Brains vs Bullets
So I'm taking a break from my regularly scheduled travel updates to share my thoughts on a huge issue with my home country.
I've met many different people from many different countries while traveling abroad but I often get asked the same question: "What's up with your country and guns?" (The second question is usually Donald Trump? Really?!) In fact the US ranks #1 with 90 guns per 100 people. (Is that really necessary outside of a zombie apocalypse?) There's no easy answer because it's such a divisive and complex issue but videos like this sure don't help.
Many people keep trying to justify our gun culture by claiming that more guns = less crime which is preposterous. The literal only function guns have is to kill. Call it murder or homicide or self-defense or whatever you want, it's still killing.
This is completely biased and unscientific yet is presented as fact because... statistics. Gun ownership deterring gun crime is correlation, NOT causation. There are many more social and economic factors that contribute to crime, not just the weapons used to commit them.
And comparing America to Honduras and a bunch of other underdeveloped nations rife with corruption? Really? That's apples and oranges in terms of both population and government. Comparing Plano, Texas to Detroit, Michigan is also absurd.
Both comparisons, not to mention this entire video, assume that all people in our country and the world are the constant variable and guns are the dependent variable which is ridiculous because people are free-willed individuals, not a single, homogenous entity.
And by the way, I checked the source cited here and the US is currently #91, ahead of all other more comparable, western countries except (surprisingly) Canada at #89.
Also worth noting, the intentional homicide rate of the US (#91) is higher than all of the countries I've visited these six months: Japan (#114), Cambodia (#119), Indonesia (#120), Malaysia (#122), Singapore (#125), Thailand (#126), Vietnam (#128), India (#132), Sri Lanka (#137), Australia (#210). I think my parents should be more worried about me coming home than traveling abroad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/…/List_of_countries_by_intentional…
The problem isn't parties or politics or guns directly - the problem is people killing other people - but guns absolutely make killing a whole heck of a lot easier.
My basic message to my country - and this applies to the rest of the world too: