America sits on a weird knife edge where there's (a) lots of talk about political violence, which is constitutionally protected and (b) lots of stockpiling of weapons, which is constitutionally protected, and (c) lots of routine mass murder incidents, which follow logically from (a) and (b) ..
BUT
.. apart from Jan 6 and a few milita incidents, nobody ever combines these three into politically targeted violence. The mass murders are always either strangers, workplace, or schoolchildren. Politically motivated, but not targeted at any kind of power structure. It's been a long time since the Unabomber. All the elements are in place for a really serious deterioration of civil safety, but so far the glue is holding.
Your other points are valid but this one has been so highly politicized that inner city gang violence is classified as mass shooting, which is a completely different social issue that’s being co-opted in with the political violence issue and the mental health crisis. All of those problems are complex and have different root causes, implications and magnitudes, but activists like Everytown want to lump them together to portray a “Gun Problem” to pitch their forced solution, which is making it harder for law-abiding citizens to own guns.
> this one has been so highly politicized that inner city gang violence is classified as mass shooting
As a non American, I am unfamiliar with your inner city gang violence.
If it involves guns being used to kill multiple people in one incident, this seems tautologically "mass murder", even if it's specifically also gang war.
(Then again, perhaps I should add "gang war" to my list examples of things where people sincerely argue if it counts as murder, along with normal war, assassination, abortion, and meat).
American gun control discourse basically completely ignores the reality that a huge amount of it is driven by gang violence and criminality. It is focused almost entirely on school shootings and things that suburbanite white people are afraid of. You're correct, they are mass shootings, but so many people aren't actually interested in stopping mass shootings on the whole, just the narrow class of them that may affect them.
I mean it is a Gun problem. Or rather many Gun problems. If guns were better regulated and we had less of them we would have a safer less violent society. Those other issues would still exist but would lead to less violence. Instead we have activists who claim that any gun laws are unconstitutional going even further then our very activist supreme court.
We can't stop drug importation. What makes you think that we can stop guns?
> and we had less of them we would have a safer less violent society.
"less of them"? We can take away all of the deer rifles and not change US violence at all. A collector with 100 guns is not more dangerous than one with 25.
The vast majority of US gun violence is committed by people who are already involved in other illegal activities involving other illegal substances. It is absurd to think that they can be disarmed by legal means.
It takes about 1% of the "by physical volume" drug smuggling to provide them with a new gun per crime.
If anything guns are harder to ban than drugs (because they're easier to make and smuggle), and that was true before 3d printing became a thing.
> We can't stop drug importation. What makes you think that we can stop guns?
Hello, I'm British.
Better solutions don't have to be perfect, as the country of my birth demonstrates: still has drugs smuggled in, sometimes even has firearms, even a few mass shootings.
But firearms are banned so effectively that even the police don't routinely carry them — the handful of officers I've ever seen armed in the UK, in person, were all in airports.
The four nations of the UK combined had around 700 homicides in total in each recent year, which is about the same as Philidelphia plus half of Baltimore. It's not just because the US is more populous, the per-capita homicide rate in the UK is about 80% lower in the UK than in the US.
I know the UK is unusual — I'm in Berlin now, and the cops here have what looks like a pistol, not that I'd be able to distinguish it in the holster from a taser or a pistol shaped pepper spray — but there's a whole world of other ways to do things than what each of us takes for granted, and we can learn from each other if we don't shut out the possibility.
Once I ran the numbers, and the part of the UK that had American Armalite rifles being smuggled in to fuel an armed conflict, Northern Ireland, which also had armed troops on the streets with rules of engagement that allowed them to open fire on civilians, resulting in dead women and children, was still less deadly than Detroit during the 80s.
n your (a), (b), and (c) list, you imply that (c) — routine mass murders — connects directly to (a) (talk of political violence) and (b) (stockpiling weapons). However, the examples you give, like Jan. 6 or militia incidents, don’t align with your routine mass murders implication. You could imply unrest for sure and I wholly agree that subsets could even be targeted violence, but that's not unique to either of your examples.
The elements will always be in place for disturbed individuals, just look at the number of "Cars running over crowds" stories, such as yesterday in New Orleans. The question and premise for a lot of the battles are, do we take away rights or abilities of those that won't do it, on the off chance that someone could?
Clear laws, enforced consistently would help a lot here. I would also posit, though not likely a popular opinion, there are people that cannot be a part of a functioning society and we have to collectively agree on that. We need to bring back functioning mental health facilities for long term care and accept that some people will be placed here and not leave.
FYI David Neiwert and others have been documenting the reemergence of politically motivated violence for decades. Also, the Congressional Jan 6 report details extents of (just one coalition of) the paramilitary efforts. Fast forwarding to today, many groups were similarily prepared in the event a Democrat won in 2024.
Yeah they do. Check out the 764 cult + project gladio. Lots of assassinations towards left-leaning folks. Atleast two such cases recorded on forensic architecture of murders of hacktivists going unchecked after quiet obviously being staged by intelligence agencies. One in Germany and one at a BLM event.
I wont speak more on it here but I can think of atleast 6 people i've known closely who've just gone completely dark online + in their community after anti-govt organization. I assume they're dead.
BUT
.. apart from Jan 6 and a few milita incidents, nobody ever combines these three into politically targeted violence. The mass murders are always either strangers, workplace, or schoolchildren. Politically motivated, but not targeted at any kind of power structure. It's been a long time since the Unabomber. All the elements are in place for a really serious deterioration of civil safety, but so far the glue is holding.