The USA has literally more than one mass shooting1 per day. It has reached the point where these don’t even reach the news any longer unless there’s some special angle to make them “interesting”. The reaction to this, from an outsider perspective, should be “maybe we should do something about the proliferation of freely available guns”. The reaction to this, again from an outsider perspective, seems to be rather “OMG I BETTER BUY MORE GUNS!!!111oneoneoneeleventy!”
What gives? How come the USA has not yet figured out that doubling down on the strategy that led to the nation having a shocking murder rate for the developed world is not a working solution?
What is it about the USA and guns that makes you tolerate this state when you’ve got a culturally-similar nation to the north of you that, despite your cultural problems being imported, still doesn’t have your kill rate?
1 Defined as a shooting event in which at least 4 people other than the shooter are injured or killed.
They’ve been a thing for FAR longer than 30 years. There has been more of them recently, but much of that is due to better technology reducing the costs of ownership and increasing the availability of the kinds of weapons really suited to killing large numbers more efficiently. Factor in the face-heel turn of the NRA in the '70s and you’ve got one Hell of a toxic stew, yes, but the ingredients for this sickness are well over a hundred years old. There’s something in the American psyche that says guns are the solutions to all problems: domestic and foreign.
I’m aware that mass shootings have existed long before the 90’s but my understanding is that the frequency has increased significantly in recent decades. Maybe it’s due to better record-keeping or changing criteria used to define mass shootings. I’m not a data scientist. It certainly feels like they’ve become more frequent since the 90’s.
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