Gun Control & RKBA
In reply to the discussion: What should be the limit on ownership of guns? [View all]Matrosov
(1,098 posts)I voted confiscation, with no private ownership or access allowed thereafter
It's very simple. Groups like the NRA actually make compelling arguments why traditional forms of gun control do not work. Psychopaths who want to massacre school children won't care that schools are designated gun-free. Current laws against felons and the mentally incompetent are worthless when criminals can buy their weapons off the street and when some people simply snap without prior warning and without there having been a chance to declare them mentally incompetent. Banning things like assault rifles and high capacity magazines in certain cities or states is irrelevant when people can smuggle them in from elsewhere, and banning them nationally would be irrelevant when most shootings involve handguns anyway.
Here's the problem. The pro-gun answer is to have people buy even more guns, as though all law-abiding citizens are going to be carrying with them at all times, and then criminals and crazies will get gunned down by the 'good guys' before they ever have a chance to hurt someone innocent. Aside from the fact that relatively few people legally carry weapons with them even in the states with the most lenient firearm laws and consequently the 'good guy with a gun' is extremely elusive in most shootings, solving the problem of our insane amount of gun violence with more guns makes as much sense as telling a smoker with lung cancer to smoke some more and hope for the lung cancer itself to develop cancer of its own and die.
Which leaves us with the other extreme, which is confiscation and forbidding anyone who isn't military or law enforcement from even touching a gun (though trigger happy police in places like Ferguson make me wonder how many officers should even be armed).