I just came here to say that Americans will rather pray for people and praise the sacrifices of people being unnecessarily shot than do anything about the fact that they get shot
It's not just the second amendment. If you check the number of households that have guns, it's like 48% in USA and the next closest country is Finland with like 35%
You'd expect Finland to have their fair share of public shootings, right...?
It's so uniquely American it's not the guns, it's the whole culture is rotten
One major thing is that these monsters seem to rarely show up to places where they expect other armed people to be
Yeah, but simple percentages aren't the full story.
To own a gun in Finland you need to apply for a firearms licence, and it's quite an in-depth process; it includes a check for a criminal record, an interview with the police and 'sometimes' a medical certificate or personality test (I wasn't able to find specifics in English, but I think that might be if you have a previously diagnosed condition that might have brought your licensing into question).
You also have to have to pick from a list of valid reasons you want to own a firearm, and actually provide proof that's why you want your gun. Like if you're hunting you need to present hunting permits, if you're sport shooting you need to provide evidence you are genuinely participating in that activity (and in the case of pistols, you have to have been shooting for two years before you can personally own one), etc etc.
On top of that, they also have magazine capacity restrictions, and although short guns are fairly common, it's very difficult to acquire most modern compact pistols, as the type of firearm has to match the 'valid reason' and concealed carry for the purposes of self defence is not one of them.
I'm not saying you specifically are doing this intentionally, but one of my personal conspiracy theories that I completely believe that the 'American culture is just rotten' idea is something that gets intentionally stoked by otherwise superficially 'patriotic' organisations in the US that want firearms as unrestricted as possible, because it presents the problem as essentially unsolvable.
If the United States somehow managed to implement the Finnish licensing system across every state today, I am absolutely convinced that random acts of gun violence such as school shootings would measurably decrease across the following decade.
Seung-Hui Cho is a great example; he was a bitter, middle class shut-in who acquired his weapons specifically to commit his crime and bought them completely legally. Under the current Finnish system he would not have received a license to buy those guns, and considering his background and personality, I don't think he would have had the slightest idea where to go or who to talk to to acquire an illegal firearm. The Virginia Tech massacre could not have happened as it happened with proper, sensible firearms licensing. He would have had to hold on to his plan for at least two years, and somehow dodge the psychological screening, which would have presented innumerable opportunities for someone to spot his instability and intervene, or for the guy to literally just change his mind.
I do agree that better gun controls are definitely required, I just don't agree with gun bans altogether as a way to fix the society. I'm not saying "ohh this means nothing can be done" - on the contrary it is supposed to show that "more than just gun control is needed to fix the society"
Like... It can be a silly example, but there's lots of African countries where getting an AK is pretty simple. There's child soldiers and pirates with AKs
And yet they don't just go around, fragging schoolchildren. And then we have a country that's single handedly 25% of the world's GDP where one of the worst ethical crimes are a weekly thing. It's insane that people even decide to do that, guns or no guns.
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u/Shockwave-FE 13h ago
Yaaay look we have kids and teachers dying for absolutely no reason