A lot of the ideas on here sound great, but are just as pie in the sky as talking about flying cars. I'm one of the relatively few Americans that doesn't fall into either side on the gun control battle. It seems like we have a lot of people who hate and fear guns, and a lot of people who pay dues to the (insane) NRA.
Would suddenly making all guns in the US vanish lower the amount of murders in the US? Of course. Guns make killing easier and less personal (push-button) than anything involving physical contact. Somehow the NRA denies this, although I don't understand how.
Is it possible to make all guns in the US vanish?
Of course not! The rabidly anti-gun folks can't seem to get this. Those in this very thread calling for Obama to pass an Executive Order to "put a stop to this" don't seem to get that it wouldn't stop anything with millions of guns already here. Its fantasy to think we could somehow force them to all be turned over to the government, and would probably cause a revolution if it was tried.
Why would taking away people's guns cause a revolution?
Because the very purpose for the 2nd amendment was to prevent the government from gaining too much control over the citizens. It was to prevent Presidents from making themselves Kings. The founding fathers wrote at length of the need for an armed populace to keep the government in check. The government trying to disarm the populace would be an obvious starting point to many people.
Then wtf can we do??
No one knows, and that's why we haven't done it! There's no simple cause, no simple solution. For one, the US has almost 10x the population of Canada, so when comparing numbers of incidents any 1 mass shooting up there is equivalent to 8 or 9 here. So some of the numbers being thrown around about how we just don't care about human life "down here" or whatever compared to Canada are a bit misleading. We do have more problems, but like I said, they have tons of causes. Breakdown of family life, check. Diverse people all living together with the occasional friction that causes, check. A government that says violence can solve quickly problems (Iraq, death penalty), check. A country born out of violent rebellion? Check. Being able to buy a gun without a background check? Check. A culture that glamorizes guns (Scarface, NFL...), check. A complete unwillingness to spend money on mental healthcare? Giant check. Media that makes these shooters into icons? Check. Take all these factors and add them together and here we are. The answer should be to start dealing with all of these problems rather than just try for simplistic solutions like arming everyone or disarming everyone.
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