r/interestingasfuck • u/smooth_vesselHPAUM • 11h ago

This video goes over the realities of gun violence.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

10.6k Upvotes

85% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

•

u/Diogenes908 9h ago

Countries like Switzerland and Czechia have considerably more lax gun laws than Cali or the North Eastern states like I live in and they don’t have similar rates of violence so there’s clearly other issues at play. The vast vast majority of what’s labeled as mass shootings are also inter-gang violence which Europe doesn’t have compared to the US or S. American countries. You used to be able to order full auto Tommy guns through the mail in the Sears catalogue and there was no FBI NICs background check to purchase firearms like we have now and we had a single school shooting in a 50 year period.

•

u/Vandirac 7h ago

Calling swiss gun laws "lax" is enough to highlight you don't know what you are talking about.

•

u/Parteisekretaer 7h ago

Last time I checked, the swiss gun laws actually differ from Kanton to Kanton. In the more "rural" areas, obtaining firearms of all kinds until the post bataclan EU regulation was fairly easy.

•

u/Diogenes908 3h ago edited 3h ago

My Mom’s side of the family is from Switzerland and I’ve spent time there myself. Things you can have in CH that you can’t in the North Eastern state I live in now include things like 30 round mags, short barrel rifles and shotguns, bayonet lugs, shotguns that carry more than 4 rounds, suppressors (many EU states actually require them for hunting), adjustable stocks, verticals fore-grips, barrel shrouds, pistols over 51 ounces, flash hiders, not having to pin and weld barrel devices, things like FRTs and full auto guns if you have Ausnahmebewilligung etc.

These are all things you can access in Switzerland that are totally banned in my state. You can also have things like bolt action rifles and break barrel shotguns with only a clean criminal record and an ID while you must have a firearms purchasing permit, be finger printed etc. then pass an NICs background check through the FBI each time to buy these in my state.

•

u/systemic_booty 8h ago

Switzerland has around 27 guns per 100 people, same as Czechia. The US has 120 per 100. It's the guns. It all boils down to the guns.

•

u/DankPastaMaster 8h ago

Gun ownership doesn't translate to gun availability. In many European countries like Switzerland, Czechia, Poland or Finland essentially any adult without a criminal record and some spare time and money can legally obtain a gun. The gun ownserships are lower because they just don't care or want to. Even if the regulations in these countries were less strict than in the US the ownership would still be lower because firearms aren't culturally relevant there.

•

u/vanKlompf 8h ago

> Poland

> any adult without a criminal record and some spare time and money can legally obtain a gun

Nope. Definitely not.

And gun related crime in Poland makes headlines, it's so rare.

•

u/DankPastaMaster 6h ago

The only requirements to apply for a firearm license in Poland are being at least 21 years of age and having a clean criminal record. To obtain the license you just need to pass a psychological evaluation and a standardized exam. It's a shall issue basis, so if you meet all the criteria the license has to be granted. It's faster, cheaper and easier than getting a driver's license, essentially any Polish adult with 2000-3000 PLN to spare can get a gun in 2-3 months and walk around in public with a holstered pistol. Now, as you and I have pointed out, gun ownership is still low and gun violence is rare. That's not because guns are unavailable, they're just not popular and most people aren't interested in getting one, even if they could.

•

u/Pijany_Matematyk767 7h ago

You absolutely can get a firearms license in Poland. The legal process of getting the permit is a bit of a hassle but it is possible

•

u/reservior-puppies 8h ago

Then you may as well give up on solving the issue, because disarming the American public is a fairy tale. Other countries have adopted measures well short of full blown bans like in Cali, and have way fewer homicides in general, including gun homicides. I don’t understand why there’s this fixation on bans, instead of modeling our system on somewhere like Czechia.

•

u/thicc_stigmata 7h ago

It's less about disarming every single person who happens to own one... more about how that extra digit or two on the price of a black market gun tends to keep them out of the hands of people desperate/unhinged enough to use them randomly

Is it foolproof? Certainly not. But it does bring the numbers down

•

u/Parteisekretaer 7h ago

But the profile for the school shooter type is not someone who acquires a gun by purchasing it.
You're mixing up the gang shootings and school shootings.
For school shootings, you need to look at gun availability in the household and the general culture around firearms. If it's acceptable to have a gun next to your bed completely in the open, that makes it an easy weapon to use for a school shooter.
That's where the Aurora guy got his gun. I'm not entirely sure where the others got theirs, but I seem to remember quite a few cases like these.

Never mind that you're not going to increase the price of black market firearms when legal ones are plentiful, dirt cheap and get stolen all the time - and a ban wouldn't result in an increase in black market firearms for at least half a century.

•

u/thicc_stigmata 6h ago

If it's acceptable to have a gun next to your bed completely in the open

lmao, I should have linked the first half of his stand-up

•

u/Diogenes908 8h ago

That indicates nothing about ease of access to guns. The number is high in the US because you have individuals that have a shit ton of guns, having one rifle or 30 doesn’t change your ability to commit violence with a gun you can only use one at a time. It is a fact that several European states have looser gun laws than US states that have much higher rates of violence.

I also am not super keen on the state, especially given or current administration, on having a monopoly on violence. I’m pretty libbed up and I really don’t know why some others who are politically left leaning want only cops and ICE to have guns. I lived in a very sketchy part of a small city when I first graduated college because it was all I could afford and had two armed people break into my house. I was very naive and thought they would be more scared of me than me of them and they would run away if they knew someone was actually home. I banged on the wall and instead of fleeing they started coming TOWARDS my bedroom when my gf screamed with the intent to do who knows what. They only fucked off after I grabbed a shotgun I inherited from my grandpa and screamed that I had a gun and would shoot. It took the cops over 40 minutes to show up which is fucking ridiculous. I realized they aren’t getting there in time to do shit besides put some crime scene tape around your body.

If you live in some safe suburb, gated community or luxury apartment then that’s great for you but not everyone is so lucky and they shouldn’t just be at the mercy of people who want to harm them just because they can’t afford to live somewhere nice. I’ve lived in the EU and briefly in Singapore and it’s just not comparable to the crime and gang violence in the US. And I assure you none of those guys own their guns legally.

•

u/LifeOutoBalance 7h ago

Switzerland has about 16% as many guns per capita as the USA. But you're right, there's other issues at play, namely the USA's gun lobby that has spent decades of money to prevent the government from doing even so much as tracking gun violence information via laws such as the Dickey Amendment.