Just to point out, in case you were wondering. Drs. Wintermute & Hemenway are leftists and rabidly anti-gun\/anti-self defense .<\/p>\n
More Than Gun Violence That Differs Between US, Other Places<\/a><\/p>\n So-called gun violence is higher in the United States than in other first-world nations. It\u2019s a point that is continually brought up, in part because we also are the only first-world nation to actually respect people\u2019s gun rights.<\/p>\n As we\u2019ve noted in previous posts, ABC News has been running a series about rethinking firearm-related violence here in the United States. We\u2019ve poked an awful lot of holes in some of their stories, and today\u2019s isn\u2019t likely to be any different.<\/p>\n You see, they\u2019re focused on\u00a0comparing the United States to other countries<\/a>\u00a0on this subject.<\/p>\n The United States has a gun violence epidemic, and it\u2019s not one shared by its peers. The nation that by\u00a0one estimate<\/a>\u00a0has more guns than people has the\u00a0highest rate of firearm deaths<\/a>\u00a0compared with other high-income countries. Mass shootings, an all-too-common occurrence in the U.S., are also exceedingly rare in peer countries \u2014 where governments have often been quick to pass gun reform in the wake of such tragedies.<\/p>\n \u201cCompared to the other peer countries, basically what we have is lots and lots of guns, particularly handguns, and we have by far the weakest gun laws. Not surprisingly, we have huge gun problems,\u201d David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, told ABC News. \u201cI think if we had basically the gun laws of any other developed country, we\u2019d be better off.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear if gun prevalence\u00a0definitively impacts gun violence<\/a>, though research by Hemenway\u2019s center has found links between a large number of guns and\u00a0more firearm homicides<\/a>,\u00a0suicides<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0accidents<\/a>. The implementation of new gun restrictions has also been associated with a drop in firearm deaths, a\u00a02016 review<\/a>\u00a0of 130 studies across 10 countries found.<\/p>\n The U.S. is \u201cnot necessarily a more violent society than others,\u201d Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis, told ABC News.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we have is unique access to a technology that changes the outcome \u2014 firearms,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n It\u2019s\u00a0not<\/a>\u00a0uncommon<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0compare<\/a>\u00a0the U.S. with other developed countries, especially after yet another horrific mass shooting. There are developing countries with higher rates of firearm deaths than the U.S., though comparing gun violence among peers helps to control for other factors, Hemenway said. And while there are lessons in other nations\u2019 policy measures that could help address the problem here, because the U.S. is on such a different plane when it comes to civilian gun ownership, it will also take more research and multiple, targeted solutions to address the scope of the problem, experts said.<\/p>\n \u201cOther countries do better. We should be able to figure out how to do better,\u201d Hemenway said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hemenway is essentially arguing that the only real difference between these other nations and the United States is our lack of gun laws and that we really should embrace how the rest of the developed world treats firearms.<\/strong><\/p>\n Well, that might be a compelling argument if it wasn\u2019t premised on such a faulty concept.<\/strong><\/p>\n The United States is a unique experiment, one that may look like the other developed nations of the world, but isn\u2019t, and for a number of reasons. One of those is indeed our Second Amendment protections of our right to keep and bear arms, but there are other differences as well.<\/p>\n For one thing, we tend to be more racially diverse.<\/p>\n England, as an example, is\u00a087.2 percent white<\/a>\u00a0and only three percent black, three percent Indian, 1.9 percent Pakistani, two percent mixed, and 3.7 percent other.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, we\u2019re only\u00a061.6 percent white<\/a>, 12.4 percent black, 10.2 percent classified as multiracial, six percent Asian, 8.4 percent other, 1.1 percent Native Americans, and 0.2 percent Pacific Islander. Then, by ethnicity, they have 18.4 percent Hispanic. In other words, we\u2019ve got a lot more ethnicities trying to share this patch of land.<\/p>\n Now, I\u2019m not saying that any of these minorities are more prone to violence than anyone else, but it\u2019s not out of the realm of possibility that all these ethnic groups rubbing together may create some kind of tension that we just haven\u2019t resolved that results in that violence. After all, we live in a time when everyone is accusing everyone else of being racist. It\u2019s possible that racial animosity\u2013which goes in all directions\u2013may result in people feeling like they don\u2019t have to play by the rules.<\/p>\n Or, it may have no difference. We simply don\u2019t know, but it\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0a data point that shows there are differences between us and many other developed nations.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s only one potential difference.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s also talk about poverty. America is the land of opportunity, but it\u2019s also the land of falling on your butt if you\u2019re not careful. Many people do just that and rebuild. Others don\u2019t and some start off on their butts and foster resentment.<\/p>\n Among the 38 nations that make up the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the majority of which are developed nations, the United States has the fourth-highest poverty rate. The three nations with more poverty? Chile, Israel, and Mexico. Of those three, only Israel can be universally considered developed and they have a problem with violence as well, though theirs comes in the form of terrorism.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s not difficult to see that the United States has some stark differences that separate it from other developed nations. Poverty alone may account for all of the difference. This holds up upon more localized examination.<\/p>\n After all, we think of cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Saint Louis as being extraordinarily violent, but even there, you\u2019ll see that the violence is generally localized. Where? In the poorer neighborhoods in the city.<\/p>\n In other words, poverty within our cities also seems to have a direct correlation with violent crime in our country. That\u2019s poverty that doesn\u2019t show up in other nations for various reasons.<\/p>\n Where is that in Hemenway\u2019s examination?<\/p>\n It\u2019s not there because it\u2019s not useful for him to push his preferred narrative. It\u2019s just that simple.<\/p>\n And I haven\u2019t even gotten into all the nations with strict gun control laws that have much worse violent crime rates than we have.<\/p>\n So don\u2019t come to me about what other countries do or don\u2019t do. Those countries aren\u2019t the United States, so their experiences are largely irrelevant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Just to point out, in case you were wondering. Drs. Wintermute & Hemenway are leftists and rabidly anti-gun\/anti-self defense . More Than Gun Violence That Differs Between US, Other Places So-called gun violence is higher in the United States than in other first-world nations. It\u2019s a point that is continually brought up, in part because … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,48,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crap-for-brains","category-crime","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73993"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73994,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73993\/revisions\/73994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}