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I mean, recognize that it's still an absolutely miniscule portion of the deaths that occur in the United States on a yearly basis. <100 mass shooting victims (for the strictest definition of 'mass shooting') per year in a country of 350+ million... it requires a microscope to detect that blip.
It looks slightly scarier if you consider all firearm homicides, disregard deaths from 'old age' and consider that it's the sort of thing that can randomly end your life even if you're young and healthy.
And yet, the biggest threat in the "death from random happenstance" category is still car accidents. And considering that you can also get grievously injured and survive it strikes me as far more reasonable to be worried about getting T-boned in an intersection than gunned down at the mall.
The single change I made that most reduces my risk of untimely demise was shortening my commute every day so I minimize my time on the road, especially my time driving at speed.
So genuinely ask yourself, if you don't go around constantly anxious about a car accident, on what possible grounds do you go around anxiously worrying about a mass shooter?
Note, of course, it's still probably sensible to wear your seatbelt.
Ultimately, being truly afraid of mass shootings requires buying into the authoritarian narrative that you're at massive risk of victimization unless you surrender your means of defense. It's pure availability bias, not an ACTUAL threat you should prioritize.
But yes, pick up some CCW training and a good holster because responsible carry can save you or others from many other threats aside from mass shooters, and allows you to take a more 'active' role in your community's defense if you wish.
As far as policies go, we need to strike a balance between safety and individual autonomy.
I've offered a compromise position for a long time now: Ban registered Democrats from owning guns.
I don't see anything wrong with restricting the gun ownership rights of those who don't believe in gun ownership rights, and they should leap at the chance to get ~30% of the population to give up firearms. By their very own logic this is a step in the right direction.
I somehow doubt they'd take up the offer.
I think this isn't quite charitable enough. Mass shootings are pushed into our faces multiple times a year, with extremely emotional language and the full might of the leftist media apparatus.
My rational brain can understand and regurgitate the undeniable fact that they're a statistical anomaly not worthy of consideration when looking at national policy. But my animal brain, if only for a second, is absolutely filled with horror at the thought of my kids bleeding out on a tile floor at school because of a subhuman monster. Nobody who spends any time on the internet or in front of a TV can avoid being shown these images, and there's enough statistically illiterate fools to bring it to you in face-to-face conversations as well.
I can state with certainty that the folks pushing for gun control from the top are pieces of shit. But I can also empathize with how horrible being even remotely close to a mass shooting would suck.
My main issue is that such an event that occurs ANYWHERE in the country is used to push fear everywhere in the country.
It makes no sense for someone residing in Oregon or Idaho to really feel unsafe because a shooting happened in Texas. It makes less than zero sense for an event that occurs in New York City (yes, even one that knocks buildings down) to strike fear into the hearts of people in Florida and California.
The homogenization of the national 'crimescape' is just absurd given the scale of this country and the diversity of cultural and socioeconomic demographics.
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You mentioning self driving cars in contrast to mass shooting just gave me a dystopian vision of a future where you could have as many guns as you wanted but they were all equipped with an AI technology, where every gun would be programmed to identify the target as being an aggressive threat or not before being shot at. Raises many ethical and philosophical questions, might be good for a sci fi story. Has anyone ever gone down this line of thinking before?
I'd be against this technology on broadly libertarian grounds and in fear that the government or someone else could just reprogram the guns to stop working altogether or not work against cops/military personnel, and besides that in the real world we'd have the old regular guns around anyway so all the "bad guys" would have the pre-AI guns or jailbreak the new ones and we'd run into the same problems as before anyway
It’s sort of the premise of the anime Psycho Pass. Police are armed with goofy sci-fi handguns that scale their output to the threat of the target. This is part of the city’s mass surveillance, which can read an individual’s mental state perfectly. So the guns will outright refuse to shoot a nonviolent target. The plot unfolds when the system refuses to recognize a complete psychopath.
Of course, this is starting from a Japanese baseline, so no reasonable civilian has any desire or ability to own a weapon.
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Also, cars have immediate, obvious utility to basically the entire population. For all the theory behind an armed populace, stochastic self-defense, etc. a gun should never be involved in buying groceries. That goes a long way towards making cars feel justified.
Hunting is the original grocery trip, though.
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You say this like many of the same people pushing gun control aren't explicitly anti-car or at least very heavily pro-public-transport and would absolutely want to restrict car ownership to suit their ends.
Aren't those two very different subsets of the large group that is 'center-left people'? Gun control is a very broad democratic issue, while anti-car is a much more niche issue, at least 1/10th the size if not smaller (plenty of suburban moms who have no issue with cars or suburbs are democrats). And I don't see too many gun-control arguments on YIMBY twitter - there's a bit, but the strong advocates of both are different people.
I suspect that if you were to interrogate a lot of YIMBYs you'd find above average support for gun control, but so far YIMBY groups have tried to avoid holistic activism and stick to land use reform, so it doesn't come up much.
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Shrug.
Out of the people I know who are most nervous about guns, all of them are regular drivers. They may appreciate and endorse public transit, but anti-car is out of the Overton window for a lot of people, especially outside the densest cities.
Never underestimate how much familiarity breeds acceptance. This is part of the reason I take friends and family shooting whenever I get the chance.
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I went down to Florida a week ago to golf some. I was on the putting green before a round and overheard some boomers talking about the different guns they owned, and the conversation eventually shifted to the new Florida gun laws that allow permit-less CC (think someone joked "do you have a holster attachment on your bag?"). They were all dumbfounded as to why anyone would want someone with no firearms training to have guns on them in public, and couldn't understand the possible motives for passing such a bill.
The next day driving north I saw a random with a gun for the first time in my life on the interstate; two motorcyclists on a windy day (so their shirts were flapping up) with holsters on over their sweatpants (and no helmets).
Reminder that permit less carry is now the fact of the law in most states now.
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Well, Florida has had shall-issue concealed carry since 1987 and has issued millions of concealed carry permits and seen that it doesn't cause excess violence or deaths?
So the 'motives' are probably based on noticing the real-world results. I dunno.
That undermines more than supports the argument for permitless carry, doesn't it? I can see a strong argument for permitless carry in states where the legislature says "shall-issue" but the licensing agency says "ooh, sorry, on your application you did/didn't close the top on the digit '4', please try again, that'll be another $200 filing fee", but if training requirements are actually providing training rather than obstruction then they don't seem like a bad idea in theory.
I don't think you can extrapolate from "Florida allows trained licensees to carry concealed and the homicide rate kept declining" to "Florida allows anyone to do so and the homicide rate won't jump" ... but "dozens of states allow anyone to do so and the homicide rate kept declining" is decent evidence. New Hampshire isn't exactly a murderous hellscape.
I think the point is more that "in the absence of strong evidence that there's a serious danger to public safety, the default position should be in favor of expanding/preserving rights."
Florida basically concluded that anyone who isn't a felon, drug abuser, or otherwise legally proscribed from owning a gun can most likely be trusted to carry one, based on years of legal permit-holders generally being more law abiding than average.
It's a norm that I personally appreciate. If we can accept utilitarian arguments in favor of limiting certain civil rights, then it needs to be mediated by the 'null hypothesis' being that we should allow behaviors until the evidence is strong enough to justify reconsideration.
We of course end up arguing endlessly over what certain evidence actually means.
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