The first mass shooting where the target was innocent bystanders, was back in the 50's. Hardly meets the definition of "we always had mass shootings." I will grant that we had cases like the Valentine massacre but that was between gang members. Also, while true we have more guns now, that's not indicative to how many people own guns. Most gun homicides happens in states and cities with stricter laws. California has the highest amount of mass shootings yet they have some the strictest laws in the country.
By "always" I didn't mean back to the creation of your country. But they're not a new thing. They've been pretty common since the 80s. And you keep throwing that line about how most gun homicides are in states with strict laws, but, again, that's just false. And yes, California does indeed rank pretty high in the mass shootings scale (I'm not sure if it's the highest though). Should be kind of expected given it's by far the most populous
In terms of gun violence per capita, it ranks pretty darn low.
It isn't when compared to other crime even in the same category and the population as a whole.
I... already demonstrated it is absurdly high compared to the population. And shouldn't it be kind of obvious that it's not as common as other crimes? Doesn't make it any less of a problem.
Why? Most mass shootings are done with handguns.
Not the deadliest ones, you can't kill as many people with a handgun as you can with a semi automatic rifle. Also many countries have banned handguns, because of how easily you can conceal them, which makes them very popular for criminals.
Possibly buyback programs.
That failed in places like New jersey and California, and they are among the most willing states to participate in it. How much more do you think it will work well in states like Texas?[/quote]
To be fair, given your gun culture, it's unlikely they will work very well.
There is little evidence that stricter testing reduces crime. Illinois requires gun owners to have a license to even own a gun, and applying for a carry permit is even worse. Yet they have a high gun crime rate.
Not really, they rank 34th in overall gun violence and they're about average in terms of gun murders. But what's really an issue is that the laws aren't enforced very well. Plenty of european countries have very strict testing and they actually enforce it and it works pretty well to make sure criminals don't end up with guns. I don't understand why anyone would oppose strict testing and background checks.
I'm giving you leniency. You don't have to stick with mass shootings to prove your case. You can show a country that implemented gun control and drastically reduced it's gun crime as a result.
They worked for Australia. It's a bit dubious what they did for the UK, because they never had that many gun murders to begin with, and they never really cared that much about guns anyways, it was done more to prevent mass shootings from happening again. I don't really know many other countries that relatively recently started enforcing significantly stricter gun laws, and definitely none that had the attitude of the US before.