Thank you for clarifying the stats re. semi-automatics, very interesting. Guess the AR-15 gets more media coverage than the 0.7% it should due to the fact that it’s the weapon of choice for mass shooters, which tend to make the news.
This is absolutely correct, in my view. But the scary thing is, most (but not all) mass shooters could have probably pulled off their deadly prank with a handgun, and perhaps made it even deadlier due to the handgun’s concealability. Handguns are the weapon of choice for ordinary murders for a reason.
And when everyone has a gun, gun ownership is not the strongest predictor of crime as it becomes a constant, hence other crime factors have more explanatory power. Income disparity is a strong one and is also seen in South Africa.
This again is exactly how the numbers play in the USA. In order to control gun violence by reduction in gun proliferation, you’d need to get the USA into a position where guns are scarce. And we are so far beyond that scarcity point, that the number of guns you’d need to collect is astronomical.
I did an analysis on that exact idea, here:
Because we are so far beyond the saturation point where scarcity matters, you’d likely have to buy back 62 million dollars worth of guns to save one homicide victim. And that analysis is admittedly chocked full of very bad assumptions that break in favor of gun collection. It’s simply not possible here, mathematically speaking.
If we’re going to address gun deaths in the USA, we have to treat the reasons people are shooting each other, or themselves. Treating the tool may work other places, but it is simply not an option for us. I proffer some suggestions here:
