow humans.

Much of my childhood I also shared house with an actual (full auto, large caliber) assault rifle, but my dad was always very careful to point out that war was not cool.

In fact, from my childhood, the gun owning part of the family were simultaneously the mild mannered, book reading part of the family.

My Swiss friend in town told me as far as he knew Switzerland still people keep fully functional assault rifles at home but those who have them need to show up for three weeks of training each year and show up at a shooting range twice a year. (He left a few years ago so anyone actually living there now should feel free to correct this.)

My conclusion has always been that the gun violence problems in US is largely a culture problem.

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skinkestek

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underlines  5 years ago

"My conclusion has always been that the gun violence problems in US is largely a culture problem."

I would strongly argue against this. Swiss gun law is very different from US, please read my five points above. Do you think US gun violence would decrease if they adopted those points? In my opinion yes.

In my opinion the conservatives, nationalists and the National Rifle Association fight against any tighter regulations that would probably save thousands of lives.

  • rayiner  5 years ago

    How do you square that opinion with the observation that some of the places with the loosest gun regulations (Oregon, Idaho) also have some of the lowest homicide rates? In Idaho, something like 60%+ of households own guns. But the homicide rate in the capital city of Boise is at Scandinavian levels, 1/10 of the US average. Utah also has high gun ownership and low gun homicides. (Note that this way of looking at the data gets around the notion that you can’t draw conclusions from homicide rates in cities with high control because guns freely flow into them from elsewhere.)

  • zdragnar  5 years ago

    Most law-abiding gun owners do not end up misusing them. Aside from sensationalized media coverage, much of the gun violence in our most violent cities (Boston, Chicago, NYC, etc) would not go down with new laws, because many of the crimes are perpetrated by people who are already violating gun laws (not allowed to posses them, illegal modifications, etc).

    Unfortunately, with police departments being defunded or restricted, illegal gun ownership and use will only rise over time.

  • skinkestek  5 years ago

    Your points are reasonable.

    But remember: the US is what it is. There is an insane amount of guns floating around already.

    My suggestion is the "Norwegian model" from now on and going forward: to get anything except a manually reloaded rifle or a (max 2 cartridge) shotgun you need a clean record with the police + (and here comes the interesting part:) you need a recommendation from a local shooting club. Oh, and before buying any hunting gun at all there's a mandatory 50 hours training.

    I'd recommend trying something similar in the US: tell NRA "we want you to help us".

    Parts of HN might hate NRA all they want but my understanding is a good chunk of the people in NRA would love to keep weapons out of the hands of crazy people as every criminal shooting hurts peaceful owners as well.

  • adsjhdashkj  5 years ago

    I very likely agree with you on every gun ppoint, but i do have a question / counter often raised to me - that i don't have to answer to:

    How would tight regulations like that look in a large country already flooded with weapons of all shapes and sizes?

    I know multiple pro-gun people who seem to compose a large percentage of their pro-gun belief system around the foundation of the inability to remove them. Ie any bad guy who ever wants a gun will always have it (because there's so many), so give more guns to the good people.

    What are your thoughts there? I don't really have a counter.

    • dmitriid  5 years ago

      You need political will.

      - Refuse sales of ammunition without proof of gun purchase and registration.

      - Refuse gun purchase for specific gun types and if a person already has a certain number of guns.

      - Mandate and enforce training before gun purchases, with obligatory re-training every X years. Checked at every purchase of ammo and guns. No training, no sale.

      - Mandatory licensing for open carry. Mandatory army-level training for concealed carry. With mandatory re-training.

      - Buyback and exchange plans for existing weapons.

      - Huge fines (not jail time, fines) for non-compliance. Money is a much bigger deterrent than jail time.

      11 replies →

    • katbyte  5 years ago

      The bad people only need guns because the good people carry them around? How often does having a gun out and about save lives? Not prevent a robbery but save a life? How many times does it escalate a situation?

      2 replies →

    • dsomers  5 years ago

      I honestly don’t like U.S. gun culture at all, but I grew up across from Michigan in Canada and this argument always seemed true. It’s just such a hard problem because of the huge number of guns plus the number of owners the seem to indicate you’d have to kill them to take their guns. It seems like a blood bath waiting to happen unfortunately. I hope I’m wrong.

  • 082349872349872  5 years ago

    Compare the level of violence in the (religiously-motivated) swiss Civil War (mid nineteenth century) with the level of violence in the (slavery-motivated) US Civil War (mid nineteenth century). That's part of my argument for culture.

    US gun violence probably would decrease if they adopted the swiss system, but good luck getting people who think a two-day hunting license course infringes their 2A rights to agree to a two-year process involving written, oral, and practical tests.

  • refurb  5 years ago

    One of the talking points of the NRA is that the US has many gun laws that aren’t really enforced all that well.

    The NRA agrees that you shouldn’t be able to buy a guy if you have mental problems, drug problems, aren’t in the US legally, criminal history, etc.

    The only one restriction that is strongly enforced is the criminal history because it’s easy to do a check. But the system for mental health checks is a patchwork across states.

    And to layer on, if someone does violate these laws, there is often no punishment. Straw purchases are a good example - it usually falls on the dealer to stop the transaction, but there is rarely any police follow-up.

  • tgsovlerkhgsel  5 years ago

    I wonder how much of the US gun violence is a problem with guns, and how much of it is a problem with crime.

    Despair and poverty without a perspective breeds crime. Switzerland doesn't have much of that.

abc03  5 years ago

"My Swiss friend in town told me as far as he knew Switzerland still people keep fully functional assault rifles at home but those who have them need to show up for three weeks of training each year and show up at a shooting range twice a year. (He left a few years ago so anyone actually living there now should feel free to correct this.)"

That's new law due to Schengen. If you had a gun before, you don't need to do this. Three weeks is probably the compulsory military service.

Mirioron  5 years ago

I would say that most social problems are cultural. The culture is what defines what kinds of options people think that have in their life. When something isn't part of your culture you're less likely to think of it. Ie gun violence being very common somewhere means that people are more likely to resort to gun violence. We observe this effect with suicide too. I believe that gun violence, stabbings, acid attacks, bombings, terror attacks with cars etc are all like this.