Internet preachers, stop acting like there can only be one response. Don’t tell me “stop talking about gun control and think about the families!” I can do both, you self-righteous bastard. Hell, I’m good at multi-tasking. I can pray for the families, cry for their loss, talk about gun control, and thank God my baby is safe in her bed ALL WITHIN FIFTEEN MINUTES. And then I’ll cycle through them again.
Gun control MUST be strengthened. How many must we lose before we see this?
Can we wipe out all gun violence? No. Banning guns will lead to exactly what the gun advocates say it will–only the criminals will have guns. No one wants that. But no one is talking about banning all guns, so why the hell is that in the conversation?
“Hey, I want to keep guns out of the hands of proven violent people.”
“YOU CAN’T TAKE ALL THE GUNS NOOOOOOOO!”
My dad owned guns. He taught each of his children to use them. We never shot anyone. He didn’t have a history of violence or instability, and none of his kids did either. “Gun control” doesn’t mean “let’s go take his guns!” (If I were you, I wouldn’t try.)
We can’t stop every shooting. This is the real world, and in the real world nothing is perfect. We can’t make sure no one is ever shot again unless it be criminals in the act of sneaking into your house. That doesn’t mean we can’t make any changes.
A reasoned and reasonable approach is do-able. It IS.
A law in Maryland banned a certain type of cheap handgun no gun enthusiast would want, and gun deaths went down nine percent. That’s forty lives a year–not a large amount, but it’s not a large state and also, that would matter a lot to you if one of those forty were your child, no?
Would this stop something like Columbine? Unfortunately it’s not that easy. But like I said–forty lives, one simple change that harms no one but the manufacturer of a cheap and badly-made gun.
I’ve read articles where the argument is that we’ll make it “difficult” for the average citizen to buy a gun. Let me pause while I weep for you.
Right, enough of that. Is it too hard to get a driver’s license if you’re qualified? I mean, talk about making the process prohibitive, when’s the last time you spent an entire day at the DMV trying to get something about your license fixed? Do people just not get a driver’s license because it’s hard?
Why is it easier to buy a gun than to drive a car?
Well, a bad driver could run over someone!
ummm…
The Aurora shooter bought his ammo on the internet. The Virginia Tech shooter bought his gun on the internet. Those Mexican drug lords trying to take down the government of a neighboring country? Guess where they buy their guns.
Some people are saying we need to look to our mental health system, and to that I say a HUGE EFFING YES. But I can, at the same time, call for a more reasoned response to gun control. It’s criminally stupid that it’s easier to get a gun than mental health care, but we’re not going to overhaul the mental health system overnight. Let’s get the damn guns out of the hands of people only purchasing them to kill.†
And to answer the “Evil will find a way!” argument–yes, a determined killer might go out and steal a gun. But in that case, isn’t the person he’s trying to steal from ARMED? Isn’t that the argument for why law-abiding citizens should have the right to guns RIGHT THERE?
Also, stop effing holding up the knife attack on the school in China to show “evil will find a way!” How many times in say, this country, has a person walked into a school or a mall and started stabbing strangers? While mass shootings happen again and again and again…
Here’s the thing with knives–they don’t go through doors. They don’t (if they’re small enough to hide) go through bodies to kill the hero and the child she’s trying to protect. Kung fu movies aside, a person with a knife has to walk up to someone to knife them. The intended victim has a fucking chance. To run, to fight, to do something to save himself and others.
STOP TELLING ME THESE SHOOTINGS CAN’T BE HELPED.
We can, we MUST do better. Are our children not worth the effort or something?
†No, it doesn’t look that would have made a difference in CT. Don’t pretend that makes my point invalid.
You might hate me for this, but if you look into the history of mass killers, it is extremely hard to predict and stop them. Each case is so vastly different that what triggered Connecticut’s killer won’t be what triggers the next. The FBI has been working on it too, trying to identify key characteristics and signs that past mass killers have shown before their rampage. Even then, there’s no guarantee.
Now, that’s no reason not to do anything about gun control. Something needs to be done in hope of saving lives. The argument that a determined killer will find a way is just a lame excuse. Of course they will, but if you make it harder, the less determined will be stopped, less lives will be lost.
No, I don’t hate you, even if I didn’t completely agree. We’re never going to be free of mass killers. But look, sadly, to the incident in China. Sad that it happened–but all the guy had was a knife. 22 children stabbed–but ALIVE.
To me, right now, that’s the big difference.
I’m seeing a lot of people equate owning a gun to driving a car, and I think it makes sense. There are people who drive without licenses, yes. But most people don’t say we should give up on driver’s training and licensing because of it. A bad driver can hurt or even kill a lot of people, so we make potential drivers prove they know what they’re doing. Why shouldn’t it be the same with guns?
I love the idea of an owner’s license, yearly registration (some assault guns are sold one way, then modified illegally after, and hey, I take my car through emissions every year) and INSURED. How DOESN’T liability insurance make sense for gun owners? And you’d get a cheaper rate for things like a gun safe, or one of those wrist-lock things so only you can fire the gun…they’ll do it if it will save them money, and then we get the side benefit of less children shot by accident.
The safety measures exist, but gun rights advocates whine they’re no fun. Sort of like any man whining that condoms are no fun. Why do we give in to the big babies?
If as citizens we allow cars, which give us freedom of movement from one end of the country to the other, to be regulated for safety reasons, we can’t argue that it’s not fair to do it to guns.
I agree with you that I’d rather have a incidents like the one in China. Those types of ppl will never go away (which most ppl don’t realize. They think toughen up gun laws and psychos won’t walk into schools. Uh, yeah they will, they’ll just use another weapon) but if there is something that can be done to prevent them from taking lives then we should do it.
Because those big babies whine very loudly and with lots of money to the right people. -.-
Because those big babies whine very loudly and with lots of money to the right people. -.- << That's in response to your question about why we give in to the big babies BTW.
Yeah, I got that. 😉
We definitely need to do something about mental health too–I just think we need to address BOTH. Gun control is going to have an effect faster. We can’t find, diagnose, and help everyone immediately, especially when the trend right now is to ignore the mentally ill and hope they’ll go away.