The United States and Brazil top the list of nations with the most gun deaths - Sensationalist Headlines

India has far greater population density, far more income inequality, much harsher poverty and is massively diverse. I don't even know if the infrastructure for mental health is sufficient to even have accurate reporting. By all accounts, all these factors in combination should mean that violent crime (specifically intentional homicide) should be higher than the US....but that's not the case.

Our healthcare system is terrible, so people are scared to get sick and when they do, they're in debt for the rest of their life. They're working jobs that aren't paying them any better than they were a decade ago, but the cost of living continues to skyrocket, and companies are growing less interested in even hiring people to begin with. The goals and aspirations we've been socialized to strive for become more unreachable such as owning a home and supporting a family. Trying to improve your standing in life requires putting yourself in to massive, growing debt that most people will never escape. Long story short: People are becoming more aware of how horrible life is and how unsustainable our national practices are, but they don't understand what to do about or who to trust when talked to. The American Dream is collapsing, people are actively watching it die but being told to believe in it despite this. And the American Dream is a big part of our identity, so for many people that leaves them with no idea what to do with themselves and no vision for the future.

Because you have nothing but rhetoric and a complete misunderstanding of basic facts and knowledge on the subject. It's ironic you think I don't know anything about this subject considering every single time you post in one of these threads, I prove you wrong in some capacity on basic facts such as the statistics used here. I know more than enough about guns to have an opinion on them, I go shooting semi-regularly with my friends and hell I hope to own a Mosin one day. I just don't blindly worship the second amendment. I don't hate guns, I don't want to ban them or something stupid like that, I simply understand that you can restrict something without infringing on people's rights. I do actually support gun rights, I just do it sensibly. The Hughes amendment is just about the dumbest law passed imho, and the NFA could really use a restructuring. I'd fully be in support of laws removing the Hughes and restructuring the NFA, especially if it was a compromise for gun control that would actually be effective in some capacity. You're just so stubbornly against any form of gun control that you think I come off as some kind of gun-hating idiot. I'm not. You can support more than one thing at once you know. Alright, I apologize for my accusatory stance, but Can you cite your sources for that, because according to Wikipedia, the US is the 10th in firearm related deaths per capita (sort by total). Regardless even if your statistics are true, I have to bring up the fact it's absolutely atrocious that for a first world country to have that rate of firearm deaths, much less 15% of the worlds total firearms death rate. We still need to do something about it. No, and there's no need to be condescending. Because I can support more than one thing at a time. I believe a combination of proper gun controls as well as a comprehensive plan to rebuild an effective modern society would be the best solution for us, not just one or the other. You seem to have this idea that I hate guns and what strict gun controls and thing that the only way to solve the issue is just to remove guns. I don't believe that, I'm a complex individual with different ideas on a subject than you do, just like everyone else in this world.

Saying youre right doesn't make it true. Your touting of raw numbers vs per capita statistics is evident youre not correct in this specific scenario. If you think that mandatory prerequisites to a right isnt restricting a right, or can be a restriction, theres nothing more I can say to you. Placing a financial barrier in front of a right is outright unconstitutional. Why do you think poll taxes aren't a thing anymore, and informed-voter tests arent a prerequisite for voting? Because its not constitutional my dood. I have honestly no idea why youre even arguing with me here. We both agree thay America has a gun problem, the point I'm making is that OPs article is a misrepresentation of that problem since it uses incorrect forms of statistics as a basis to draw its conclusion. I'm not against gun control in all capacities, I'm against ineffectual measures and against restricting the right all together like you propose. The measures we have in place work fine, and they'd work better if the FBI and the ATF got off their asses and worked harder to enforce them. Adding new laws on the books when the current ones aren't maintained is just silly. The laws would also work better if there we made some other initiatives as well. U.S. Has 31st Highest Rate Of Gun Violence In The World Those countries all also enjoy low rates of gun violence, but the U.S. has the 31st highest rate in the world: 3.85 deaths due to gun violence per 100,000 people in 2016. Not being condescending, just making sure you understand why you're not being fair by using incorrectly represented statistics. Your desire for unconstitutional measures restricting rights doesn't make you a proponent of the second ammendment, especially because you want to restrict that constitutional right. If you were asking for effective and less restricting measures, I'd probably agree with you. But I'm not cool with placing financial barriers to rights.

Neither does you saying you're right make it true either. You're inability to understand that just because a statistic is not accounted for per capita doesn't make it useless is evident of that. Where did I ever say there should be a financial barrier for these sorts of things? I don't believe there should be one. Mandatory safety classes would come free as they're mandatory, and safe storage laws would be ridiculous if only gun safes were allowed. Even in my support of other gun control policies, at best I think you should have to pay an administrative fee and nothing more, something cheap like 30 bucks that anyone could afford, and even then I'd prefer if the government were to pay for it instead because administrative fees are stupid. Why are you against ineffectual measures if they'd have no negative consequences then? The problem of you being against "ineffectual measures" is you never seem to be able to prove that the measures are actually ineffectual because guess what? We haven't actually implemented them yet so we don't know if they're ineffectual or not. Nor do I believe in restricting the right altogether, like I said there are guns you should be able to buy (long guns in general, specifically manual actions) that aren't really used for anything but proper actual purposes a gun is used for. The measure we have right now are not working considering the gun violence and firearm death rate we have, and we need to step them up as well as fix the current ones we have. That's gun violence, not gun deaths. Two different things. I never said I was a proponent of the second amendment. I truly believe that inherent belief in the second amendment is silly. The idea that every single person deserves the ability to own a firearm is stupid because not everyone is responsible enough to own one, and I'd say most Americans agree with me on that considering that convicted felons, drug abusers, and seriously mentally ill people are not allowed to own firearms, and that has been proven to be constitutionally valid. These restrictions would just be an extension of that. Precedent takes place in court law and the precedent has been that people who are not responsible enough to own a firearm are not allowed to own one. Simple measures like the ones I suggest extend that.

There's a lot of emphasis on community in the US, it just tends to be very local community based.

Why do Americans always use the size of their country as justification whenever it is criticized? Popular vote losers winning regardless? "We're a big country". One of the few nations still not using the metric system? "We're a big country". Piss poor public transportation? "We're a big country". It's like they think it's a get out of jail free card they can just throw down whenever a debate about the US takes place. Guess what? India also has super dense urban areas and large low density farmlands. How exactly do the US and India differ in that regard in a way that is relevant to crime and quality of life?

Hi, I'm from the UK and I sympathise but that sounds pretty familiar. With our own nuances, like our increasingly frustrated population consistently voting in a government that intends to dismantle our healthcare system and make people even more frustrated. I guess we never had an the American Dream™ as seen in Steinbeck novels, but even if American exceptionalism is that strong of a drug, people still have ambitions whatever country they're from. Our debt system isn't nearly as crushing as yours, and we have an amount of consumer laws in place that certainly help the individual not feel total fucked. But, for some reason we're moving away from that. I'm just trying to say that a lot of American ideals seem to rest on the idea that "we're special" and like... you're not. A lot of other countries share a lot of problems with you, and at least we're trying. A lot of American policymaking seems to be throwing your hands up in the air and going "fuckit, it can't be fixed!"

India, like many developing nations, has extremely tight-knit family structures and community, which provide an informal social support network that the US utterly lacks. So many significant events- losing a job, having a kid, recovering from illness- are much easier to deal with when you have a few dozen relatives willing and able to chip in. There's no prevailing culture of pulling yourselves up by your bootstraps, no 'suck it up and tough it out'. India's not unique in this regard; I spent a few years in East Africa and it was very similar. You live with your family, you work with your village or urban community, you identify with your tribe. It's hard to adequately put into words just how much of a difference this is- you don't go robbing people at gunpoint if you personally know everyone you victimize, and they can identify you in return. You don't build up seething resentment and then go on a shooting spree if you're surrounded by people who have a vested interest in your well-being. You don't act out when it will reflect badly on your family and your tribe. It's a completely different kind of society and, frankly, I think it's far healthier than the American model that produces tons and tons of people who need help but are utterly alone. We used to work like that, but somewhere along the line it just broke down. The homicide rate is over triple what it was in 1900, and that's in spite of a dramatic increase in medical lifesaving capabilities. Throw in urban gang violence associated with the drug trade, something that is pretty uniquely American, and it's not surprising to me that our rates of violent crime are higher than those of comparable nations.

The size of our country is relevant because the US isn't one giant homogenous entity. In terms of ethnic background, customs and cultures, levels of wealth and poverty, etc the US could really constitute at least 5 different countries. Reallistically speaking it's more though, Minnesota as an example had a very high literacy rate and fairly low rates of crime, while Illinois has significantly higher rates of crime and lower literacy. That's just two states near each other that have similar ethnic and social make up. You go to Alabama or New York and you might as well be in an entirely different country in terms of social norms and customs. The United States and it's Citizens are a lot more complicated than just "being American". To try and cover everyone and everything under one blanket ignores all the different social and economic issues that effect reach part of the country different, whether it's the collapse of the once great City of Detroit or the incredible levels of poverty around Mobile Alabama. I can't really do Justice in terms of writing in regards to how different the US can be depending on where you are in the country, there is simply too much to try to describe and define. So with that in mind what works for one part of the country might not work for another. Things like Obama care had varying effects across the country, with some states such as my own seeing significant increases in costs of healthcare while others had huge drops. That's what happens when you sign into law things that do not take into account all the different issues indevidual starts have.

So what? Every state in the US has the same main language, at least. Tiny ass countries like Belgium have 3, depending on the region. Italian dialects are so different from one another that sometimes people from towns a few dozen kilometers apart can't understand each other. Spain also has several languages, and political discrepancies are such that several regions want independence. When was the last time a US state genuinely wanted to secede? I could go on and on... It has nothing to do with landmass. The US isn't special, you only think it is because you're familiar with it and know its nuances, while you tend to perceive other nations as unified cultural blobs since you don't know much about them. The same goes for India. It's home to over a billion people, over four times the US population. I really doubt it's culturally and politically homogeneous and to claim that it is less diverse than the US is a baseless assumption on your part. Maybe, that sounds like a plausible explanation. Except there isn't any data to back up the relation between said cultural differences and differences in homicide rates. In fact, I have no idea how a study could possibly test this hypothesis. As it stands, there's no more evidence indicating that this is the cause than there is proof that a lack of firearms is the cause. If stats like Switzerland murder rates are to be considered evidence that firearm ownership has no effect on gun violence, then, according to the same logic, India murder rates should be considered evidence that lacking healthcare and poverty have no effect either. Unless you agree with this conclusion (which I personally don't), then it should be considered that neither are valid proof that any of those parameters have no incidence on crime and violence.

you're absolutely right about how you're wrong about gun control.

Go to Florida, you get an almost even balance of Spanish and English speaking individuals once you get in the southern half of the state. Those Spanish speakers come from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic/Hati. All very different cultures in a similar location. Go to Louisiana and head to the south where you will find your generic southerner along with Cajuns who have their own dialect, entirely separate from what you will hear anywhere else in the state. Take an Appalachian mountains man and put him in a room with a guy from Newark and they aren't going to understand each other and they are going to have wildly different ideologies. Places you listed have a few cultural splits, the US has hundreds with different reactions in different regions (way more regions than any country in Europe). You mention Spain as an example. Catalans and Spain have been at it for over 400 years. America has been a country for just over 200, Texas and California have been in it for the last ~150 years. Give them some time down the present track we're going and see what happens. It has plenty to do with landmass, because landmass means geographical separations, which means different regions, and different regions breed different cultures. It wasn't until relatively recently (in respect to the history of the country) that you could actually connect with people on different coasts and start "globalizing" internally in America. It's clear you lack an understanding in human geography, which is fine, but don't preach what you don't know.

Spare me the condescending insults. You use them to boast your superiority, but your pettiness only proves it wrong. Not to mention your criticism of my geography skills is pretty damn rich when you go and say things like: America has been a country If you want to prove me wrong, give me actual sources that show that the US does indeed have exceptional diversity compared to any other country. Something more than the word of yet another American. You claim the US has hundreds of cultural splits, but I really doubt those splits are as deep as what you consider to be splits in Europe. You've cited 3 linguistic splits so far, that's no more than what you'd find in Belgium, a country 300 times smaller. And that's certainly much less than across Europe, which is of similar size. This points to landmass not having nearly as much of an impact as you claim. I'm curious as to what constitutes a cultural split in your eye. An accent, slight differences in lifestyle and different traditional dishes does not a different culture make. If that were the case, I can give you dozens in mainland France alone, and dozens more in insular regions. Reunion island is home to no less than 4 religions of significant following, and sizeable populations of Chinese, Arab, Indian, Malagasy descent and others. All this on land less than a thousandth the size of the US. It's as if a history of trade and immigration has magnitudes more to do with cultural diversity than having acres of farmland and wilderness. And why do you think that population size has nothing to do with cultural and political diversity? You're direly lacking evidence on that point as well. You'd think a self proclaimed geography expert would consider all of those factors. But no, it seems that according to you the US is special, simply because of its landmass. Shouldn't Russia be even more diverse then?

It's because your culture is fucked. People cannot be left alone to their own devices, lest this occurs Protip protip there were no mass shooting every other week 50 years ago in the USA

guns are great, wish they were more legal here