But you don't see children being gunned down every other week in Europe.
The problem is guns.
The person you are replying to did not say guns caused the tragedy. Rather the availability of guns in the U.S. is why we see school shootings every week in the U.S. and not in Europe.
When people in other countries lose their minds they cannot go on rampages as easily because of filters on gun ownership.
In fact before people go on rampages they often go to the US first to get guns so their rampages can be more 'effective' where they actually do live:
They totally can, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China:
> On March 23, 2010, Zheng Minsheng (郑民生)[7] 41, murdered eight children with a knife in an elementary school in Nanping,[8] Fujian province...
> An attacker named Wu Huanming (吴环明), 48, killed seven children and two adults and injured 11 other persons with a cleaver at a kindergarten in Hanzhong, Shaanxi on May 12, 2010...
> On 4 August 2010, 26-year-old Fang Jiantang (方建堂) slashed more than 20 children and staff with a 60 cm knife, killing three children and a teacher at a kindergarten in Zibo, Shandong province....
> The death toll has risen to nine in Friday's stabbing attack outside a middle school in northwestern China allegedly carried out by a former pupil seeking revenge for having been bullied....
etc.
There's a reason 99.8% of this stuff is done with guns. AR-15s, to be specific, or something very similar.
It's because that's what is easy. These people aren't geniuses.
If you take the assault weapons away, the vast majority of this will just stop happening. This is a solved issue. We know how to solve it.
No, the problem is guns in the possession of people who can't use them responsibly. Guns aren't magic. They don't take over a person's mind and make them shoot other people. The people who misuse guns would misuse any other weapon you gave them. Or even things that you might not think of as weapons.
But the vast majority of gun owners are not such people; they are responsible law-abiding citizens. So any policy about guns, at least in the US where we have the Second Amendment as part of our Constitution, has to be based on letting responsible, law-abiding citizens have guns. Otherwise you are punishing responsible, law-abiding citizens for the misdeeds of a very small number of people who are not responsible or law-abiding. That's not a good idea.
The problem is that guns are so readily available that even those that cannot use them responsibly can still get their hands on them. Three of the four guns used in Columbine weren't even purchased by the killers but by a fellow school mate who had turned 18 and could buy them for the killers. Similarly, with the Sandyhook shooting -- it wasn't even the shooter's gun that was used.
In the Columbine case, was the school mate prosecuted for, at the very least, negligently contributing to homicide?
With the Sandy Hook shooting, was the owner of the gun prosecuted for allowing the shooter to have it?
Speed limits: Speed doesn't cause accidents just people who go faster than their ability to control the vehicle. Many people are sensible and wouldn't do this.
Drugs: Many people can take drugs and enjoy them and not descend into anti-social and criminal behavior.
Sure, and if "regulated" means a person has to show some proof of being a responsible citizen, that's fine.
However, Canada has stricter gun laws. While bolt-action hunting rifles are legal and unregistered in Canada, owning one involves getting PAL, which is similar to earning a driver's license. It involves lessons and tests.
And more... murder-y weapons like pistols and "assault-style"[1] rifles are either banned or restricted. Restricted means the gun is registered, you take extra certifications, and you fill out paperwork just to transport it from your home to the firing range, which is basically the only place you can legally fire the thing.
Shootings still happen. There was a tragedy in Quebec City a few years back where a "great replacement" nut shot up a mosque (which illustrates how we have the same cultural problems as Americans). But the number, per capita, is tiny compared to Americans.
It's hard to escape the obvious conclusion that the reason there are so many gun deaths in America is because guns are so poorly controlled.
Most of the street crime guns here are smuggled over the border (America is to guns as Escobar's Colombia was to cocaine), so the lax gun laws don't just impact the USA.
[1] yes I know it's a vague term but you also know what I mean don't @ me.
Our world is filled to the brim with vague constructed terms to solve for a problem, not for a clean categorization. The assault-style category is a desire to lump all the guns that multiply too much the assailant's power. It's not about a certain bullet type, or a specific barrel length. If it's too good at doing a mass shooting, it's assault-style.
The Wikipedia article only covers the major ones, but Canada has a mass shoot pretty regularly too. And if shooting scale by population, you'd expect the US to have 10x as many - all else being equal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mass_shootings_in_Can...
Certainly NOT saying it's not a problem, but one needs to put things in perspective if you want to get to the root cause.
US has 10X as many firearms deaths per capita compared to Canada, which implies 100X as absolute value.
https://globalnews.ca/news/2378037/gun-violence-by-the-numbe...
IMO the biggest problem with the US over Europe is lack of social cohesion, lack of familial cohesion that includes extended families, focus on individualism over community, and lack of social safety nets. These factors have a huge impact on mental well being.
The idea that Europe and the US are very similar other than access to guns just because both are developed western nations is very naive…
California, Illinois and New York have different populations and different issues than Ohio, Texas, and Alabama for example.
