Comments by "Mark H" (@markh1011) on "Sydney Watson" channel.

  1. "I would Never move to Australia." Australia ranks higher than the US in the categories of Safety AND Freedom. ...having smarter gun laws does not let the criminals take over... that's bullshit fear mongering.
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  2. Typing while watching and I'm hearing several problems with what you're saying. Your defence that America's gun problems aren't that bad was to name a few crappy third world countries that were worse. With this defence you inadvertently contradicted your claim. If you're even in the same range as dangerous third world countries then there IS a problem. How does the US compare to 1st world countries? Terribly. Looking at the title I could ask, why are gun supporters so obsessed with trying to pretend the US doesn't have a problem? As to why we are fixated with the US... I'm sure you already know the answer to this or could figure it out... In Australia...... music, TV shows, movies, computer games, any news globally whether its about politics or famous people... predominantly comes from the US. and not by a small margin...I know more about US politics than I do about Australian politics... If another country starts churning out content like that we'll follow them too. The reasons we focus on gun massacres is very similar to the reasons we focus on terrorist incidents. Our interest is related to our fear of the incident and not necessarily directly proportional to the body count. 70-80% of gun related deaths are suicide? No way. It's more than homicides but not that high. If I go back through recent years it gets over 60% a lot but 70-80? No. You make the argument that having a firearm to prevent crime is better than banning firearms and making crime explode... sigh... 1 - No intelligent person is trying to ban all firearms. That's ultimately a straw man argument you're attacking. 2. - We see from the US disaster that a lot of people having firearms does little to prevent crime. Australia has a lower crime rate. ..and even ranks higher than the US in freedom. 3. The laws were made more strict in Australia and crime did not explode. In fact as I said our crime rate is still less than the US. You're still using the general, fear based argument that guns makes you safer. We know from the US that this is not the case. Ok I'm getting further into the video and I think you just made a comparison between the lives medicine saves and guns. Did you really just do that? You tried to draw a parallel between life saving medicine and guns? Sigh...that's it I'm out. I think I wasted my time even responding. A little advice, being obnoxious and sarcastic is not a substitute for putting together cogent arguments.
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  3. " Researchers put it down to just returning to how they were" What researchers? NRA ones? This is a vague, unsupported claim. In the 18 years up to and including the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, there were 13-gun homicides in which five or more people died, not including the perpetrator. No they were not mostly people killing their family as you imply. in the next 22 years there was what, 1? 2? All coincidence I guess? Oh but "researchers" say it was. You focus on general gun violence. That was not the trigger for the change. Massacres was. ..and the change in laws did have an effect. That's the point. It's a relevant one. At the very least it shows that tightening laws is one strategy that will impact the regularity of massacres. While you can point to differences between the countries that is something that must be considered. If you deny this I can only think you're being blinded by bias.
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  4. Excellent research. How do those stats compare with deaths from Islamic terrorists in the US?
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  5.  @andrewmattox1233  Thanks. To be honest, I'm a supporter of better gun control. I'm not talking full bans or anything unrealistic. I do think America could learn from where things have gone well in other countries. Now that sentence alone can start people yelling and screaming at me. I know other countries are different. I know America is a great country. I'm not putting the US down. I like America. I'm just saying that the US isn't necessarily the best at every single thing. Some Americans seem to disagree with me. But back to the point I've noticed different reactions to massacres from white people and terrorist attacks from the left and the right. I don't identify with either left or right. I think the left deflect and make terrible excuses when it comes to terrorist islamic terrorist attacks and the right do something similar when it comes to gun massacres. I suspect if the death toll from terrorism in the US compared to that of gun related murders things would be different there. As you point out, in the big picture, the number isn't actually significantly high compared to some other causes of death. But both events strike fear. Both trigger a reaction. Our reactions aren't always rational. Mosquitoes kill more people than spiders each year but most of us are terrified of spiders and not mosquitoes. Fear of dying in a car crash is dismissed easily compared to the fear of dying in a plane crash. Anyway I don't have a particularly coherent point here, beyond that you're right, the numbers aren't that high but the events strike fear that goes beyond the numbers. Just my opinion.
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