Link to episode, relevant bit is near the beginning.
To summarize: In America, any Nazi asshole with even the slightest murderous intent can get a gun pretty easily and then use it to kill a bunch of civilians in a mass shooting.
This is in contrast to Japan, a place with very strict gun control, where it's far more difficult for said Nazis with murderous intent to get their hands on a firearm to act out their fantasy. So what happens is those Nazis, even if they kinda want to kill, are still too lazy to go through the arduous process of getting a gun to do so and are more likely to just stick to the far easier option of posting on 4Chan.
So those people in Japan who do want to get a gun bad enough aren't going to "waste" it on a bunch of no-name grocery shoppers or whatever, they want all their effort to be "worth it", so instead they do targeted attacks on high-profile individuals, most likely politicians, like Abe.
So that's why in America we get plenty of mass shootings, but very few political assassinations anymore.
Also remember the additional fact that nazi mass shooters also deliberately targets minorities and other "undesirables" , most are found in large number in public spaces in specific locations.
I think this has much more to do with it.
These are fascists terrorizing the population. They have an ideology. It isn't just random violence.
They're right, because the overwhelming cause of mass shootings in America is gun proliferation. There so many guns floating around they literally spill over into other countries and fuel gun violence there. But as usual the US is exceptional in this regard because there are other countries with a similar level of gun proliferation per capita, such as Switzerland, that do not have a mass shooting problem. This is probably because their gun proliferation is institutionalized and regulated in a way the US is not.
I think it's more likely that the lifestyle of people in Switzerland is not as alienating and self-destructive as the lifestyle and culture in America. Community exists, life is nowhere near the hellworld living in America is.
A significant part of the mass shootings america has is also because it is a suicidal action.
If healthcare and social safety nets existed and urban design were different and people lived in a way that actually made them feel good the mass shootings would plummet.
On top of all of that you guys also have an absolutely INSANE gun culture that you just don't have in places like Switzerland and Finland that also have high rates of gun ownership
Gun culture in the USA is implicitly tied to historical instances of pacifying native americans and catching runaway slaves.
This is the part no one on the left or the right wants to admit out loud; We have guns to kill native Americans and slaves and that's it. That's the entire reason the 2nd amendment exists.
Look, I'm just a stupid Australian with my own cultural biases and all so ignore me at your leisure... But there's something i just don't get
I hear this " American culture is so violent and that's the root cause ,white settler nation, violent racism and toxicity masculinity,guns as comfort blankets" and i think "yes and ...?"
Sure, in a perfect society people could own guns and not sandy hook, but it's clear America isn't that. What i don't understand is why leftists think that mitigating the damage caused by those contradictions of the American project is a cure worse than the disease.
conceal carry, stand your ground laws... These are all intended to increase suspicion , destroy solidarity and reduce common cause. I just don't see how guns materially brings people together. And if the ukr war has taught is anything states fight with guided artillery now, so i don't see how having a bump stock modded ar is supposed to protect your freedoms.
I'm in Britain, and I'm not saying they shouldn't mitigate the damage. There is absolutely a difference between what a gun with 2 shots in it can do compared to a gun with 30. The only reason I bring these things up are that it is a more valuable discussion to be having, these problems are caused by capitalism at its worst in the richest most affluent country in the world with the highest amount of resources to deal with them. The "guns should be regulated" issue has no economic, societal or class analysis of these events, it boils things down to symptom and treatment instead of material cause which is where communists should be.
With that said I don't know if I would support it anymore. Seems more like they need as many guns as they can get for the fight against fascists that's coming.
Yes I agree but I feel quite strongly that the combination of factors within American lifestyle and society itself is generating these mass shooters and that regulation will only reduce the scale of the horror while not actually stopping the problem of people being driven to perform these murder-suicides.
I think if you could delete all guns tomorrow from the face of america the same number of murder-suicides would occur. It would change shape but the problem of people killing themselves and taking others with them when they do it would remain.
If all the guns disappeared from American soil, after the first U-Haul van/truck is used to mow down protesters the gun control liberals will be agitating for seven day waiting periods to rent trucks
Other factors in Switzerland's gun culture - they have compulsory military service so gun owners are highly trained and they aren't allowed to stockpile ammo.
Is it even true that Japan has a lot of political assassinations? Quick googling found ~5 Japanese assassinations and 23 ones in the US after WW2, meaning the US has slightly more of them per capita.
Oh yeah, I didn't mean to give the impression it happens over there every other week like mass shootings happen over here (Unfortunately), my bad.
How many of those were carried out by indirectly the government of each country? Probably a lot in both cases.
I think it's better framed when you compare instances of random violence to political assassinations. Japan has rare instances of mass murder, but 5 high profile assassinations. The last instance of mass death I can remember in Japan was the Kyoto Animation arson attack a few years ago, before that was probably the sarin gas thing in the 90s. Whereas America has 5 spree killings per day.
Continuing on that thought process, the low level of gun control and constant ambient hum of people “going postal” (to use an older parlance) ultimately serves to create a circumstance where, even if they aren’t more likely to be targeted, high level political targets have adequate motivation to have very developed defenses and security from rogue gun men. Obviously not the intent behind how gun law is in America but an interesting externality.
This. Remember when in New Zealand (which has moderate gun control) someone threw a dildo at the PMs head and the response was basically "oh! Ha! That's quite a laugh!"
That was Stephen Joyce and he was the Minister of Finance so not quite PM
We did have protestors record an awkwardly long chase of the PM's vehicle not long ago though
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/video-shows-protesters-target-jacinda-arderns-van-in-bay-of-islands/EBJEUH74NULJUUZWM7PHM6566M/
Reminds me of a scene in The Thick of It. One character says something like "If I had a gun, I'd shoot myself" and someone else asks "Is that all that is stopping you? Lack of resources?"
Gun-control laws bring I N N O V A T I ON!!
Free markets = less innovation!
No this is putting the cart before the horse.
Abe's assassin did not build a gun and then shop for a victim.
He had a target, the leader of the Unification Church that he was personally highly motivated to kill which is why he had the motivation to overcome the barriers to acquiring a gun. He didn't even kill Abe because of his high-profile but only because he didn't have the opportunity to get his real target and thought killing Abe would do the most damage/send a message to his real target.
People don't go to the effort to acquire a gun under gun control to kill randoms because randoms don't engender the same Captain Ahab like motivation.
This is just the kinda theory you come up with if you have to have a hot take on everything for a living.
maybe they were and it got lost in the retelling :vivian-shrug:
People don’t go to the effort to acquire a gun under gun control to kill randoms because randoms don’t engender the same Captain Ahab like motivation.
I mean, consider Steven Paddock, a guy who went through no small length of trouble to do a mass shooting in a very Ahab-esque manner. He killed plenty of random civilians.
True. It is almost as though mass shooters don't follow any kind of rational pattern at all
Cost/benefit analysis but for public shootings
Idk one is about maximising collateral and the other is about minimising it. totally different intent in action and risk profile, I wouldn't think there'd be much crossover between proponents of either group.
shooting fish in a barrel rather than cutting the head of the hydra.
Im agreeing fwiw
I think theres a lot of easy access to implements of death, and even more easily misdirected violence because of itWasn't this just a joke? Like, the US has had plenty of shootings and attempted shootings of politicians historically. I mean, there was the :baseball-crank: guy only a few years ago
