SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Federal authorities are responding to a shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, a small community southeast of San Antonio.
In a press conference Sunday night, an official from the Texas Department of Public Safety described the scene: Around 11:20 am, the suspect, dressed in black, approached the church and began firing an assault rifle. He then entered the church and continued firing.
Gov. Greg Abbott confirmed that at least 26 people were killed. A Texas Department of Public Safety official said the ages of the victims ranged from 5 to 72 years old. The AP reports that the pastor's 14-year-old daughter is among the dead.
The Department of Public Safety confirmed to NPR that at least 20 others were wounded. A DPS official said in the press conference that the gunman was confronted by an armed civilian outside of the church.
The shooter, who was found dead in neighboring Guadalupe County, has been identified as Devin Kelley, 26, a former Air Force member.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Monday November 06 2017, @04:31PM (5 children)
Will banning guns completely eliminate gun violence? No, but it would greatly reduce it.
The USA has nearly 10x the gun homicide rate when compared to Canada (and Canada doesn't have a gun ban, just restrictions):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by aclarke on Monday November 06 2017, @07:49PM (2 children)
I just pulled some numbers on this before reading your comment, I was curious about this too.
US / Canada / multipler
People: 323.1M / 36.29M / 8.9x
Firearm murders: 11k / 158 / 70x
Guns per 100 people: 101 / 30.8 / 3.28x
Total guns: 326M / 11,200 / 29.2x
Guns per murder: 29,700 / 70,700 / .419x
So there you have it. Canadians have a little more than twice as many guns per firearm-related murder. Maybe banning guns more will help, but it seems like dealing with societal and cultural issues will help more.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snow on Monday November 06 2017, @08:21PM (1 child)
Definitely. I'm not a gun owner, so I could be wrong, but I think that most Canadians look at a gun as a tool, where a lot of Americans look at them as penis extenders.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Crash on Monday November 06 2017, @11:04PM
Most guns in Atlantic Canada are hunting rifles. People don't walk around with them; they are rarely even loaded. In 35 years the only handguns I've seen (in person) were in use by the RCMP or City Police.
I've never even heard anyone in Canada even talk about "Canadian gun rights", beyond a brief kerfuffle (decades ago) when registration of all owned firearms was required - which was deemed to be more of a govt tax overreach than anything else.
The firearm phenomenon in the US is beyond most any other first world countries' reckoning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @10:40PM
>"The USA has nearly 10x the gun homicide rate when compared to Canada"
But what is the comparative rate of homicidal psychopaths? You can't draw a conclusion without that information.
(Score: 3, Informative) by urza9814 on Tuesday November 07 2017, @12:28AM
Unless you think knife attacks or vehicular homicide are totally acceptable, you should probably be looking at OVERALL homicide rate. Less guns = less gun violence is practically a tautology. If it was your only goal you could probably reduce gun deaths greatly by freely distributing high explosives, but most people wouldn't consider that to be an improvement...
I'll also note that Canada also has things like universal healthcare and better social services in general, which tend to make people less desperate. Better mental health and less desperation means less suicide (which are the VAST majority of gun deaths) and also less crime in general. Maybe try comparing to China next time, in this context they *might* be more similar politically... :)
More seriously though...compare these three maps:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country [wikipedia.org]
https://assets.weforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1511B11-global-inequality-work-map-GINI.png [weforum.org]
None of them line up perfectly...but it looks to me like the GINI index is a better predictor of overall violent crime than rates of gun ownership.