Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
Its been proven many times that strict gun control does nothing but prohibit law abiding citizens from purchasing firearms. It might have kept this person from purchasing a firearm, but we really don't know that. He obviously went insane, but at the same time planned his rampage. At least that is what I'm getting from the news reports.
I own firearms, and use the safety. All of them are hunting rifles or shotguns. Should I be punished because somebody went insane? I don't think that's fair.
I'm not sure how you can prevent something like this, but I do know that more education and gun safety courses can prevent a lot of accidents. But a rampage? I'm not so sure. This guy was a med student. You don't get there without being smart.
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I think the problem in the US is not that every citizen has access to guns, its that every citizen damn near has a gun, what seperates most developed countries from the US is that even though their citizens have access to guns, they have to jump through enough hoops and the process is onerous enough to deter any one that doesn't have a specific need to have one, this doesn't stop the occasional wack job from popping off such as in Norway or Dumblaine, but in the rest of the world it is rare that a nut job has access as they do tend to get weeded out or just give up, it also has the added effect that by lowering the level of casual ownership it makes the whole idea less alluring when someone is breaking from reality, these kind of incidents tend to grow on each other, one wacko pops off and 5 other borderline wackos watch and think 'wow thats a good idea'.
The US is also tremendously affected by the lack of general access to healthcare as it is generally these border line personality nutters that get picked up here for muttering to themselves or storing urine in the basement, here they get dropped into a less than perfect but at least functioing system that treats and tracks them.