$25-50 new tax on each firearm purchased. (Or maybe more??)
$.05-$.10 new tax on each bullet
Tax goes towards funding the following:
-1. Enhanced background checks
-2. Federal Firearm Ownership "Club" - Required to own a firearm, granted after attending several classes (Requires you be 21 Years of Age, Gives you automatic lifetime CCW, $10,000.00 in firearm household insurance, fingerprinted/photographed, Free lifetime membership to state/federal firearm ranges)
-3. Mental Health Evaulations for those who become incarcerated. Conducted from within the prison system. Evaulation does not "revoke" or "approve", it only gives recommendations to a panel. The panel will consist of randomly selected citizens of the "Firearm Ownership "club"" (Ooops, that could be problematic lol)
-4. Mandatory Firearm Safety courses in public schools
-5. Additional security/officer funding for public schools.
And someone complying with all that with a clean bill of health and fully registers and finger printed and DNA sampled and anything else you can think of has a relative steal their guns, kill them, then go kill 20 children.
What did you accomplish?
If people stopped being hysterical about it and applied all their proposed bans and regulations and even GOOD suggestions in retrospect against the Sandy Hook shooting, it still would have happened.
Even if you do something like requiring qualified people who live with non qualified people (assuming they have been reported or have any mental health history on record yet) to prove they have safes, etc. All it takes is one moment where the authorized owner is retrieving/storing the arms when they get hit in the head with a meat cleaver while the safe is open. Even if they don't live together, they still visit. Even getting over the that it would be wrong to deprive a sane person of their rights because someone in their family is insane.
I'm trying really hard here, and I can find absolutely NOTHING that can possibly stop this from happening again. I forced myself to look at those kid's photos repeatedly, to the point I had difficulty breathing at times. I'm a pretty cold emotionless person, but kids will turn me into a puddle every time. I've been spending a lot of time with my niece and nephews. Just happy to hold them or sit next to them for hours on end. I can feel the exact pain those parents are going through even though I don't have kids of my own because I do adore kids that much. I know they will have to walk past their bedrooms, with the last toys they played with still laying on the floor, their beds not made, the last clothes they had on the night before tossed about. And each day that goes on where you think they are coming home but don't, each day that passes when you just want want to hug them and bury your face in their neck and feel their warmth and smell them even just one more time, but all you have are cold dead photos of them smiling and bearing their baby teeth still that are just flat cold silent pieces of paper feel or smell nothing like them. And each day they don't come home your senses become more and more elevated and their scent left behind in their bedrooms gets stronger and stronger, that squeaky little voice you remember gets louder and louder, but you will never hold them or feel their warmth in your arms or brush your thumbs across their cheeks or smell the sunshine in their hair ever again. The unopened Christmas presents that they will never know they got. And this year, their birthdays that they didn't make it too. Yeah, they say you can't imagine it if it doesn't happen to you, but I can, I feel it 100% and it's vomit inducing fucking horrible and it will get worse and worse and NEVER EVER GO AWAY. I know I personally couldn't go on if it happened to me.
I want to have a perfect solution that could stop this from ever happening again, honest I do, but there ISN'T anything.
I know because I AM a sociopath myself (by choice, it's not an evil word btw), one of those smart quiet keeps to himself "weird" types everybody is always scared of. I think of all the ways "if this was stopping me, how would I do it anyway" and I basically play a game of chess with myself and I've never won... I always find a way. Some of the things I thought of would make you sick to your stomach and would be brutally effective.
If we want to only focus on guns, if I didn't have them, I know where to get them. If they are actively kept away from me I'd have a plan to get them anyway. I would start planning THE DAY I overheard someone talking about a hunting trip coming up or heard someone talking about grabbing something out of the safe, my ears would perk up and I'd be discrete about it, calculating my opportunity. If I had to I'd hide a 808-16 or similar camera in the room and get the combo. Numerous methods. If there were no guns, I'm fully capable of building my own entirely from scratch, even if it has to be a smooth bore semi automatic shotgun. A lathe, a hydraulic press, a drill press, a spot welder. All these things can be had from a Harbor Freight for under $200 each (maybe not a lathe). I'd make it full auto while I'm at it. Shotguns are DEVASTATING and according to the gun grabbers shotguns are the last things they would ever take so they would still be plentiful during a complete assault weapon and magazine ban. If I couldn't get them online with someone else's ID I'd shoplift them from a store where they sit on an open shelf. Failing that, get a part time job sweeping floors at the place and sneak a case out. Opening shift 6 am leave my station, with ammo in my pocket, hop over the gun counter, load up and open fire on the guy behind the counter while he's on the phone or taking a piss and never knows what hit him. Escape out the back door where I've parked and beeline straight to the nearest elementary school with a semi automatic shotgun with 10 round capacity of double ought buck, replacing each round I fire as I fire it within a second so that it never empties. I'd be arriving as traffic is jammed up in the drop off circle and people would be sitting ducks. I'd even time my opening shots so that the intersection leading out of the school had a red light and cross traffic because the panic would cause traffic accidents and further trap people in their cars.
How about lever action hunting rifles that hold 5-10 rounds and are farily small and lightweight? You can operate a lever action nearly as fast as a semi auto. When the internal tube is empty, drop it and reach for the next one slung on your back for an instant reload. And unlike the weak .223/5.56 round that pretty much disintegrates upon hitting a soft target, a large hunting caliber rifle would pass through 6-7 children in a single shot when the are all huddled in a corner defenseless. A 6 year old's torso isn't even 4-6 inches thick and is about as fragile as tissue paper. Media wants to point out "100s of rounds! Each shot 10 times!" but truth is small children are frail, and they were most likely killed with the first 1-2 shots. The rest it is him just mutilating the bodies and wasting ammo, so the whole high capacity magazine thing is just pure bullshit.
Basically I could go on and on and on about infinite ways to carry out evil. It can get pretty sickening, especially when you realize that you can't find a way to stop yourself knowing your own plan.
Movie theater scenario: be a customer, get in, get out the back door where I've stashed super soakers and water balloons full of gasoline in the trash barrel and quickly get it inside (security cameras already noted and avoided). Wait until the theater is packed. Poor gasoline from the top row so it starts flooding down to all the seats below. By the time people are trying to figure out why they smell gas, I've already lit it and begin to start tossing gasoline filled water balloon like devices (ones tested not to be eaten by the gasoline), hosing people down and throwing matches/flares/whatever around. Oh btw, I chained the doors. Now the people that would have escaped are packed 50 deep in a narrow hall and stuck. Nobody is going to rush me because they are socked in gasoline and I'm carrying a traffic flare. I can either wear a fake uniform so as to easily bypass cameras, or even get a job at the theater, then I can just stash it all in a janitorial cart and nobody would question it as I went in and out of the exists carrying trash and emptying trash containers.
The only difference with me that makes me a good guy are principles rooted in logic that recognize and respect individual liberty and free will of other people and could never carry out things like that regardless if I felt remorse or not. And I could never hurt children. I'd blow my own brains out if I ever felt I was a threat to a child. But it's a useful perspective to have, to see through the eyes of a determined killer, to see how they plan, use any means at their disposal, and to sadly realize that random events planned by a determined and clever person CANNOT be stopped by laws. Keep that in mind when you've read this because I KNOW this post is going to freak people the fuck out. I hope it's insightful and worthwhile.
I can't defeat myself in this game. Honestly, without bias and without just trying to support my own position as a gun enthusiast who enjoys "assault rifles" the most, forgetting I care about gun rights at all: in ALL scenarios I "planned" the ONLY unknown that I could NOT plan for or be prepared to react to immediately with 100% pre-calculated perfection is a random bystander putting a bullet through my head or otherwise meeting me with the same surprise as I use to catch my victims off guard (and yes, someone soaked in gasoline carrying a concealed weapon would have to risk igniting more people including themselves to take me out).
It goes beyond just parroting vauge "only good guys with guns and stop bad guys with guns" mantras. It's the same unpredictable element of surprise that I would use in all my "what would I do if I was a mass murderer" scenarios, and like my virtual victims, it's the ONLY thing capable of stopping me because its the ONLY thing I can't plan for or react to or have an answer for on the spot because it's random and unpredictable. Note that armed guards are not random and unpredictable, I'd have taken them out first or blocked their access to the massacre scene in any scenario or even observed shift changes and choosing the area in the building farthest from the security office. So no, not even armed guards are enough. It needs to be unpredictable and random, that's the only way I can stop myself before dozens are murdered.
Instead of saying "only guns can stop bad people with guns", we should say "only random unpredictable responses can stop a murderer who randomly and unpredictably strikes. Because it's not unpredictable and random to the psychopath unless someone makes an effective effort to do so. Don't underestimate how calculating a psychopath can be. To us it's a "random shooting", to them it's not. Knowing police will take a MINIMUM of 1-2 minutes to respond, etc isn't random enough, and neither is uniformed armed guards that cry out loudly "know where I am and take me out first!"
This is a shitty problem. I hate not having a conclusive definitive answer (other than the one the gun grabbers don't want to hear).
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