Comment on US demands access to tourists' social media histories
kazerniel@lemmy.world 5 days ago
reason #2 why I would never visit that country
(#1 is the mass shootings and gun mania)
(tbh the only thing I’d want to visit to begin with are the giant sequoia in California)
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
How… how much gun violence do you think actually happens here?
There’s a lot by number, and that’s a serious fucking issue, but the US is also massive. It’s not a regular or frequent danger of normal life here.
Even those numbers are pumped up by the fact that suicide by gun is counted in the exact same “gun violence” statistics as gang violence, and the “school shootings” statistics include all from the “gun violence” stats that occur within a certain radius around, regardless of when it happened (summer break, middle of the night, etc) or if it was any danger to students.
News overfocuses on shit like that because it pulls eyes and clicks, and therefore ad revenue.
Again, it is a serious fucking problem, but it’s not the kind of thing you’re going to experience in daily life or as a tourist.
kazerniel@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Mass shootings are still proportionally a lot more common than in similar countries:
The USA has about 5 times the general (non-suicide) homicide rate compared to the UK.
Add to that the 20 times higher gun ownership rate between USA and Scotland, plus the mental health crisis and extreme political polarisation, and I would rather just not be there, you know 🤷
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Perfectly valid, and thanks for not just jumping on the US bad dogpile and instead citing some stuff.
I’m just speaking up because I’ve seen a lot of people online from outside the US running with this idea that gun violence is like, a daily occurence that every US citizen deals with regularly, when that’s so fucking far from the reality.
Yeah, things are a powder keg over here lately and the accessibility of firearms doesn’t help, but I’ve met only one person in my almost 35 years of life who’s ever been held at gunpoint and they’re the only person I know who has ever been through any form of gun violence.
There’s plenty of reasons to avoid this place for a good long while unfortunately, but I feel like the gun danger has been overblown.
kazerniel@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Thanks for sharing your experiences, it’s definitely good to hear daily life is not as scary as it may seem from news coverage.
Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
Relax there’s plenty of other reasons not to visit your shithole country
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Yeah, hence why I didn’t say anything to counter anything else, or that it was a good place to visit anytime soon.
Got any other mindblowing facts for us?
Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
facts.net/fun-facts/
drhodl@lemmy.world 5 days ago
You should travel. It will open your eyes to the shit going on in America that apparently you Americans think is “normal”.
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
I have and do, likely more than you. Thanks for patronizing!
That doesn’t change my point, that the danger of gun violence is a problem, but is considerably made out to be worse than the reality by the media.
Like, we have states larger than some European countries. If you took the reporting on all the bad shit happening over the equivalent space/population amount in Europe it would be pretty fucking harrowing as well.
I’ve known multiple people fall into a life of constant anxiety due to overexposing themselves to the media. Convinced that every city was a fucking gun violence warzone. That horrible things were happening all the time. They didn’t know anyone who knew anyone who had experienced the things they were convinced were regular horrible occurences. And they knew more than one person (mutual friends) that worked and lived in the US city with the highest homicide rate at the time. None of those people had been even in the vicinity of gun violence.
I’ve been around for nearly 35 years, and I enjoy talking with people. I’ve met only one single person who had been a victim of gun violence, in that they were robbed at gunpoint while working nights at a gas station in a rough area.
There are fucking studies about this shit that are over 15 years old that show that exposure to news media back then caused people to ridiculously overestimate the frequency of crime (and especially violent crime). News has only become more emotionally charged since.
I’m not saying America is some amazing place. I’m just saying that the news would have you believe that almost everyone here has had a gun violence experience, or that visitng the US is unsafe because of gun violence, when that’s not the case.
drhodl@lemmy.world 4 days ago
So, why then are the statistics of dead, murdered school children so much higher than anywhere else in the world? I just googled, and there are 4300 child gun deaths in US every year, about 3600 in school shootings. That’s an apalling number, and the fact you guys don’t try to restrict guns, is even more apalling imo. For general gun deaths…"The U.S. has significantly higher gun death rates than most other developed nations, ranking as an outlier among high-income countries, though lower than some Latin American nations. While the U.S. rate is substantially higher than places like Canada, Australia, and European countries, it’s lower than countries with extreme violence like El Salvador or Venezuela, but its overall firearm mortality is in the top percentiles globally. " USA has third world statistics, and while 3rd world countries do have a lot of gun violence, they have almost zero school shootings… I’m not trying to be patronising, but it sounds as if you have a somewhat sheltered existence. To the rest of the normal and decent world, guns are restricted to those who have a need, and are demonstrably sane. USA is open slather, with no public psych care available, and you guys think this is normal. YOU are the outliers, and your cowardly politicians are owned by the gun lobby, so it perpetuates. Sane people see how fucking stupid this is, even as you deflect the problem to the media, and try to minimize it. The statistics say that you are wrong, and your children are paying for it.