Why do Americans seem to fear terrorism, but ignore gun deaths? An article I found

[Therumancer]

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Again, utter crap.

The US can't very well go and destroy the world, because it's part of it. The computer you are using, the clothes you are wearing, all of those are likely made in or out of things from outside the US. Destroying the nations that produce those isn't in the US's interest, nor another economic crisis.

And...do I really have to explain "Mutually Assured Destruction"?

Should the US go down the road you propose, the rest of the world is likely to remember how wonderful the Russians were for fighting the Germans in WW2 (or perhaps the Chinese vs the Japanese) and move towards them. The EU suddenly would start thinking about getting its act together.

Not committing as many atrocities as it could does not make the US "the good guys". It makes the US tolerable to the rest of the world. As long as the important parts of the world don't feel too threatened by the US, they've no particular reason to become a threat to it.

It is not in the US's interest to provoke others into challenging it. It doesn't matter if the US "wins" if the end result is less favourable than the status quo, which it is likely to be.

Now, there is more that the US could safely do, it could get involved in another ground war or two, overthrow a few more third world governments without hurting itself too much. There'd be very little actual benefit for the US doing that, though.

You show you haven't been reading what I've said, you might want to do that. My entire point is that the best the rest of the world could hope for in facing the US if things were pushed if very much an "everyone dies" situation. We actually agree there, you just prefer to take an anti-US tact.

That said, the fact that we are even handed in dealing with the rest of the world is the point. If we were acting like we are accused of doing, there would be daily atrocities. Rather we are stupidly careful in how we do things, more so than we should be, even when it winds up harming our position and activities. It's just that the world by and large like to QQ about the US, and doesn't bother to ever consider how we could be acting, not to mention the number of times we've gone out of our way to deal with other people's problems, stop atocities, and other things with little or no benefit to ourselves.

If you had been paying attention though, what I am argueing is ultimatly that we should be the fictional guy your complaining about, at least for a while. Either that, or simply go back to isolatioism and let things fall apart without us. As great as it is to say "the world will get along just fine without America", that is likely to change the first time there is a crisis and we just tell the rest of the world to deal with it on it's own, while we actually do act only in our own interests. Have a genocide going on someplace? Let Australia or someone foot the bill and provide all the peacekeepers, refugee care, and everything else without any benefit. Chances are at the end of the day even the "nice" countries will all have a reason for not getting involved the way we do.

As far as I'm concerned the US needs to stop being a group of White Knights, accept that it's morality experiment has failed, and start actually doing what we need to do in order to remove threats to the US and ensure our own prosperity and global dominance. At the end of the day if the world objects too much and decides to "unite against America" all they do is kill everyone including themselves. I'm tired of the threats and whining, I'm pretty much ready to just flat out say we now live on planet USA, accept it or suffer. Have our president give speeches in Doctor Doom armor if nessicary to set the right attitude, I'm just utterly sick of the terrorism and garbage without adequete response, and not even being able to talk about securing our own borders without conniptions from both foreign and domestic sources.

That said, I don't think we have much to actually discuss with each other. We disagree on a fundemental level. Given your attitudes about the US, you are simply incapable of seeing things from my perspective or what I am so POed about because to you, you feel the truth is entirely differant.

 

[Requia]

Why do the British seem to fear gun deaths, but ignore football riots and violence?

It's simply a difference in what is culturally normal in your society. We have gangsters with guns, the British have soccar hooligans with tire irons and knives.

How very stereotypical.

Again, it's all about cultural relativism. The British can't hope to understand American gun culture any more than Americans understand British football culture. To the British every American who owns a gun is a crazy paranoid survivalist, and to Americans every British football fan is a crazy football hooligan who starts a riot whenever Arsenal losses. The difference being that the British keep telling Americans that we need to get rid of our guns because they make us barbaric, but Americans never tell the British that they'd probably have less violence if they outlawed soccer, because it's not our country and not our place to judge.

Don't they also start riots when Arsenal wins?

 

[ZeroMachine]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/21/boston-marathon-bombs-us-gun-law Don't "shoot" the messenger by the way. Personally, I think it's in part because of the fear monger that is the mass media, if not mostly. I mean CNN covered a lockdown of a city for the whole day Friday where NOTHING HAPPENED for most of the day! Lets not forget the bullshit they reported to later retract(false bombers, false leads, false reports of other bombs)not just CNN either.

1 man shut down a city of over a million. Where is the logic in this? Anyway, I just thought it was a pretty good read.

TWO people got it locked down, and it makes perfect sense. Someone attacked our city. We wanted to catch the fuckers, and guess what? It worked. We caught them. One of them alive, which is damn near unheard of in regards to terrorist attacks.

THAT BEING SAID, I totally agree with you in regards to ignoring that problem.

 

[Trueflame]

It's about control. More people die from car accidents than plane accidents, yet it's rare for someone to be scared of driving, but more people are afraid of planes, even though statistically they're safer. Hell, statistically even in Israel, a country with much more terrorist activity than the US you're still more likely to die of a traffic accident.

But when you're behind the wheel of a car, you have a sense of control. Even if you're confronted by an assailant with a gun, you still feel a measure of control, because you're both humans with roughly the same capabilities, and one of you just happens to have an advantage due to a specific weapon. Planes are scary because then your fate is entirely out of your hands, and in the hands of a pilot. It doesn't matter that the pilot is vastly more trained and qualified than the average driver is at driving, people simply trust themselves more than they do others. And terrorism is the same way. It's something that seemingly happens anywhere, and for no reason, so how do you defend yourself? It seems more like a force of nature in that sense, simply happening at any time and for no reason, and that makes it much more threatening than things people believe they can control or affect or protect themselves against.

That's my take on it, anyway. Personally, I think both the gun hysteria and bomb hysteria are gross overreactions, but people and news companies need something to panic about, I guess.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Therumancer....

Stop, just..stop.

I am an avid gun-lover and an American, I own 9 guns including a 'scary black rifle' and several military-style pistols and even I have to say..

Please.. just stop.

You're letting the lens of your own perspective color how you interpret things outside of your purvue too much, and that lens is none too clean.

Firstly, Government is not some sinister Orwellian entity that's out to take away your guns, your apple-pie, your dog, and then rape your mom. You want to know what Government is really all about?

GOVERNMENT:
WELL-MEANING, BUT RUBBISH.

That's it, that's all their is. The CCTV cameras in Britain are a well-meaning attempt at enhancing public safety, and it's rubbish. Diane Feinstein's rhetoric is a well-meaning attempt at enhancing public safety, and it's rubbish. That's all it is, a lot of well-meaning intent flowing into ideas and actions which are rubbish-rubbish-rubbish. Nothing sinister, nothing fascist, just well-meaning intent that turns to rubbish when in contact with reality.

Couldn't agree more. Therumancer is the kind of person that normal gun owning Americans like the keep their distance from, because he's the kind of gun rights "advocate" that gives us a bad name. The government isn't some sinister entity that's out to control every aspect of our lives and put us under their boot. Gun owners don't own guns to keep the government in check, nor do we have guns to oppose the government and resist their control.

Americans have guns because we like to be able to protect ourselves, not from some sinister big brother concept, but rather from nature, and from each other. In rural America people keep guns because there are lots of wild animals around, and because police response times in those communities tend to be ridiculously long (at least half an hour in a lot of areas, if not more). Even in urban and suburban areas police response times aren't perfect. The police aren't going to be there the exact second that you need them, at best they'll get there within 5 to 10 minutes of getting the call, which means that they'll probably be there at least 7 minutes after a crime has occurred. That's why Americans like to have guns, because we decide that we want to make our protection our own responsibility, because the only person who you can guarantee to be there when a crime is happening to you, is you.

It's not that Americans don't trust their government, or the police. Rather we realize that the government and the police are not perfect, and cannot guarantee our safety, that's why, as responsible individuals, many of us like to take our protection into our own hands

 

[likalaruku]

I blame the news.

Personally I don't give two shits about terrorism.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Americans fear terrorism because we're programed to. By the Bush administration and the patriot act

American's don't fear gun violence because we're programed not to. By the second amendment and the NRA

More often than not gun deaths are personal, I want to kill this person so I'll shoot him.
or I want to kill this group for reasons, so I'll shoot them.

Terrorism is more vague. I'll put this bomb here and see what happens.
or How many people can I kill at once?

Also if you see a gunman coming you can duck.
Car bomb goes off right next to you you're a little fucked.

 

[LetalisK]

Vietnam taught us the dangers of such over-confidence. And the fallacy of believing in what we want to believe when viewing the world and its complexities through "rose tinted glasses".

Not entirely relevant I know, but I've heard that Vietnam was less of a military defeat and more of a PR disaster, and that given enough time, the Vietcong would have eventually been broken and exhausted, unable to continue fighting. Not sure how true or exaggerated that might be, just a thought.

Yes and no. The North Vietnamese forces got squashed in almost every military engagement we had[footnote]Hence their reliance on hit-and-run tactics, which were more about causing a steady trickle of wounded and dead for the American public than actually destroying the American military[/footnote], and this is including the infamous Tet Offensive, but the military's plan, which was basically just attrition via a big game of King of the Hill, was such a piece of shit that it contributed to the PR disaster. And, yes, given enough time, even that strategy might have worked. However, I can say that of almost any occupying strategy freed from the restrictions of time, so it doesn't actually say much.[footnote]Edit: To expound on this more, even if we only needed one more month, it was still a bad strategy. As the occupying force, time is against you. The longer the war goes on, the harder it is going to be. The strategy we picked was a long-term strategy of attrition, something that requires copious amounts of time to work and is most effective when time is on your side, like say, a native guerrilla force for example...[/footnote]

 

[TechNoFear]

Something people (generally outside the US) seem to forget, or not notice, is that gun laws only impact... you know... legal guns.

Firearm laws do not stop at limiting the type of firearm or regulating ownership, they include increased penalties for other firearm related crimes.

In Australia just possessing an illegal firearm can result in up to 15 years jail, in addition to any sentence for other crimes committed.

Openly carrying a firearm in a public place is a crime, as is failing to properly secure your firearms (kept in a locked gun-safe, ammo in separate locked container). These usually just mean you are fined and lose your firearms license.

And while I don't doubt that a higher-than-insignificant percentage of gun-related violence in the US is due to legal guns, I seriously doubt that gangsters, wannabe gangsters, plain crazy people, etc. etc. are using legal guns.

~14% of all homicides are family members killing each other (~25% when you add in friends and partners/defactos), a much higher percentage than gang homicides.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-10

The vast majority of the illegal firearms used in crime were once legal. These firearms became illegal because they were straw purchased, borrowed or stolen.

The vast majority of mass shootings are committed with legal firearms.

Also, it's not exactly as though I, a plain citizen of the US with no criminal record, could actually go out today and literally just buy a gun. Even if I wanted a hunting rifle (since I live in a relatively rural part of the US), I'd still need a license for it, which would likely take a few weeks at least (I don't actually know, since I don't care about hunting).

I own a number of firearms and have worked in law enforcement.

My handgun is kept at the local range, I am not allowed to bring it home.
My long guns are all single shot and locked in a safe on my farm (the reason I can own firearms is because I own rural property, self defence is not a valid reason).

To get a semi-auto rifle I need a firearms license, show cause why a single shot rifle would not suffice, get a personal OK from the police commissioner and obey the storage regulations (have a gun-safe). If successful the process would take months.
Handguns are harder...

 

[Thaluikhain]

To get a semi-auto rifle I need a firearms license, show cause why a single shot rifle would not suffice, get a personal OK from the police commissioner and obey the storage regulations (have a gun-safe). If successful the process would take months.
Handguns are harder...

Firearms are easier to buy, though, or so I'm led to believe. In that most Cat D weapons are bought from other Cat D owners, not imported, and there aren't many of those around. Not sure about Cat C semi-automatic rimfires with less than 10 rounds capacity (or why you'd actually want one of those).

 

[sXeth]

Bombs tend to come in one big hit that can be named, and easily sensationalized with dramatic pictures of smokes, and debris and so on.

Guns tend to involve smaller per use casualties, and you generally won't see any dramatic pictures of them because they aren't really flashy. Most of the dramatic Front Page Splatter shots you'd possibly get off gun violence would be banned from general media.

While gun control is statistically an unproven premise, as someone just above mentioned, Illegal Guns don't magically form out of wishes and intense stares. Most or all of them were legal before buying bought off in illegal deals, lost, or stolen. This is also why gun control is largely ineffective, because the staggering amounts of guns out there would have to be recovered and dismantled over a period of years to thin the stock out to a trackable amount. As long as theres a consistent flow of guns being legally made and distributed to the public, the illegal stock will continue to replenish itself from the new guns.

 

[TechNoFear]

Firearms are easier to buy, though, or so I'm led to believe. In that most Cat D weapons are bought from other Cat D owners, not imported, and there aren't many of those around.

CAT D firearms (higher calibre semi-auto long guns holding >5 rnds) are usually only 'privately' owned by professional shooters, and are often transferred with the shooting 'business' / quota / licence.

 

[Callate]

There are between thirty and forty thousand motor vehicle deaths per year in the United States, versus around ten thousand gun homicides (and arout twice as many suicides.) Comparatively, the chances of being killed in an act of terrorism are ridiculously small.

But we feel like we're in control in our vehicles. And we feel we take control by owning firearms. Terrorism takes the possibility of death entirely out of our hands, so we overreact in an attempt to re-establish that control over our mortality.

Never mind how illusory that control may be in either of the prior two cases, or how ridiculous a pretext that might be to spurn safety laws.

 

[JagermanXcell]

Meh, back when I was a kid and the whole 9/11 happened I was to naive I couldn't understand the fear it instilled on people.
Now I'm older and guess what, I still don't give a crap, because I realized 9/11s happen EVERY DAY outside America .

Hell something may even be wrong with me cause I literally do not fear death or just being killed in general. Lets face it, People die every day from car crashes, suicides, and even more from gun homicide. And have you noticed as of late people in America who are Americans are killing other Americans! (Thanks media... hope you love being worse then terrorists) People die here and we rub it off like its a regular tuesday, then a bomb goes off, people think its terrorist, panic switch is flipped.
Ummm.... ok?....

As to why we fear terrorism over the blatantly obvious and frequent problems here, I really don't know how to answer it.
Perhaps the idea of terrorists able to take death like its nothing because they think its good to die in order to kill us who literally cringe at the act of dying sets off our fear. That and the media likes to cram those spooky thoughts into people's heads.
I'm no expert on this subject, but thats honestly how I see it.

 

[Les]

Couldn't agree more. Therumancer is the kind of person that normal gun owning Americans like the keep their distance from, because he's the kind of gun rights "advocate" that gives us a bad name. The government isn't some sinister entity that's out to control every aspect of our lives and put us under their boot. Gun owners don't own guns to keep the government in check, nor do we have guns to oppose the government and resist their control.

Americans have guns because we like to be able to protect ourselves, not from some sinister big brother concept, but rather from nature, and from each other. In rural America people keep guns because there are lots of wild animals around, and because police response times in those communities tend to be ridiculously long (at least half an hour in a lot of areas, if not more). Even in urban and suburban areas police response times aren't perfect. The police aren't going to be there the exact second that you need them, at best they'll get there within 5 to 10 minutes of getting the call, which means that they'll probably be there at least 7 minutes after a crime has occurred. That's why Americans like to have guns, because we decide that we want to make our protection our own responsibility, because the only person who you can guarantee to be there when a crime is happening to you, is you.

It's not that Americans don't trust their government, or the police. Rather we realize that the government and the police are not perfect, and cannot guarantee our safety, that's why, as responsible individuals, many of us like to take our protection into our own hands

Self-defense is a factor, it is very psychologically reassuring to have the means to compel someone with hostile intent to refrain from harming you and/or your property and/or the persons and property of your friends and family, either through intimidation or force. In fact, the closest thing I've heard to the 'Gun Envy' that Theu has talked about has nothing to do with trying to intimidate government into doing a better job and more to do with property-owners hearing stories about someone catching a burglar in their home and whooping him with a broom-handle or somesuch and getting charged with assault while the burglar gets off the hook and that makes some people in Britain grumble and wish they had more leeway to use force to defend their property like the Americans do.

...but, self-defense is not really something that comes up often. It's one of those 'Nice to have, but probably won't need' kind of things. But then I grew up in an environment where guns were ubiquitous, but reasons to fear them were quite the opposite, where students bringing guns to school just meant it was hunting season, where if you knew somebody who was selling an old 4x4 he probably wouldn't take a check but he would take deer-rifle and a shotgun.

Then here come the interlopers with, "YOU, why do you NEED these guns?" A question that had never even occurred to Any of us as a concept worthy of questioning, and many of us invariably panic and go, "Bwaah, Self-Defense and the 2nd Amendment, Blood of Tyrants and Patriots, Bwaaaar.." And just hit that button over and over again until people like me start gun debates under the assumption that I'm a gun-lover and thus a paranoid nutter who sees hobgoblins behind every shrub and the biggest ones live in Washington D.C.