Upon the wake of this devastating news in CT, I’ve found myself seriously re-evaluating my view on gun control in this country. I’ve always considered myself a deep-hearted liberal, but I was somewhat ambigous about this issue. It didn’t affect me personally because I don’t have a gun so I can’t say I took much time to learn about them.
I’ll be the first to say that this issue runs deeper than simply gun control. Banning guns at this point in our society would be practically impossible. Some of the more underlying problems in our society that need focused on include income inequality, our justice system, the wars on multiple fronts we continually undertake like the drug wars and our actions in the middle east, and our lack of concern for healthcare and education. These should be our priorities. If these issues were better handled you would see less violence in our society.
Now that may seem self-evident but unfortunately as we all know that is not the case in america. In fact, I’m almost suprised to see the amount of outrage that I do. I read about what goes on in palestine, syria, and many other countries around the world where children are being slaughtered. This happens everyday and people ignore it, but as soon as it involves american children it is front page news.
Personally, I’ve used my knowledge of what happened to the jews during the holocaust to sympathize with gun enthusiasists. It is my understanding that jews were stripped of their arms before the arrests began to take place. Now, I understand that the idea of a violent overthrow of a tyrannical government is ridiculous. However, I deeply distrust those who are in power and although I know that I could not successfully win that fight were it ever to occur, I like to think that I could at least put up a fight.
So, basically the gun right advocacy train of thought is quite clear and has been drilled into all of our heads. Their reasoning includes protection from the government and criminals, hunting, collecting, and sport. Fair enough. What is not clear, is why guns should be banned? That is my question.
Anti-gun advocates want to ban guns because they think it will help diminish the effect or number of mass shootings, violent crime, and negligent incidents. They believe that if there are fewer guns out there, then fewer crimes will be committed. They believe that if there is a great enough penalty for violating gun control laws, people will not commit crimes with them.
All of these ignore completely the point that the vast majority of guns are never going to be used to commit a crime, and violent crimes carry penalties greater than anything they conceive for violating gun control laws (i.e., if somebody isn’t worried that he’s heading out to commit murder, he’s really not going to worry that he’s going to get caught with no trigger lock on his handgun, or that he has an unregistered handgun, because the punishment for those crimes is going to be trivial compared to the punishment for shooting somebody).
I think the statistics on number of violent gun crimes in countries that have banned handguns speak for themselves. The only real argument to that is, “But America is different.” Well, America is different, but I haven’t yet heard a convincing argument for why this particular solution would play out any differently here than it has in the UK or Japan.
That said, Canada has a lot of guns and not nearly as much gun violence as we do, so if someone could explain that difference and come up with a way to achieve that here without banning guns, I’d be all ears. Really.
This is the real problem. If we had a magic wish and could make all “bad” guns disappear as we implemented gun control, it would work, and it would work well. The pesky problem is the 250+ million guns already in America. That’s a big downside to having a history built on violence.
I’ve met a few people who have explicitly said they’d load up and shoot anybody – police officer or military – that came to confiscate their guns if anybody came to take them. These people stockpile ammo too, so there’s no shortage of that.
I’m actually a little worried of all-out civil war erupting if we ban them. Granted, a lot of these guys are probably all talk.
Also, I’m not at all so enamored by some rule written hundreds of years ago. Every 50 years we should reevaluate all rules that we continue to follow to see if they still apply
A total gun ban is impractical, not to say impossible to pass the necessary legislation. But it should be possible to ban certain types of weapons without too much fight – for example, it’s (I assume) illegal for a private individual to own a nuclear weapon. The question is where to draw the line. I find it hard to accept that hunters go rabbit-shooting with bazookas or machine guns.
Yes, there are other ills of society that need to be addressed. But the problem here is that the individual sicko goes berserk. There’s no way of stopping that. Well, I suppose we could do genetic tasting on all babies and destroy the ones that we think are going to possibly vary from “normal” behavior, but somehow I think that solution isn’t going to be very practical. Trying to “change the culture” to be less violent? Well, sure, but how does one go about “changing a culture”? Destroy the First Amendment, allow only happy family-oriented programs on TV, movies, and internet?
In short, there’s no practical way of changing society, nor of stopping the individual looney. The only thing that can be done is to make it difficult for individuals (sane or loony) to purchase weapons of mass destruction.
I think that misses the point. The vast majority of cars are never going to be used to kill people either, and yet we impose restrictions on car ownership and usage. If someone is heading out to commit murder, you’re correct, he won’t worry that he doesn’t have a safety lock on his AK47. That’s not the issue. The issue is, if someone is out to commit murder, he should NOT be able to buy an assault rifle at his local 7-11.* Will that stop him from murdering his mother-in-law with a butcher knife? No. But it will stop him from shooting up a movie theater, or a school, or a shopping center. There’s no way to stop a murderer in advance, but we can at least try to make it more difficult for such a person to commit MASS murders.
Yes, I know. I exaggerate for the sake of emphasis.
The thread title asks about gun control advocacy, then the OP asks why guns should be banned? They shouldn’t, which is why I advocate controlling guns, not banning them.
What I always find most infuriating about the ongoing gun control debate is this right-wing distopian fantasy that gun control necessarily means repealing the second amendment. No reasonable gun control advocate could be for the outright ban of all firearms. I have no problem with people owning guns. In theory I don’t even have a problem with them owning assault rifles, etc.
What I have a problem with is the refusal of gun rights advocates to understand that enacting common-sense standards regarding who can own guns and what they have to do to get them is not the same as banning guns. America is a nation of moderates. A majority of us dislike abortion but do not support an outright ban. Why can’t we reach a similar compromise on gun control? The idea that any demand for simply discussing gun control reform is tantamount to advocating for an across-the-board firearms ban is foolish. Guns are not going away, but the current safety measures clearly are not working. It is up to reasonable people on both sides of the debate to do the hard but necessary work of reaching an acceptable compromise.
I understand that it would be practically impossible to ban guns in this country. But what is the answer then?
You can control guns all you like but if even a handgun is permitted some lunatic is going to go on a mass shooting every now and again. I can agree that an assault weapon like an AK-47 is much more dangerous than your typical handgun. But to what extent? 20 dead children is a tragedy but so would 10 or even 1. It simply happens because guns fall into the wrong hands.
Nothing; not in our lifetimes. The gun fetishists have won in this country, and that means they get to keep fondling their metal toys while the rest of us will pay the price for their self indulgence. Both here in America, and everywhere else our ocean of guns spills into.
I’m sure that there are 19 families that he had a less dangerous weapon and he had been stymied after only killing one kid.
I agree, assholes are always going to exist, but we can limit their damage with rational gun control. Very, very few people believe that rocket launchers should be available to people, and very, very few people believe that all guns should be banned altogether. Therefore, we are differing not in whether a line should be drawn, but where that line should be.
I welcome the resident gun experts to tell me where they believe this line should be drawn.
If you’re looking at it from the point of view of “Which guns should be banned?” you’ve already lost, because the anti-gun POV is “The kind that can kill people,” and that’s not gonna fly.
If you want to see it as “Who do we deny access to guns?”, you have the issue that some guns have been issued to people who were perfectly fine with them, but they ended up in the hands of the wrong people. Also, identifying people as “crazy enough to go on a killing spree” is kind of problematic.
The problem is and always has been that any attempt to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have access to them has intruded on the rights of the people who should, and until the 2nd amendment is repealed, that isn’t going to be successful.
Why can’t some guns be banned and others not? Serious question from someone who doesn’t know much about guns. Are there not characteristics inherent in each and every weapon that could be quantified and deemed legal or illegal? Similar to cars.
I’m very moderate on the issue of gun control. I have no problem with responsible adults having reasonable weapons. But, when I try to have a serious conversation about how we can come to a mutually agreed upon definition “reasonable”, I’m told that it there is no possible way to differentiate a single shot rifle that holds a few rounds, from a high capacity, multi-shot per second weapon. Any discussion of limiting the legality of different weapons seems to devolve into fear that this is just an attempt to limit the legality of all weapons. I swear to god, I just want to have some definition of a reasonable weapon that makes everyone happy, and this is not an attempt to get your gun from your cold, dead hands!
But if it ends up being all or nothing, well, put me down for nothing.
It’s a lot harder to get a gun onto an island than into the US. A,so I think it gets tricky when you compare a homogenous society like Japan with countries like the US.
I go back and forth on gun control but I’ll note that my (not unique) interpretation of the Second Amendment is that it was enacted to allow the average citizen to resist government actors if needed. Put another way, it’s not about home defense per se as much as it is about having an armed citizenry who could resist a despotic Federal government.
I find myself agreeing with and being comforted by this argument. However, why can’t they be regulated reasonably like everything else?
I think that people are becoming more willing to sympathize with gun control because of the tragedy. This should put a spotlight on a lot of other issues that cause this kind of thing. Owning a gun would be one of them. Because until we begin to change our thinking we are going to continue to have this kind of stuff happen. Gun control or no gun control.