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In 2015, there have been 32 mass shootings (defined as 4 or more people killed) in the US, there's been 298 total, but in those cases 3 or fewer people were killed. There's been 1 in all of Europe this year.

http://shootingtracker.com/wiki/Mass_Shootings_in_2015
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers_(Europe)

Note that the wiki article for Europe will require going to its attached pages for other mass-shooting events that include school, workplace or domestic locations. The first list includes only partly-public area shootings.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
The issue is that we don't actually have a mass shooting problem in the US, regardless of what the media and politicians claim. Per 100k, your odds of being killed in a mass shooting are lower than in other European countries with much stricter gun laws.

Yeah, I've seen this argument bandied about. It's a pretty stupid argument, to be honest. It either ignores national differences and looks at all countries, whether developed or not, or it includes countries like Mexico as a developed country, or it considers not being the absolute worst developed in any given year as being just fine. For instance, there's one argument floating around that Norway was worse than the USA over a four year period, just because of the Anders Breivik massacre.

So basically people can avoid the reality by either pretending it makes sense to compare the US to Mexico, or by reassuring themselves that because there's 40 or 50 developed countries in the world, in any given point one of them will probably have suffered a horrible tragedy to bump the US off the top of the table for a little while.

[It's a non-problem, given the millions of gun owners in the US who do nothing wrong.

Mass shootings are a minor problem. Shootings, which claim about 10,000 lives a year, are quite a major problem.

Keep in mind that shootingtracker.com data is...somewhat suspect, and has included things like 11 year old's with pellet guns (resulting in no injuries of note) as a "mass shooting", and the operator of the site has a rather, colorful, background in (their words) "propaganda".

 sebster wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
[It's a non-problem, given the millions of gun owners in the US who do nothing wrong.

Mass shootings are a minor problem. Shootings, which claim about 10,000 lives a year, are quite a major problem.

10,000 lives is only a couple of thousandths of 1% of the population of the US. How can something that is victimizing a tiny fraction of the population be classified as a major problem?

Prestor Jon wrote:
10,000 lives is only a couple of thousandths of 1% of the population of the US. How can something that is victimizing a tiny fraction of the population be classified as a major problem?

Because it's 10,000 people. Holy gak did I really have to type that?

If there was a kind of cancer that killed 10,000 people a year, would you claim that researching methods of prevention and treatment wasn't needed because it isn't a major problem?

Prestor Jon wrote:
10,000 lives is only a couple of thousandths of 1% of the population of the US. How can something that is victimizing a tiny fraction of the population be classified as a major problem?

Because 10000 people is a fairly large number of people, regardless of how large a percentage it is of the total?

Prestor Jon wrote:

 sebster wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
[It's a non-problem, given the millions of gun owners in the US who do nothing wrong.

Mass shootings are a minor problem. Shootings, which claim about 10,000 lives a year, are quite a major problem.

10,000 lives is only a couple of thousandths of 1% of the population of the US. How can something that is victimizing a tiny fraction of the population be classified as a major problem?

Hrm, I would say it's an issue, but more fundamentally than a gun issue, it's a socio-economic and cultural issue where violence is just more prevalent within the US than in most similarly developed nations.

 sebster wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
10,000 lives is only a couple of thousandths of 1% of the population of the US. How can something that is victimizing a tiny fraction of the population be classified as a major problem?

Because it's 10,000 people. Holy gak did I really have to type that?

If there was a kind of cancer that killed 10,000 people a year, would you claim that researching methods of prevention and treatment wasn't needed because it isn't a major problem?

I still argue the principle of dealing with the bigger problem of 83,000 people a year dying from alcohol related causes. Yes, there is no denying 10,000 people a year is bad. 83, 000, though, should be addressed with all the vigor the gun control lobby and liberal news media uses. The thing is, though, a large amount of the population likes drinking and labor under the assumption that drinking won't affect them, even though as many people per year are killed by drunk drivers as are murdered in gun related violence.
In my mind, it all comes down to a mistaken perception of power.

Relapse wrote:
I still argue the principle of dealing with the bigger problem of 83,000 people a year dying from alcohol related causes.

Why does it have to be one or the other?

 Vaktathi wrote:
Hrm, I would say it's an issue, but more fundamentally than a gun issue, it's a socio-economic and cultural issue where violence is just more prevalent within the US than in most similarly developed nations.

Actually, in terms of crimes per capita or violent crimes per capita, the US is actually pretty middle of the road. It's just murder where it stands way outside the rest of the developed world.

I mean, I certainly agree that culture is an issue (though seperating gun culture from gun saturation is a bit of a chicken and the egg). But it's way too simplistic to just assume the US is just a more violent, more criminal place in general, because it isn't.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Keep in mind that shootingtracker.com data is...somewhat suspect, and has included things like 11 year old's with pellet guns (resulting in no injuries of note) as a "mass shooting", and the operator of the site has a rather, colorful, background in (their words) "propaganda".

Which I discounted from my tally, since I only included (as I mentioned) events with 4 or more killed.

Relapse wrote:
I still argue the principle of dealing with the bigger problem of 83,000 people a year dying from alcohol related causes. Yes, there is no denying 10,000 people a year is bad. 83, 000, though, should be addressed with all the vigor the gun control lobby and liberal news media uses. The thing is, though, a large amount of the population likes drinking and labor under the assumption that drinking won't affect them, even though as many people per year are killed by drunk drivers as are murdered in gun related violence.

Yes, we've had this conversation a bunch of times before. And I'll be honest, I'm kind of disappointed you're still repeating the exact same thoughts you had when you first raised this issue.

For starters, most people don't drink in the mistaken assumption that it won't negatively affect them. Tell a person that that drinking, epecially binge drinking, negatively impacts their long term health, and they'll likely say 'duh, you patronising dumbass'. Instead, it becomes an issue of each person balancing that long term health consequence against the fun they're going to have in having some drinks.

And that's how any of these issues need to be judged. Does the amount of fun people get out of the product justify the harm? And if it isn't justified, is that negative net result sufficient to justify government response? So for heroin, for instance, we've made a call that the harm vastly outweighs the benefit, and by enough that we believe the drug needs to be banned entirely. For drinking we think its a much closer thing, so we've put in place some laws and restrictions, but people are still able to drink. Guns are similar to drugs, with some laws and restrictions, but for the most part if you want a gun you can get it.

That's the basis on which everything is assessed. Not by ranking it against some other death toll, or anything else like that, but by comparing the amount of benefit in each product to its harm.

 Psienesis wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Keep in mind that shootingtracker.com data is...somewhat suspect, and has included things like 11 year old's with pellet guns (resulting in no injuries of note) as a "mass shooting", and the operator of the site has a rather, colorful, background in (their words) "propaganda".

Which I discounted from my tally, since I only included (as I mentioned) events with 4 or more killed.

Right, I just wanted to caution about its use as a source is all.

 sebster wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
10,000 lives is only a couple of thousandths of 1% of the population of the US. How can something that is victimizing a tiny fraction of the population be classified as a major problem?

Because it's 10,000 people. Holy gak did I really have to type that?

If there was a kind of cancer that killed 10,000 people a year, would you claim that researching methods of prevention and treatment wasn't needed because it isn't a major problem?

They'd likely just find some way to consider it a moral shortcoming of those who died and write the situation off as being better off without without them regardless of whatever effort it took to cure and whatever value the people in question provided.

 sebster wrote:
And that's how any of these issues need to be judged. Does the amount of fun people get out of the product justify the harm? And if it isn't justified, is that negative net result sufficient to justify government response? So for heroin, for instance, we've made a call that the harm vastly outweighs the benefit, and by enough that we believe the drug needs to be banned entirely. For drinking we think its a much closer thing, so we've put in place some laws and restrictions, but people are still able to drink. Guns are similar to drugs, with some laws and restrictions, but for the most part if you want a gun you can get it.

That's the basis on which everything is assessed. Not by ranking it against some other death toll, or anything else like that, but by comparing the amount of benefit in each product to its harm.

I wish this was true. But given the history of anti-marijuana legislation, and the lack of scientific rigor in declaring it as bad as heroin, I don't.

Moreover, it's a bit tangential here, anyway. Any significant change starts off as a constitutional problem for the US. It's not an easy process.. And that's before you consider the extra (political, emotional) hurdle of trying to amend our Bill of Rights.

Any lesser change isn't likely to have changed this outcome. I live in California, with the most stringent gun control laws in the country. We have the safe gun storage laws already. If a parent isn't storing their shotgun safely with an 11, year old in the house, adding a minor criminal sanction isn't really likely to compel smarter behavior; it just adds a little to what you can charge the parents with.

 insaniak wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I still argue the principle of dealing with the bigger problem of 83,000 people a year dying from alcohol related causes.

Why does it have to be one or the other?

I agree, we could talk about both, but I have never seen anyone on these threads ever muster any concern over the far larger number of victims of alcohol as gun violence. Even if we factor in suicides and accidents, alcohol still kills three times as many people, yet nary a thing is said about it to the degree gun deaths are spoken of.



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 sebster wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I still argue the principle of dealing with the bigger problem of 83,000 people a year dying from alcohol related causes. Yes, there is no denying 10,000 people a year is bad. 83, 000, though, should be addressed with all the vigor the gun control lobby and liberal news media uses. The thing is, though, a large amount of the population likes drinking and labor under the assumption that drinking won't affect them, even though as many people per year are killed by drunk drivers as are murdered in gun related violence.

Yes, we've had this conversation a bunch of times before. And I'll be honest, I'm kind of disappointed you're still repeating the exact same thoughts you had when you first raised this issue.

For starters, most people don't drink in the mistaken assumption that it won't negatively affect them. Tell a person that that drinking, epecially binge drinking, negatively impacts their long term health, and they'll likely say 'duh, you patronising dumbass'. Instead, it becomes an issue of each person balancing that long term health consequence against the fun they're going to have in having some drinks.

And that's how any of these issues need to be judged. Does the amount of fun people get out of the product justify the harm? And if it isn't justified, is that negative net result sufficient to justify government response? So for heroin, for instance, we've made a call that the harm vastly outweighs the benefit, and by enough that we believe the drug needs to be banned entirely. For drinking we think its a much closer thing, so we've put in place some laws and restrictions, but people are still able to drink. Guns are similar to drugs, with some laws and restrictions, but for the most part if you want a gun you can get it.

That's the basis on which everything is assessed. Not by ranking it against some other death toll, or anything else like that, but by comparing the amount of benefit in each product to its harm.

You citing the number 10,000 as something you didn't even believe you had to type about in relation to explaining how awful the toll is. Then you say we should weigh the benefit to the harm in apparently trying to minimize 83,000 people a year dying.

So you are saying two out three domestic abuse cases are a benefit of alcohol, since it's involved in that many, or all of the lost jobs and broken marriages, and health problems are benefits? Prohibition won't solve it though, since we'd just have a repeat of what went on in the 20's.

Relapse wrote:
... yet nary a thing is said about it to the degree gun deaths are spoken of.

Probably because alcohol-related deaths tend to involve fewer people wandering into schools and slaughtering children with it.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

Relapse wrote:
So you are saying two out three domestic abuse cases are a benefit of alcohol, since it's involved in that many, or all of the lost jobs and broken marriages, and health problems are benefits?

No, he wasn't saying that.

 insaniak wrote:

Relapse wrote:
... yet nary a thing is said about it to the degree gun deaths are spoken of.

Probably because alcohol-related deaths tend to involve fewer people wandering into schools and slaughtering children with it.

True, alcoholism just harms exponentially more children within the confines of the home. Since all the children who suffer emotional/mental/physical abuse at the hands of alcoholics don't end up lying dead in a classroom its OK for society to ignore the problem.

 insaniak wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I still argue the principle of dealing with the bigger problem of 83,000 people a year dying from alcohol related causes.

Why does it have to be one or the other?

Of course we can and should try to solve more than one problem at a time. That being said, if if the rationale for action is "saving lives", then why aren't we having a huge national push to reduce heart disease instead? That's way easier to work on, doesn't involve complex political realities, and kills way, way more people.

It's about trying to save lives, isn't it? What's wrong with calling into question our priorities? If my house is on fire, I might point out that we don't need to be dusting the bookcases.

This is a legitimate question. I'm not trying to be snarky or intentionally obtuse; but if the reason we need to do something about people dying from gun violence is to protect life... isn't it a bit misplaced, in that gun violence in general and spree killings in specific are statistically very rare and incredibly rare, respectively?

 insaniak wrote:

Relapse wrote:
... yet nary a thing is said about it to the degree gun deaths are spoken of.

Probably because alcohol-related deaths tend to involve fewer people wandering into schools and slaughtering children with it.

Yet somehow, in spite of that, alcohol is responsible for almost 9 times as many deaths per year as people in gun related homicides.


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 Ouze wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I still argue the principle of dealing with the bigger problem of 83,000 people a year dying from alcohol related causes.

Why does it have to be one or the other?

Of course we can and should try to solve more than one problem at a time. That being said, if if the rationale for action is "saving lives", then why aren't we having a huge national push to reduce heart disease instead? That's way easier to work on, doesn't involve complex political realities, and kills way, way more people.

It's about trying to save lives, isn't it? What's wrong with calling into question our priorities? If my house is on fire, I might point out that we don't need to be dusting the bookcases.

There is justifiably already a bigger push to eliminate heart disease, though.

In this case, gun violence is the bookshelf. We already understand prohibition doesn't work by trying to throw the breaks on a Nation's
culture, heritage, or any other intergral aspect of that society. All that ends up happening is that otherwise law abiding people are suddenly criminals and accomplices to the murders that happen so they can have their desires met, be it alcohol in the prohibition era, drugs from Mexico and SA nowadays, or possibly guns in some future time.

 insaniak wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
10,000 lives is only a couple of thousandths of 1% of the population of the US. How can something that is victimizing a tiny fraction of the population be classified as a major problem?

Because 10000 people is a fairly large number of people, regardless of how large a percentage it is of the total?

No it isn't. 10,000 people is a miniscule amount of people. It's somewhere between 0.002 and 0.003 of 1% of the population of the country. There are tens of millions of gun owners and hundreds of millions of guns in the country and only a few thousandths of one percent of the country are killed by guns annually. Five times as many people will dies of cancer this year in the state of California alone then will be murdered by guns in the entire country.

10,000 is a lot more than zero sure and every murder is a tragedy for the family and friends of the victim but 10,000 people on a national scale isn't anywhere close to being a major problem.

We're not going to enact drastic fundamental changes to the US Constitution, multiple state constitutions, overturn SCOTUS decisions and change the culture across large swathes of the country because 99.997% of the people aren't getting murdered with guns.

 Janthkin wrote:
I wish this was true. But given the history of anti-marijuana legislation, and the lack of scientific rigor in declaring it as bad as heroin, I don't.

Good point. To clarify, I'm not saying these assessments are done perfectly, in some kind of Vulcan logic with all facts perfectly understood. I'm just saying that people take individual products, and make a personal assessment about how much they think people gain from the product against how much they think people lose, and go from there.

So it doesn't mean we always, or even often, produce the correct level of laws for any given product. But it is still the basic framework for how we try and determine what the amount should be.

Moreover, it's a bit tangential here, anyway. Any significant change starts off as a constitutional problem for the US. It's not an easy process.. And that's before you consider the extra (political, emotional) hurdle of trying to amend our Bill of Rights.

Sort of. That particular clause is pretty vague. I mean, lots of people are certain that it says one thing or another, but you'll note all those people believe it clearly says exactly what their own opinion on guns just happens to be. There's not many people out there saying 'oh I wish we could ban guns, but the 2nd says what it says'. Nor are there many people saying 'I believe gun ownership should be a personal right, but I think the second was only really talking about militias'.

My point, basically, is that if people start to decide that guns need to be more heavily controlled, then that belief will flow through politics and in to how the constitution is read. This has already happened, but in reverse, as a change in beliefs about guns at the grassroots level flowed through to the SC and produced the eventual rulings in favour of protection of private ownership.

Whether or not we'll see a change in people's beliefs in any of our lifetimes is a whole other conversation. Whether we should is another question entirely

If a parent isn't storing their shotgun safely with an 11, year old in the house, adding a minor criminal sanction isn't really likely to compel smarter behavior; it just adds a little to what you can charge the parents with.

Yeah, this is a good point. Any parent with the foresight to want to prevent punishment for an unstored gun alreaady has the foresight to avoid losing their child to an unstored gun.

Relapse wrote:
I agree, we could talk about both, but I have never seen anyone on these threads ever muster any concern over the far larger number of victims of alcohol as gun violence. Even if we factor in suicides and accidents, alcohol still kills three times as many people, yet nary a thing is said about it to the degree gun deaths are spoken of.

Yay! I was waiting for you to trot this one out again!

People talk about guns because many people see it as a big issue. People don't talk about alcohol, or swimming pool covers, or cars, or medicine bottles, or any of the other red herrings people like to bring up because they don't see them as big issues; and they are all areas where, regardless of how you feel about them, work is being done to make these already statistically (for amount and duration of contact) things safer.

As I always say, if you feel strongly about any of these things, go start a thread... one which is not a thinly veiled "waaaaa! People are mean about guns but look at all these things which are super deadly that no one cares about because they hate guns and America!" and I'm sure you will get a good discussion (this time...).

Prestor Jon wrote:

True, alcoholism just harms exponentially more children within the confines of the home. Since all the children who suffer emotional/mental/physical abuse at the hands of alcoholics don't end up lying dead in a classroom its OK for society to ignore the problem.

Except that society isn't ignoring the problem.

Can't speak for the US, obviously, but there has been a lot of work done in the last couple of decades here to attempt to change peoples' attitudes towards alcohol. Just banning it wouldn't be likely to work, and would be a hugely unpopular move... but educating people about the dangers of it, and changing people's perception towards 'appropriate' usage of it can and does have an impact.

Prestor Jon wrote:
No it isn't. 10,000 people is a miniscule amount of people..

If you honestly think that, then we're unlikely to reach any sort of agreement here.

Because I can't even comprehend the mindset that can view ten thousand deaths as insignificant. The fact that there are a lot more than 10000 people still alive doesn't in any way make that number any smaller.

Relapse wrote:
You citing the number 10,000 as something you didn't even believe you had to type about in relation to explaining how awful the toll is.

Yeah, and if anyone said they didn't think 80,000 deaths to alcohol was a problem so why should anything be done about it, I'd type the exact same thing.

So you are saying two out three domestic abuse cases are a benefit of alcohol, since it's involved in that many, or all of the lost jobs and broken marriages, and health problems are benefits?

No, of course not. Don't make up stupid accusations. Obviously those are costs.

The benefits are the millions of people who go home and have a quiet drink, and enjoy that drink. The benefits are the millions who find alcohol helps them enjoy a night out. The benefits are the millions who enjoy being in a slightly looser frame of mind (or a much looser frame of mind, in some cases).

Now you, as we've estabished before, give those benefits. Which is fine, that's your opinion. Lots of other people hold different opinions. And so everyone weighs up those considerations, and decides what course of action they think is best for a given product. And then democracy works, more or less over the long term, to establish a set of policies that more or less is an aggregate of those individual points of view.

The point, to repeat it once again, is that each product is measured in terms of its own benefits and costs. So something with a lot of benefits and a lot of costs is measured by itself. Something else with smaller benefits and smaller costs is measured by itself.

What you shouldn't do, what you try to do all the time in these threads, is to try and isolate purely the costs of each product, and then rank products in terms of only those costs. All you end up with is a list of products more or less in order of how commonly they're used in society, with absolutely no understanding of whether the product represents an overall benefit or harm to society.

 SilverMK2 wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I agree, we could talk about both, but I have never seen anyone on these threads ever muster any concern over the far larger number of victims of alcohol as gun violence. Even if we factor in suicides and accidents, alcohol still kills three times as many people, yet nary a thing is said about it to the degree gun deaths are spoken of.

Yay! I was waiting for you to trot this one out again!

People talk about guns because many people see it as a big issue. People don't talk about alcohol, or swimming pool covers, or cars, or medicine bottles, or any of the other red herrings people like to bring up because they don't see them as big issues; and they are all areas where, regardless of how you feel about them, work is being done to make these already statistically (for amount and duration of contact) things safer.

As I always say, if you feel strongly about any of these things, go start a thread... one which is not a thinly veiled "waaaaa! People are mean about guns but look at all these things which are super deadly that no one cares about because they hate guns and America!" and I'm sure you will get a good discussion (this time...).

How ever you want to color it, far more people die from alcohol than guns, and to put Sebster's point in, far more people die of heart disease than both of the first two. Guns are the things that get people all piss in their pants scared, though. Just seems funny to me, especially in light of people throwing around that 10, 000 killed yearly number and minimizing the far larger number of other kinds of deaths that are largely preventable.

 Ouze wrote:
This is a legitimate question. I'm not trying to be snarky or intentionally obtuse; but if the reason we need to do something about people dying from gun violence is to protect life... isn't it a bit misplaced, in that gun violence in general and spree killings in specific are statistically very rare and incredibly rare, respectively?

Gun violence is not uncommon. Again, 10,000 is a big number. Spree killing is relatively rare, and so are gun accidents.

Really, it comes down to what makes it on the TV. The world would be a different place if the news just reported on statistical studies - but it runs on stories of direct personal horror, and the more unusual the more it will be covered. So guns get an unusual focus, but then terrorism is an even bigger story, and even in it's worst year that was dwarfed by gun murder. And because people think what's on the news must be what's most important, people end up with a really weird view of the world.

Relapse wrote:
Guns are the things that get people all piss in their pants scared, though.

Indeed. It's almost as if 'deaths from gun-related violence' and 'deaths as a result of alcohol' are two completely separate issues...


You seem to be assuming that people complaining about gun-related violence, in a thread discussing gun-related violence, are somehow blind to any other danger to people's health. The more likely possibility is that in a thread related to gun-related violence, people are discussing gun-related violence.

 sebster wrote:

Relapse wrote:
You citing the number 10,000 as something you didn't even believe you had to type about in relation to explaining how awful the toll is.

Yeah, and if anyone said they didn't think 80,000 deaths to alcohol was a problem so why should anything be done about it, I'd type the exact same thing.

So you are saying two out three domestic abuse cases are a benefit of alcohol, since it's involved in that many, or all of the lost jobs and broken marriages, and health problems are benefits?

No, of course not. Don't make up stupid accusations. Obviously those are costs.

The benefits are the millions of people who go home and have a quiet drink, and enjoy that drink. The benefits are the millions who find alcohol helps them enjoy a night out. The benefits are the millions who enjoy being in a slightly looser frame of mind (or a much looser frame of mind, in some cases).

Now you, as we've estabished before, give those benefits. Which is fine, that's your opinion. Lots of other people hold different opinions. And so everyone weighs up those considerations, and decides what course of action they think is best for a given product. And then democracy works, more or less over the long term, to establish a set of policies that more or less is an aggregate of those individual points of view.

The point, to repeat it once again, is that each product is measured in terms of its own benefits and costs. So something with a lot of benefits and a lot of costs is measured by itself. Something else with smaller benefits and smaller costs is measured by itself.

What you shouldn't do, what you try to do all the time in these threads, is to try and isolate purely the costs of each product, and then rank products in terms of only those costs. All you end up with is a list of products more or less in order of how commonly they're used in society, with absolutely no understanding of whether the product represents an overall benefit or harm to society.

Now we get closer to the heart of the matter. People find relaxation and pleasure in shooting guns, yet find themselves under attack in the media and here on Dakka because they like guns.
To let you know, I don't own guns and never felt the need to have one in the house with my kids. Happily in this country, that is my own decision and not something forced on me.


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 insaniak wrote:

Relapse wrote:
Guns are the things that get people all piss in their pants scared, though.

Indeed. It's almost as if 'deaths from gun-related violence' and 'deaths as a result of alcohol' are two completely separate issues...


You seem to be assuming that people complaining about gun-related violence, in a thread discussing gun-related violence, are somehow blind to any other danger to people's health. The more likely possibility is that in a thread related to gun-related violence, people are discussing gun-related violence.

Dead is dead. It's just one kills far more than the other.

Prestor Jon wrote:
No it isn't. 10,000 people is a miniscule amount of people. It's somewhere between 0.002 and 0.003 of 1% of the population of the country.

Were you posting arguments like that when 3,000 people died in the Twin Towers?

If you could drag your murder rate down to something closer the rest of the developed world, so the total deaths would be about 6,000 or 7,000 less than they are now, would you say 'nah, not worth it, 10,000 is a tiny number'.

10,000 is a lot more than zero sure and every murder is a tragedy for the family and friends of the victim but 10,000 people on a national scale isn't anywhere close to being a major problem.

And here you're falling for the same basic logic fail as Relapse. Look at the number, decide it is small by some vague standard, and then just declare that nothing must be done. You just completely missed the step where you figure out what might be done, and what that would achieve and cost.

Now, it is possible to decide that the possible solutions might cost too much and acheive too little, that's where I'm at personally. But whatever your conclusions, at least you'd have the beginnings of an argument that made sense.

We're not going to enact drastic fundamental changes to the US Constitution, multiple state constitutions, overturn SCOTUS decisions and change the culture across large swathes of the country because 99.997% of the people aren't getting murdered with guns.

I don't think you've got any idea how political change works.

Just think about it this way - 50 years ago not even the NRA thought the 2nd Amendment applied to private ownership. But political opinions change, and as they do