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Why Are Americans So Obsessed With Guns?

posted by on Monday January 09 2017, @08:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the second-amendment dept.

mrpg writes:

The love of guns in the United States has been well documented, as have multiple mass shootings across the country such as those in Orlando, San Bernardino, Newtown, and Virginia. The ease of access to guns in American society comes at a shocking cost.

As of September 2016, almost 11,000 people have been killed as a result of gun violence. Despite this high death toll, mass shootings in America show no sign of disappearing.

The Stateside obsession with guns can appear baffling to UK observers unfamiliar with its origins. So just how did this gun culture become so deep-rooted in the American psyche?

BBC source: Why Are Americans so Obsessed with Guns?

Wikipedia: Gun politics in the United States

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday January 10 2017, @07:47AM

    by deimtee (3272) on Tuesday January 10 2017, @07:47AM (#451933) Journal

    Interestingly, you omit what the gun death rate is BY RACE in Alabama. Here are the numbers from 2014 for example. The black rate for gun deaths is 20.5, but the WHITE rate for gun deaths is 15.3. So actually the gun death rate for WHITES was "almost by not quite two times a white state." Oh wait, by the majority of its population, Alabama IS a white state!

    and

    By the way, I realized that I forgot to mention an important qualification -- the racial breakdown by state is by race of VICTIM, not perpetrator. I used this as a proxy because I couldn't quickly find data by state that also broke down by race for perpetrators. But we do know from numerous crime statistics [fbi.gov] that intrarace homicides (white kills white, black kills black) are MUCH more common than interrace (white kills black, black kills white) crimes. So it's a reasonable assumption that the pattern in most states for race of offender follows race of victim, at least overall.

    You realise that if the intra-race murders were mostly black, and the inter-race murders were mostly blacks murdering whites, then the figures would come out as you say while still matching what VLM said?
    Statistics by the victim's race are useless here, you need the statistics by perpetrator.
    (And isn't dividing by race of victim racist anyway? Are black lives worth less so you count them separately?)

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @09:12AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @09:12AM (#451954)

    Black-on-black crime accounts for about 90% of black victims
    White-on-white crime accounts for about 85% of white victims

    Your objections are without merit

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @11:40AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @11:40AM (#451983)

      Taking the big assumption that your figures are correct, and applying them only to the murder rates above, then :

      4,850,000 population 69% White 31% Black :
      3,346,500 White 1503500 Black

      20.05/100000 * 1503500 * .9 = 271 Black Kills Black
      20.05/100000 * 1503500 * .1 = 30 White Kills Black
      15.3/100000 * 3346500 *.15 = 77 Black kills White
      15.3/100000 * 3346500 * .85 = 435 White kills White

      465 White killers in total /pop 3346500 *100000
      348 Black killers in total / pop 1503500 *100000
      =
      Blacks are killers at 23 per 100000
      Whites are killers at 14 per 100000.

      Isn't playing with numbers fun? I wonder what those numbers become if you manage to exclude gun suicides.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @06:05PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @06:05PM (#452154)

        Blacks are killers at 23 per 100000
        Whites are killers at 14 per 100000.

        So, you're saying that, based upon your numbers, black-skinned people are 1.6 times as likely to murder someone as white-skinned people?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @06:25PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @06:25PM (#452165)

          Kill someone, not necessarily murder. Those figures include suicide and lawful kills too.