So, I saw this shared on my Facebook newsfeed last night by a friend. It makes me sing, in sarcasm...
Ohhhh Caaaanadaaa....da da da da da daahhhhh!
Can you hear the melody? That's me trying to remember the words to Canada's song.
Below was my response to her post....
America has a population 10 times that of Canada. There are plenty of mass shootings in Canada, and America has about 10 times as many mass shootings as Canada, in proportion to the population. Canada also has a gun problem.
Why does the media ONLY focus on America?
Let's not ignore the many hundreds of gun deaths in South America, Brazil and Mexico every day. Double that of the USA. Why is everyone focusing on Americas 'gun problem' when Brazil has almost half the population of America yet more annual gun deaths? Where is the outcry for protecting Mexican children? Brazilian children?
I am so confused by how many of my friends are refusing to look at the bigger picture and blindingly follow the media's narrow path on this topic. When so many of us have open minds ignoring our governments and the mass media about vaccines, education and healthcare yet hang onto the media's mutilated data and biased opinions on guns. Youtube is censoring videos every minute that dare to suggest Parkland's child interviews were staged. The media so desperately trying act like experts on gun control using the tears of the victims to try and manipulate our minds and our votes.
Do you know how hard it is to find the actual statistic for the number of gun deaths per year in America? I couldn't actually find a written figure. Because the printed figure is 10.5 deaths per 100,000. Which sounds a lot worse than 0.01% of Americans die by guns, which is 35,000 per year (population of America 355,000,000).
In Brazil, with a population of 200,000,000, there were 40,000 gun deaths in 2017 (0.02% of the population.) Mexico gun deaths 2017 - 24 per 100,000 people, more than double that of USA. Honduras, Venezuela, El Salvador, Jamaica all have massive gun deaths annually, 2 to 3 times that of USA. Very little and buried media coverage.
Ever heard of Swaziland's gun problem? Nearly 4 times worse than USA.
Now here is something very interesting that flips these statistics on their head. 60% of all gun deaths in the USA are suicides. Which means that 6 out of every 10.5 of those gun deaths in the USA are not violent homicides or accidental. However, less than 5% of all gun deaths in all the other countries mentioned are suicides, which means that nearly 95% of all the gun deaths in the other countries are violent, purposeful and actually reflect the safety of the country. If you were to remove the suicides from the gun death totals in America, there would be 4 people per 100,000, just 0,5 people per 100,000 higher than Finland. (See what I did there, I didn't remove the statistic for suicides for Finland to make my point) That's exactly what the media does to ensure maximum effect and anger by the public. (Finland has a very high % of suicides per gun deaths)
I'm just trying to put things into perspective. I don't disagree that there is a problem with gun deaths in America, but more gun laws on top of more gun laws will not solve America's gun death problem. The one common denominator that I see from all the countries where gun death homicide rates are so high is a drug problem. Where there are gun deaths, there are drug problems. That is a fact. The majority of gun deaths including suicides are drug related, either involving illegal or prescription drugs. In my opinion, the illegal and prescription drug problem in America exacerbates the gun death problem, both homicides and suicides. The relationship has been proven in multiple studies.
Another common denominator, private health care in a system where the pharmaceutical companies have total control monopolising the market and forcing drug prices to skyrocket for maximum profit for both the manufacturers and the doctors who prescribe the never ending lists of unnecessary medications. Most mass shootings in the USA with the highest death toll involve shooters who were taking prescription medication for mental health diseases.
The situation is far more complex than the media would dare to dig, more complex than the average person's brain can handle and so complex that the government don't have a shitty clue what to do about it. So why on earth would we ask them to make more gun laws when they do such a terrible job enforcing the gun laws, mental health provisions and health care premiums that are already in place?
Her reply...
Guns are bad. We all need to stop killing each other. If we didn't have guns or weapons then the world would be a singing rainbow of love and joy, peace at last forever more. Skipping fields of sunshine and bunny rabbits nibbling on clover blossoms while children giggle on the hillside.
Or something along those lines.