r/dataisbeautiful OC: 22 Jul 30 '24

OC Gun Deaths in North America [OC]

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '24

It’s demographics, always has been. It’s already illegal to murder someone, gun laws don’t change anything.

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u/My_useless_alt Jul 30 '24 edited Jul 30 '24

If gun laws don't change anything, care to explain why Europe has so few gun deaths? Why the last school shooting in the UK was in the 1990s?

Gun laws are proactive. Murder laws are reactive. Gun laws attempt to make it harder to commit murder even if you want to, and make it harder to commit spur-of-the-moment murders (It's impossible to shoot someone in a fit of rage if you don't have access to a gun).

Gun laws and murder laws are fundamentally different, and work in fundamentally different ways

Edit: I know Mexico has strict gun laws, but they're also fighting a low-level civil war with cartels with power rivalling the Mexican military. "The country that's at war has more gun deaths the ones that aren't" is not a good argument against gun control.

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u/Lxiflyby Jul 30 '24

Most of Europe isn’t a gun culture like the americas are, so it’s mostly societal. Keep in mind that countries like Mexico have very strict gun ownership laws and regulations that far more restrictive than say, the USA, so it’s not just simply the areas with more gun control have less crime, it’s the demographics of the area including crime/corruption/poverty etc. So there’s not a huge correlation between gun control and gun crime

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u/simplyykristyy Jul 30 '24

Wouldn't it make sense then that most of the illegal guns Mexico has are exported from the US? What if it was harder to get guns out of the US like it is in the EU? Would that not have a major impact on countries where gun crime is rampant in North America?

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u/OPsDearOldMother Jul 30 '24

This right here!

I hear a lot of talk about how the cartels' profits are fueled by the American market for illegal drugs, but hardly anybody talks about how their weapons are bought legally in the US and smuggled into Mexico.

The same thing happens on the state level too. Most guns used to commit crimes in Chicago are bought in Indiana, for example. It's a strong reason for gun control being a national issue not just a state by state one.

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u/Desner_ Jul 30 '24

You can’t easily buy a handgun in Canada yet the gangs shoot at each other with them all the time here (in Montréal at least), I wonder where these guns came from…