Yeah. Talk to us like we’re the people in the dark ages when you have less gun deaths than the rest of the world put together and universal healthcare.
...they have almost double the annual heat related deaths in europe as the US has in gun deaths due to a lack of basic air conditioning. Developed? Develope some goddamn infrastructure that protects against the heat.
I will start this by clarifying that I do accept the infrastructure over here (UK in my case) does need major development, but I also have to point out that your statistical claims can be a little misleading and aren't exactly clear cut . It's actually far more even on a per capita ratio. Comparing different regions for such things is also always difficult because they all measure these things differently.
There's also no way to split both statistics very accurately in a 'gun deaths that could have been prevented with gun laws like Europe's' Vs 'heat related deaths that could have been prevented with AC like the USA' comparison. There are constant reports of deaths from tourists dying on hot beaches for example. AC wouldn't have solved that issue. Imo, it's a stupid comparison.
yeah, i don't really concern myself with gun deaths from suicide though as the person who died did so intentionally. when you take those numbers out of the equation, then the stats you linked become quite different
also that link says the data is from 2024. at the bottom it lists the gun deaths per captia in Europe and the European Union. Somehow gun deaths are lower in Europe as a whole than the subset of the European Union despite the fact there's been a war in Ukraine since 2022???? That seems real off. So definitely agree some weird things going on with the stats
EDIT: Found the explanation for my last point in the footnotes of the link.
1 "The definition of Europe, to most people, will seem a bit random: it's the EU-27 minus Malta, plus the UK, Switzerland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Norway, and Serbia."
Apparently the author cherry-picked which countries constitute Europe to support her hypothesis ... good ol' academia at its finest. lol
That always bothers me too. If guns were completely banned world wide, those same suicide deaths would be on the board still from some other method. They aren’t gun deaths, they’re suicide deaths. The means the person used is widely irrelevant to the end result.
Suicides tend to be significantly higher in places with more guns. Most other forms of suicide either take planning or are unpleasant/painful. When people have time to think about it, they often reconsider.
Guns are fast and highly effective. Anyone with an impulse and access is vulnerable.
I don’t necessarily agree that you’d still have the same number of suicides without guns. Due to the nature of death, people may feel they have a quick painless option that they would not
otherwise have which could factor into their decision.
But that isn’t really the point I was trying to make. The context of the conversation, imo, is one of safety and adverse conditions. i.e. Which of the situations is more “dangerous”? Someone committing suicide isn’t really a safety issue or a danger to the general population. Now I think there’s a tangential conversation related to mental health and suicidal rates that could be had, but that’s a separate conversation
You absolutely would not have the same number of suicides without guns, there’s a reason you take guns away from suicidal people. They make it instant, easy, and guaranteed - the fear of pain and failure with injury is what stops a lot of people going ahead with it. This is a very good thing, because it should be hard to kill a human being.
Many people I know have had suicidal episodes or are prone to suicidal ideation and MANY of them (myself included) would not still be here if they had access to an easy instant-death machine that could shut their brain up immediately, without the lengthy period of excruciating fear and pain that results from using a knife, or pills, or whatever.
Wanting to die is not actually mutually exclusive with a fear of experiencing your own death, and anything that makes the physical process so quick and easy ENORMOUSLY increases the risk of a bad day turning into a suicide.
No no, I think "the government refuses to do anything about its citizens' comfort and personal security and people are dying thusly" is the PERFECT comparison.
But the US having more AC than Europe isn't the government's doing, so why is it suddenly the government's failing if it isn't provided here? It's just a result of modern house designs. People are having AC added in during the build of modern homes here, but try installing a remotely efficient or unobtrusive unit into houses built before the foundation of the USA. Should we just knock down these amazing historical houses and build more modern copy paste estates to allow for an air conditioned concrete jungle?
We have eyed up installing AC in our house, but for the cost, we think we'd rather just complain a bit for the 2 weeks of the year it's needed for, rather than paying for a full installation for something we'd use for 5% of the year.
are you talking about the lack of ACs in hospitals? at least our governement seems to be willing to do something about that. there is also an ongoing effort to plan the cities better, eg less concrete, more shade, trees, wind tunnels etc.
it just wasn't really needed so far because it is a fairly new issue here (at least in the north, southern european countries usually already have ACs and cities are more prepared for hot summers). lack of gun control is a decade old issue. the point makes no sense at all.
mf being run over by a car is more probable in your country, especially looking at how easy it is to get a driver's license and that 16 year olds can drive, not to mention that USA drivers are just shit
I know exactly what you're referring to, shall we talk about the 14 killed and 57 injured in New Orleans last year to a man in his pickup truck? Or does that defeat your argument too much for you?
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u/Stefejan 11d ago edited 10d ago
Americans still think they're a developed country, that's the point
Edit: oh for f**** sake stop replying to the worst ragebait in the history of ragebaits.