Gun bans can, and do, work to reduce death. The thing is you have to disarm the entire populace AND remove their ability to obtain guns; all guns must be banned, otherwise gun-control only disarms those that are law-abiding.
Oh yea, and in the US you'll likely have to murder about 10% of the population; as they say "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hand".
I think the ultimate end needed, the total removal of guns from our population, is also something that can never happen; and these half-mesures do little more than perpetuate the fear/power conservatives.
This hits the nail on the head. Gun bans do work, but you have to ban all guns, or at the least, every automatic gun, including revolvers. You could let people keep single shotguns from the 1800s, but you've got to remove someone's ability to kill people faster than they can rush that person. Then again, you'd just have huge mob gangs of 10 guys with single shot shotguns guarding the ones doing the shooting....
Look the reason this was brought up this latest time was because of a mentally deranged person. Aside from an all out gun ban or police to protect children, you cannot stop that, but you can prevent some of the hundreds of gun homicides that have occurred in the US this year so far, in 1 month. There have been hundreds if not over a thousand already.
All out gun bans do reduce gun violence to minimal. However they historically also introduce new crime, and nations with all out gun bans have a ton of crime. I honestly think though that you cannot even compare the US to other countries. I think we've simply got to be better than them.
Most gun homicides are a result of someone stupid with a gun; someone who thinks they can rob a liquor store and get away with it, rob a bank, rob a person or a home. The reason none of us on this board are likely to contribute to the average homicide is because we simply know better. I, and I say this all the time, I hate repeating myself, but I firmly believe it's a matter of education. There is no "gun violence," there is only people violence. The problem here is people wanting to kill each other.
If there were no guns, nobody could use a gun to kill someone. If nobody wanted to kill anyone, you could give everyone in the US a tank, and we'd all be fine. The fundamental problem is people. And moreover, it's stupid people. You don't find many smart criminals in jail for homicides. You don't find many smart criminals killing people in the first place. Smart criminals are out there stealing money, not killing someone cause disrpecc mah a-tohr-i-teh! I'd love to live in a place where the Newtown shooting was the most horrific event in recent memory, but as has been brought up so many times, the streets of Chicago are the most horrific event.
I'm not sure what we can do about the Newtown shooting other than stick cops in every school, just like it's always been in Memphis, where I grew up. But what I do know is that we can try to address the even bigger problem, which is people dying on our streets every day, mostly out of stupidity and ignorance.
Maybe it's time we raise the federal budgeting for education to more than 2%. Shall I dare say 3%? What would happen to our children if we spend 5%? What about 10%? Are we really so enamored with free medicine and government-managed retirement accounts that we forget to spend on our kids? Shame on us.
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