this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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Yeah it's all about appearance. It's human nature.
Same thing in the US. We have a ton of people trying to ban AR-15 rifles because they look scary. They act like it's some sort of urgent public health emergency and tons of people are dying all the time because of these awful terrible military death sprayers. In reality more people are punched and kicked to death every year or beaten to death with bats than are shot with all types of rifles including ARs.
In a country of 320 million people, rifles of all sorts kill at most a couple hundred every year. It's not at all as serious threat to safety, but people obsess over it because it looks scary. Obesity related illnesses kill 300,000+ Americans per year, but you don't see anybody talking about banning cheeseburgers.
Meanwhile in Ukraine, the happy little almost cartoon-shaped frag bombs dropped from hobby drones are killing Russians with great efficiency. But they don't look scary or gruesome so this stupid thing gets the attention.
I think it's just human nature. We focus on what looks frightening, not what actually threatens us.
I guess people downvote because they disagree with your view on gun regulation (which I do, too) that you use in your example.
I believe you make a good argument that people focus on scary-looking things rather than actually-scary things. The example you give is valid, too: Many people associate ARs with gun violence, while most victims of gun violence get killed by small handguns (source).
I’ll upvote your thoughtful comment!
What a disingenuous take. People want them banned, and rightly so, because they are used on a weekly basis in mass shootings. And there are no upsides in having them around. Pretty much every other western country do without and we get mass shootings once a decade, or less.
Obesity kills people, good unrelated point. Something should be done for that too. While working on gun control/ban.
This is actually false.
There are not mass shootings with ARs every week.
Look at a website like mass shooting tracker, and actually READ some of the incidents. Most are like 'victim1 and victim2 were leaving a house party on Crescent St. when suspect1 and suspect2 opened fire from a moving vehicle. Victim1 and victim2 returned fire and all four young men were wounded, along with bystander1 and bystander2.' This will qualify as a mass shooting because four or more people are wounded, so it shows up on that stupid tracker. But there is no AR anywhere, just pistols. Read between the lines and you realize this is a gangland shooting. And in all likelihood all four firearms are illegally owned.
Reality is more people are punched and kicked to death every year than are killed by all rifles including ARs.
Furthermore, there are several million ARs in circulation, and only a couple hundred rifle deaths every year. From a pure statistic point of view, that makes it actually a pretty safe product.