According to the president of the United State's, mass shootings don't happen with this kind of frequency in any other country in the world, and we have the highest level of violence. So, what do the facts say, do mass shootings, and mass murders, occur in other countries than the U.S.? Other industrialized or "advanced" countries?
Here is a chart of such countries.
As you can see, the U.S. has a rate of about .15, and Switzerland is .17, Finland is .34, while Norway is 1.3. Norway had a homicide rate of .6, but then suddenly, a single mass attack brought it up 2.2 homicides per year. They have a mass murder rate of 1.3, compared to the U.S.'s of .15? How is this possible? The fact of the matter is, mass murder is sadly completely random. It has almost no bearings on the total murder rate, gun control laws or in reality almost any single factor. Crime is random, and random mass attacks are even more random. We can't blame anyone, any law or any procedure for this. It is an inevitability in a free world. The UK has had mass attacks since their gun laws were enacted. Australia has had them. Australia has had knife attacks, and fire attacks.
These violent attacks are caused by deeply rooted psychological issues. Each one of them has been insane, a terrorist, or possessed other mental issues. By ignoring the human aspect, by ignoring these people as people, and instead focusing on the weapon, be it the car bomb in the Oklahoma city bombing attack, the knives in the Chinese attacks, the box cutters or the plane used in 9/11. The fact of the matter is, these problems will persist as long as there are people motivated to kill one another, and it's naive or even willfully ignorant to simply think that regulating a single tool will take away the ability for people to kill one another, even in large numbers. It is of the opinion of this author that the only practical, reasonable solution is to focus on the criminals, improve things like education and the mental health system, and generally focus on people rather than things to solve the problems. Crime is fundamentally a social problem, not one due to the existence or use or various tools. Therefore, focusing on people gets to the heart of the issue, rather than ignoring them and placing the blame on things. To ignore the human element would lead to catastrophic results.
A comparison to other forms of attacks - Australia
Various claims have been made that, after harsh gun control measures were implemented, there wasn't a single mass shooting in Australia. This of course would be a fairly impressive feat, although chalking it up all to gun control would be extremely difficult. After all, a myriad of factors contribute to high crime, ranging from poverty, to culture to even randomness, making it impossible to truly control crime, let alone with a single piece of legislation. But, the question still remains; did Australia manage to eliminate all mass shootings?
The answer to this question, of course depends inherently on how you define a "mass shooting". While some figures go by 4 or more killed, others guy by 3 or more injured. The distinction is important, as while the difference may not seem like much, there is only a 5-15% chance of being killed by a bullet, if you get immediate medical attention. A mass shooting done outside a hospital may have injured a lot of people, but not resulted in the deaths of any of them. A mass shooting done at a time or place where medical attention was scarce could result in far greater casualties, meaning that injury rates are vastly different from death rates for different reasons. Nonetheless, the figures used in most sources seem to reference the mass shooting statistic of 4 or more people killed. According to the source, they did. But, does this hold up with reality? [1][2][3]
The short answer is, no. There have been at least one casesof mass shootings involving the deaths of 4 or more people in Australia. The first is the Hunt mass murder, where a man killed his wife and three children, constituting four people killed. The number is not zero, but due to the difficulty of compiling such records and their general rarity, there isn't much information on the subject. So, what about 3 or more injured? While there are not comprehensive lists, there are at least a few dozen cases of this happening, notably the Hectorville Siege, the Monash university shooting, and the Melbourne Shootings. [4]
But let's ignore mass shootings for a moment. Even if they had stopped, and criminals decided to use arson, explosives, vehicles or poison, would more lives had been saved? If a criminal used a knife instead of a gun, would more lives to be saved? The simple answer is, yet again, no. The Cairn's Child killings resulted in 8 stabbed to death, without a gun, which is far more than 3, 4 or 5 dead. The lin family murders resulted in at least 5 dead from a hammer. So, if a suspect used a knife or a hammer, could they not kill more than 4 people? Of course not. They have and they will.
What about Arson? By far, Arson is the deadliest means of death in all of Australia to date. The quaker's hill arson attack killed at least 11 people. The Childer's palace fire killed at least 15 people. Finally, the Black Saturday's Bushfire killed 173 people. 173 people. And it left another 400+ injured. If just one murderer decided to use arson instead, they could literally kill more than all the mass shootings from 1960 to 1996, combined. So, if a murderer switched weapons to a knife, or arson instead of a gun, is Australia safe? The short answer, once again, is no. Australia is actually worse off by letting criminals use other methods than a gun to kill people. What about in France where guns that were involved in the deaths of over 140 people were illegally smuggled in to the country? Or an 18 wheeler attack that killed 80? Are there no 18-wheelers in Australia? The idea that Australians are safe because guns are harder to obtain is in and of itself a fallacy. What does it matter what weapons they use when the same, if not more people, die?
World Comparison
The Oklahoma City Bombing attack killed 168 people and wounded an additional 680 people, with a fertilizer bomb. The Indian subway bombings killed 209 people and injured an additional 700 people, with bombs made from pressure cookers. In the United states, 2001, September 11th, two terrorists managed to overtake a plane with box cutters and killed 3,000 people. Comparatively, only about 500 deaths and another 1,000 injures have resulted from mass shootings in the year, from 1980 to 2012. If guns are so deadly, how is it that a single attack can kill and injure at least as many as all of them combined in 30 years?
The reality is, guns are not needed for mass murders. The worst mass murders from other weapons have been worse from guns. These weapons, such as pressure cookers and fertilizer, are widely available and generally unregulated. Making bombs or weapons from them are generally fairly easy. Easiest of all is arson, which has death tolls far beyond that of most shootings. And on top of this, even if guns are banned, they can be illegally smuggled in to the country with relative ease. An 18 wheeler can be used to kill over 86 people, worse than the worst single person mass shooting of all time, at 67 deaths. So are guns the problem? The answer is very simple; people are. If you want to lower crime, you need to focus on the murderer, not the methods. Several far more easily obtainable, and deadly methods exist for criminals. Massive mental health coverage is needed to track and detain suspected terrorists and murderers to protect society. Simply banning guns is at best a patch to cover up the problem. If you really want to save lives, you have to dig deeper, and focus on humanity, rather than things.
No comments:
Post a Comment