coldfish wrote:@Mort:
The US invaded Iraq about 10 years ago. It came out that the prevailing thought was that after Saddam was knocked over, the locals would welcome americans as heroes, they would welcome democracy and we would be out of there in months with little blood spilled. The US administration basically assumed Iraqi's were just like us culturally. Bad assumption.
Guns are part of the US' culture. We are different than you are. Another part of American culture is deep distrust of government. The US government has no ability to take away the guns from americans and even talk about it has caused gun sales to skyrocket. As I noted before, the number of hunters outnumbers any military in the world. Even worse, most people in the military come from that culture. If a president were to order the military to forcibly seize all weapons, I wouldn't be surprised if the military turned on him.
That being said, no gun owner wants what happened yesterday. Everyone is and should be absolutely appalled. If the gun control people would just shut up for a second and think, they really could push positive change in the US. Things like gun shows are notorious for ease of access to guns. Firearm training is extremely lax. These are the type of things that could be fixed and if you approach gun owners and tell them "we don't want to take away guns from responsible people, we just want to make sure crazy people can't get them." I think it would work.
I also agree with you about the mentally ill. The US obviously isn't taking that stuff seriously. I'm not sure if its political correctness or what, but virtually all of the mass shooters over the past few years have been tagged as being dangerously mentally ill before they did something. We just didn't take action.
Here's what you're saying:
1. America has lax firearm training.
2. If the government tried to take guns away, people would turn on it.
That thought doesn't scare the living **** out of you?
Now, I get what you're saying. This presents an opportunity to invite gun owners to debate in terms of limiting access to specific people who will use the weapons for evil. All that's fair.
Here's my problem/question:
How can someone, who's received lax firearm training, be allowed to purchase a firearm in the first place? Who's judging what "proper firearm training" is? What's the criteria?
That's like someone not passing their driving exam and getting their drivers license anyway. There should have been harsher protocol years ago. Trying to inject it now - while I support the idea - is not going to be easy.
Your word "lax" seems to me, to be the most appropriate word in this debate. Rules, restrictions, criteria, control and availability seems to be a complete crap shoot.
A final series of questions, and this is something I truly have no insight in, but am curious of:
How does expensive guns find their way to the low income areas and "ghettos"? Who's providing those kids with weapons? Why do they end up there? How is it acceptable? How come nothing has changed despite people having known of this problem for decades?
That's an area, in my eyes, that seems to have NO control whatsoever. And due to the lack of control in those areas, people die. Is it because low-income families are of no significant importance to the US?
These are legitimate questions, and if I am stepping on toes here, I apologize. It's not my intention to do so.