Gun Control

[Imogen]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/70277/

So, my life was touched very personally by gun violence in late October. It really changes your perspective on all the guns we've allowed to float around our country over the centuries. If we had never allowed so many guns to be produced and sold, I think real gun control would be more feasible. As it is, they're out there (leading to an intense paranoia on my part at the moment despite my wanting to own one eventually). Political or not, it's time to start considering closing loopholes that allow people to get crazy powerful weapons or buy guns at gun shows with no waiting period and all of that. I know the guns used in CT were obtained legally by the owner, but since her son knew how to gain access to them, I don't think we could've prevented that tragedy. But perhaps we could prevent them from being so bad if we didn't allow high powered rifles to be purchased for funsies.

Also, Eirene is so right in her PS.

[UffishThought]

I don't know. I think yayfulness' article about mental illness is a more practical solution. We don't now for sure what motivates someone that mentally ill to do what they do, and I'm not convinced it's for "glory." Changing that variable may or may not do anything. But I think that learning more about mental illness and working out a better system for those who are mentally unstable would go a long way toward preventing future tragedies on this scale.

[Imogen]

I think in this specific instance, we definitely need to look into the mental health angle. but not all people who kill someone are mentally ill (this is probably arguable though). I'm not saying get rid of guns completely, but getting rid of the loopholes that make them easy to access and restricting who can buy certain types of firearms would also be a step in the right direction.

[yayfulness]

I decided not to include this in my answer, since it was a bit of a tangent, but some extremely brief research told me that the vast majority of gun violence in the United States is linked to crime (that is, other crimes). Mass shootings, while tragic, represent a tiny, tiny minority of the cases. Gun control needs to be aimed at solving violent crime.

[wired]

So this is one of the problems with post-massacre gun debates. The discussion takes place with the emotional background an anomaly, discussing statistics that are relevant to a completely different context (i.e. gang and drug-related violence). I'm open to increase gun control regulation, but I dislike conflating the two situations and the underlying policy rationale.