 Welcome to Teams on Topic. I'm your host, Emma Arnson. Today I'm joined with Ramiro and Issa and we have a very interesting topic that I'm excited to get into, but before we do that, let's get into what some people around Davis have to say about it. So our question this week is what do you think are some of the primary causes of gun violence? I think some of the primary causes of gun violence or lack of education on gun safety. I also think some of the laws could be implemented to have more restrictions on certain types of guns. But I think a lot of it has to do with gun violence has to do with mental health in this country. I think we suffer from a big crisis when it comes to mental health of individuals because I feel like whether people use planes, guns, trucks, if people are mentally unstable and they put it in their brain that they want to cause big harm. They'll figure a way to cause harm and I think the system has failed in terms of mental health. I think we don't have enough. I think in a lot of ways in this country, we suffer from health in general, whether that be physical or mental. And that's because of we don't have good health care in this country. And I think people, they don't go to the doctor because they can't afford it. They don't have the right insurance and so forth. So I think that's a bigger problem. I think if people had accessibility to health care, they would go see a therapist that paid for their therapist. Like a lot of insurances, they only pay for like checkups, stuff like that. They don't really pay for people like if you go there and say I'm a schizophrenic, they're like that's a therapist. That's a separate thing. You have to pay that out of pocket. And if you pay out of pocket, that's like $500, $1,000. An average person working a nine to five cannot afford that. And that's where you see a lot of these people who are do these heinous acts of gun violence. A lot of them are not very rich people, you know. That's great. Thank you so much. Masculinity, white supremacy, colonialism and capitalism. Great. Thank you. The number one primary cause I think is the accessibility of guns. They are way, way too easily accessible. So they get in hands of people that shouldn't have them. I also believe I'm a strong proponent of gun control. So I also believe that even when they're obtained illegally, they can be used in a lot of dangerous ways. For example, they can be stolen from the person. They can be used in the fit of anger. They can be used by children who might find them. So I'm, I think the availability of guns and the preponderance of guns are responsible for the gun violence. Great. Thank you so much. The primary causes of gun violence, is that what you asked? I think it definitely has to do with administration as well as the current gun laws that we have. I do believe that there needs to be some more restrictions on who can get a gun, how long it takes for them to get a gun. In certain states it's a little different because here I feel like there's some more restrictions on that, but in other states there are not. I think open carry is okay, but like getting those permits I think should be a little bit harder. Great. Thank you so much. Gun violence certainly has been on the rise as we see in the news all the time and I think a large part of this, certainly we have policies that don't necessarily keep guns out of the hands of people, but I also think that there's just, we don't connect anymore, right? Like this experience here if it's happening is pretty profound, right? Because when is the last time that I got stopped on the street to have a real human connection with two people? Usually everyone's like, oh, what's in my phone? So part of it I think is, aside from the policies, there are fundamental issues in terms of like, why are people turning to violence as an answer to a misunderstanding? I think so many people feel misunderstood. We are complex human beings, super complex, and I think we all really need a space to feel understood. I think that would, I'm not saying it's going to cure it, I think it would help. That's really interesting. Thank you so much. Well, that is a wide variety of reasons that people put out from like health care to white supremacy, but I think the main thing that people talked about was accessibility to guns was their main reason that they thought that gun violence was a big deal or so why, or do you guys agree or what do you guys think about it? Personally I do believe that accessibility is a huge issue here in the United States, yet I believe that it roots from our culture. What I mean by this is that all these movies that have been shown to kids since they were kids, all these guns, you know, it's become normalized. All these guns and violence, it is no longer something to fear, it is something that people go to a movie to watch. I'm not saying it's specifically permanent to movies, but it's everywhere. I also believe that mental issues are a great factor in gun violence, but how do you measure one's mental illness or mental stability when buying a gun? We don't have certain parameters such as other countries do to measure these people. Yeah, I think two of them that really struck me was the guy who just struck me as the typical stereotype of a brainwashed UC Davis college student, masculinity, white diversity, colonialism, how does this colonialism connect to gun violence? I wonder, but the lady with the purple vest, I think she made some really good points. First of all, she started off by saying something incorrect, which is that gun violence has been on the rise. I think she might be talking about mass shootings, but we're at the lowest point in 45 years of gun violence. But her point on how nobody connects anymore. There used to be this thing where every day people are taking the bus home from work, and they meet these people who are taking the same bus every day in your building connections. Now we're on our tablets. I think everybody is very lonely, even though we're living in an age where it's super easy to connect to anybody. So I think those were really interesting points that they made. Do you think that has a lot to do with gun violence, or do you think that's kind of unrelated from the... I do think it's related, because a lot of times we've seen people plan stuff for a long time, and roots of it are really softened, and then there's the thing where you're planning it, but there's nobody who you're talking to, so nobody can prevent you from doing it. We saw the San Bernardino shooting. It wasn't because of olias per se, it was because they weren't really connected with the community, their neighbors, but they were talking about the shooting. We've seen three years they were talking about it, they were planning it for a year. So there's really people who don't have ties with their neighbors, people don't have a chance to be talked out of doing something, or their cause is solely because they have nothing to live for, because of this loneliness epidemic. Another factor that I feel that doesn't necessarily affect gun violence, but it does affect gun control is the media, and how it's portrayed in the media. Nowadays all we see is just negative things, people, mass shootings, et cetera, et cetera. Yet we never see how guns may save lives. I'm not to say that I am pro-guns, neither am I against guns. I just feel like we should take both sides of the stories, instead of just portraying just one as most media outlets do. Yeah, it's a really interesting point. I think that there's a lot to be said about how media portrays gun violence, and I'm sure there's two pretty different points you could say that media only portrays, like it portrays too much or portrays too little. I mean, I guess, well, anyway. But I think that it would be interesting to compare it. I personally don't know the numbers of gun violence between pre and post, like easy, accessible media. I know you were saying that gun violence seems to be on decreasing rather than increasing, so I don't know if either of you know any statistics, but do you think that before that what was to account for the gun violence? Well, before I get into that, I'd also like to refer to something that is just part of human nature. If we were to compare the U.S. to other countries, say the U.K., where to attain a gun is way more difficult than it is here in the U.S., we could see the statistics. Violent, murder, violent actions taken against other people over there, most of them are people who use just blunt weapons, knives, et cetera, et cetera. Here in the U.S., it's guns. Why? I agree, because they're accessible. That anger, that sickness that is in each society to want to harm others, it's always going to be present. Guns are just a tool for it. I think that's completely true. We talked about this last week with the second amendment, you can't stop guns in America. In London, they're trying to ban knives because of the crazy amount of stabbing that happened there because there's no way you can get to guns. Also, in Europe, you're seeing a lot of the radical terrorists mowing down people with trucks. You saw that in New York City. Guns are just one way that people can kill. They're the most popular way in America because we have such a widespread amount of guns, which is not necessarily a bad thing. You're in the U.S. as I saw it right now in the clip you showed me. People tend to objectify violence and relate it to certain things. I feel like that is not a very good part of our culture. It's probably happening everywhere too, but one of the gentlemen in the video connected white supremacy to guns and violence. I was extremely shocked at this. Why? Because certain people just have this instant connection to guns equal bad, equal white supremacy. I totally disagree with white supremacy, but I feel like they just try to find certain aspects of society that are bad and connect it to guns. I don't know if I got my point across. There are lots of recreational events and sports and stuff where guns are used in a proper, improved manner. I feel that these people should also be equally represented and not just negative effects. If, say, there was some way that we could drastically rebrand guns to have a view of more recreational use instead of a use of violence or threatening, do you think that would deter gun violence at all? I'm for gun control, to be honest. I do believe that having harsher laws, perhaps maybe stricter gun control influx, would definitely decrease these numbers, though they are the lowest. They're as low as they have been in the past 45 years, but I also believe that having a more positive side in the media could change people's minds, perhaps change these people who are actually committing these killing minds, too. I think, sure, if we made a more sport like maybe there would be less killings, but really maybe because we're in California and there isn't that much of a gun culture, we do think of guns as killing machines, but people who actually own guns, they see more as a self-defense, more of a hunting thing that they really do of killing people. I think that's a misnomer that we really see a lot. Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's like gun culture is so different in California than it is in a lot more rural areas, so I think it's interesting to see the point of view. I know I got the chance to talk with some people from, I believe it was North Dakota, and it was really crazy because we were talking about should guns be allowed at school in the case of teachers being armed or stuff like that, and it's interesting to see the comparison because I was against it, but they were all for it and it was just a part of their normal culture, so I think it's interesting. What would be interesting to see is if gun violence is less prevalent in the more rural areas, or if it's about the same, I don't know. Well, given the recent mass shootings, most of them do typically happen in places where gun ownership is way higher than the rates here in California. For example, Florida, the Orlando shooting. I don't know the percentage, but I know a lot more people over their own guns than they do here. Also, you know, the Columbine shooting Sandy Hook, where that happened here. Well, I mean, there have been mass shootings in California. I don't think that's a valid argument because we've seen San Bernardino and multiple, the one in South California recently. I don't think gun ownership is really what it is. It's these crazy people who they're not necessarily getting their guns legally. A lot of people are going through background checks and all these systems. And passing, there's no way to really tell if somebody's going to buy something and later on do this or if they're already playing to do this. It's really tough to use the government to measure whether somebody's going to kill. I agree, and this kind of goes back to the point of mental illness. There's no specific way to measure somebody's mental stability in order to allow them to own a firearm. I don't believe there is even a way or possible to come up with these decisions. But I feel like with more enforcement and harsher laws, perhaps we could see an improvement in these numbers. Unfortunately, most of the guns that are out there have already been out there. In fact, I believe there's close to 90 million guns out there in the U.S. today. That accounts for one in every, I don't know the exact population of the U.S. But if we were to restrict gun laws, what would happen with the guns that are already out there? The legal guns, too. The ghost guns, as certain people name them. We can't really account for those guns that have already been released to the public, right? Yeah, and one more point of the mental illness is we saw a huge push in the last century for de-institutu... You know what I'm saying? Which is less and less cities providing beds for mentally ill, less police taking mentally ill people and putting them into clinics. And this was bipartisan. This was Republicans wanting less funding and Democrats believing that these people should have more autonomy to choose where they want to be. And this has been a huge part of our homelessness crisis, but also with mentally ill people out there with not mass shootings but more of the petty crime bringing a danger out. And so it's really, there's a huge mentally ill... There's a huge issue with the mental illness in America and how we've been dealing with it for the past 50 years. Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's so many interesting points of view that you can go with it for the reasoning behind gun violence. I mean, I think definitely mental illness plays a part of it. And then I know we're also talking about accessibility, so I think in the future it might just be... I don't know how you would solve accessibility as you were saying that it's hard to get back all these guns that are already out there and then even if you bought back all the legal guns, then it would be like there's still guns out there that were bought illegally. And even after that people would buy illegally. Yeah, and then that might make it even worse. I mean, it's hard to see into the future. But yeah, thank you guys for being on. It was a really interesting topic to go over with. So tune in next time to Teens on Topic.