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US demands access to tourists' social media histories (www.dw.com)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 17 points 10 months ago (11 children)

reason #2 why I would never visit that country

(#1 is the mass shootings and gun mania)

(tbh the only thing I'd want to visit to begin with are the giant sequoia in California)

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  • [–] -5 points 10 months ago (10 children)

    How... how much gun violence do you think actually happens here?

    There's a lot by number, and that's a serious fucking issue, but the US is also massive. It's not a regular or frequent danger of normal life here.

    Even those numbers are pumped up by the fact that suicide by gun is counted in the exact same "gun violence" statistics as gang violence, and the "school shootings" statistics include all from the "gun violence" stats that occur within a certain radius around, regardless of when it happened (summer break, middle of the night, etc) or if it was any danger to students.

    News overfocuses on shit like that because it pulls eyes and clicks, and therefore ad revenue.

    Again, it is a serious fucking problem, but it's not the kind of thing you're going to experience in daily life or as a tourist.

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  • [–] 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Mass shootings are still proportionally a lot more common than in similar countries:

    There were 109 public mass shootings in the United States and 35 public mass shootings in 35 other economically and politically comparative countries between 2000 and 2022. The United States makes up 33 percent of the combined population of these 36 countries; however, it also accounts for 76 percent of public mass shooting incidents and 70 percent of victim fatalities in these countries. (source)

    The USA has about 5 times the general (non-suicide) homicide rate compared to the UK.

    Add to that the 20 times higher gun ownership rate between USA and Scotland, plus the mental health crisis and extreme political polarisation, and I would rather just not be there, you know 🤷

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Perfectly valid, and thanks for not just jumping on the US bad dogpile and instead citing some stuff.

    I'm just speaking up because I've seen a lot of people online from outside the US running with this idea that gun violence is like, a daily occurence that every US citizen deals with regularly, when that's so fucking far from the reality.

    Yeah, things are a powder keg over here lately and the accessibility of firearms doesn't help, but I've met only one person in my almost 35 years of life who's ever been held at gunpoint and they're the only person I know who has ever been through any form of gun violence.

    There's plenty of reasons to avoid this place for a good long while unfortunately, but I feel like the gun danger has been overblown.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    Relax there's plenty of other reasons to not visit your shithole country

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    You should travel. It will open your eyes to the shit going on in America that apparently you Americans think is "normal".

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    I have and do, likely more than you. Thanks for patronizing!

    That doesn't change my point, that the danger of gun violence is a problem, but is considerably made out to be worse than the reality by the media.

    Like, we have states larger than some European countries. If you took the reporting on all the bad shit happening over the equivalent space/population amount in Europe it would be pretty fucking harrowing as well.

    I've known multiple people fall into a life of constant anxiety due to overexposing themselves to the media. Convinced that every city was a fucking gun violence warzone. That horrible things were happening all the time. They didn't know anyone who knew anyone who had experienced the things they were convinced were regular horrible occurences. And they knew more than one person (mutual friends) that worked and lived in the US city with the highest homicide rate at the time. None of those people had been even in the vicinity of gun violence.

    I've been around for nearly 35 years, and I enjoy talking with people. I've met only one single person who had been a victim of gun violence, in that they were robbed at gunpoint while working nights at a gas station in a rough area.

    There are fucking studies about this shit that are over 15 years old that show that exposure to news media back then caused people to ridiculously overestimate the frequency of crime (and especially violent crime). News has only become more emotionally charged since.

    I'm not saying America is some amazing place. I'm just saying that the news would have you believe that almost everyone here has had a gun violence experience, or that visitng the US is unsafe because of gun violence, when that's not the case.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    So, why then are the statistics of dead, murdered school children so much higher than anywhere else in the world? I just googled, and there are 4300 child gun deaths in US every year, about 3600 in school shootings. That's an apalling number, and the fact you guys don't try to restrict guns, is even more apalling imo. For general gun deaths......"The U.S. has significantly higher gun death rates than most other developed nations, ranking as an outlier among high-income countries, though lower than some Latin American nations. While the U.S. rate is substantially higher than places like Canada, Australia, and European countries, it's lower than countries with extreme violence like El Salvador or Venezuela, but its overall firearm mortality is in the top percentiles globally. " USA has third world statistics, and while 3rd world countries do have a lot of gun violence, they have almost zero school shootings...... I'm not trying to be patronising, but it sounds as if you have a somewhat sheltered existence. To the rest of the normal and decent world, guns are restricted to those who have a need, and are demonstrably sane. USA is open slather, with no public psych care available, and you guys think this is normal. YOU are the outliers, and your cowardly politicians are owned by the gun lobby, so it perpetuates. Sane people see how fucking stupid this is, even as you deflect the problem to the media, and try to minimize it. The statistics say that you are wrong, and your children are paying for it.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    I don't know what to tell you beyond what I've already said.

    I'm not denying that it's a serious goddamn problem. I have acknowledged that in every single comment I've made about this. Please stop insisting that I'm saying otherwise.

    Once again, I am only saying that despite the high numbers, it is not just some ever present part of life over here to the degree that every American, or even a majority, has experienced gun violence. Everyone from the outside seems to think that's true, but it's insanely, laughably not. The quite overwhelming majority of Americans have not experienced gun violence, and won't within their lifetime.

    Our population number is roughly equivalent to 3/4 of the entire European Union's combined population. Any of our numbers relating to people are going to look high unless you bear that in mind.

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