With all of the recent gun violence, what is the sentiment on the board about Gun Control? I personally am beginning to think there is some merit to it.
I just wanted to bring up the OP as a sort of reminder of what this thread is about. It is not about demonizing guns or people who value them, or about demonizing the mentally-ill or those using prescription drugs. I may be off topic to point out the associated facts of the most horrific things in our news with those way-beyond the norm people who have done the evil deeds. We have millions of guns, and millions of people who for some fairly ordinary reasons are on medications which have in less than a hundred instances combined, and been factually associated with the horrific killings we as a society should do something about.
If you're going to think more regulations on guns will solve the problem, I have suggested that you will need to think again someday, when all the regulations you could imagine or ask for are in place, and something like this still happens. I don't think hundreds of laws regulating prescription drugs will solve the problem, either.
what will solve the problem in cost/benefit efficiency to a greater extent than gun regulation, is actually having competent, trained people on hand with the equipment it takes to stop a shooter. It wouldn't even have to be another shooter. I have said that even a little old lady with the guts to rush the shooter could precipitate the final act these shooters universally have in mind. . . shooting themselves to avoid any possibility of having to be held accountable in public courts.
tasers would do the job if someone was close enough, but the most effective thing we can do is make it a possibility that there will be a rapid takedown of the shooter somehow, preferably a non-lethal one.
I have made my point. I don't carry guns, but I would rush a shooter like this screaming like a banshee. If he had to swing his rifle to take aim, I could do about forty feet of rush before he could hit me. If four or five others would do the same, the killings would be stopped at about three plus the four he could shoot as they rushed him.
If we as society had this mental toughness in our culture, our kids would be substantially protected from this specific threat.
And after all I've read in this thread, I've come to the conclusion that the very idea of regulating individuals in ways that incapacitate them in the defense of their own lives, or the lives of their family, or of their property, is morally reprehensible. The consequences of laws of this nature will be tens and hundreds of more lost lives, if not thousands and millions, than leaving things as they now are.
The only way we are going to improve life in this world is by empowering people to protect themselves from whatever threats they can perceive to their own well-being. No government, no bureaucrat, no police force can reliably "be there" to do the job for them.
we do need laws making it criminal to kill, and we need to enforce those laws credibly enough that the ordinarily-sentient perps will believe they will be caught and punished. And the perps who would do any wrong to us should know they face a substantial risk of effective self-defense response on the spot.
