this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
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[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The United States has over 4 times more murders per capita than France, for instance.

One thing a lot of people seem to forget is that the US has significantly more income inequality and significantly less social safety nets than France. Poverty drives crime.

What the US needs most is nationalized healthcare, deregulation of marijuana to cut down on mass incarceration (which breaks up families and drives poverty), actually taxing the rich, and better regulations and workers rights to prevent corporations from exploiting everyone

[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 0 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, but also an easy access to guns enables crimes by itself, and makes existing crimes deadly. That happens on top of other social problems.
A random poor teen with nothing to lose might think about robing a store, but be too scared of being confronted and never actually do it, unless he gets a gun which gives him courage. If a random night robbers get confronted with surprised home owner, they might punch him, scream, and run away, unless they have a gun in which case they're in a shootout and everyone is dead.

That becomes moot if they aren't motivated to commit crimes in the first place.

Even if removing guns from the US reduced crime rates, it wouldn't be as much as doing what I described. Plus, there's an opportunity cost, in that you only have so much political capital to spend on legislation.

How about we focus on improving the lives of 99% of the population instead of wasting political capital on trying to reclassify 50% of the population as criminals for owning guns.