They’re certainly dead on that the gun control laws in the US are a joke. You tend to get that when the foxes regulate the chicken coop.
The pair bought guns, he wrote, adding that “gun control in the U.S. is a joke” because the pair lied when asked if they were suffering from mental illness. Police did not confirm how many guns were used in the shooting, adding that Tanvir was able to legally purchase a gun “recently,” KXAS reported.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/06/texas-family-murder-suicide/
Menzo
7644
Biden plans to take executive action on guns. None of this will reduce mass gun violence, though.
I just got weird looks for laughing out loudly.
While I’m happy to see LaPierre get roasted, I suppose none of this is going to move the needle a micrometer on gun control in the U.S.
RichVR
7649
Two shootings today. I’m too depressed to link them.
Two super sensible OpEd on gun control, that I and think even many avid gun owners could support. That would actually might make a meaningful reduction in gun violence.
and even better one in the NY Times
To create real and lasting change, we must end the culture war over guns. Instead, gun control groups are helping to perpetuate it.
No decent human being, whether gun owner or not, wants to live in a country with our level of shooting deaths. The most meaningful way to deal with the problem, though, is not to look at how to keep certain guns from all people**, but how to keep all guns from certain people — the people almost all of us agree should not have guns.**
The bold part is super important and really should be the focus of legislation.
Nesrie
7651
That’s usually just code for brown people. Don’t believe me… just take a trip down memory lane. We don’t even have to back that far in history to see that is what was sold and done.
No it is really crazy people like most of the mass shooters we’ve seen. The ones that neighbors, teachers, cops, and former friends, and even parents say they are worried about.
Nesrie
7653
That’s what they always say… only the violent, only those who need to be controlled… and then look at our prison system. I think this individual is… mistaken if he thinks focusing on suicide will make a country that refusing to treat mental health seriously… somehow care more about gun control.
Ah yes, we’re back to guns not being a problem, it’s just that darn mental illness. Presumably they’re killing all these people by firing crazybullets with their minds.
Give mentally disturbed, violent people easy access to guns, and weird stuff happens. Hard to fathom.
Timex
7656
The thing is, folks like Ted cruz say stuff like, “we can’t stop giving people access to guns! We just need to punish criminals harder!”
But punishment doesn’t work as a deterrent to the mentally ill.
Punishment doesn’t bring dead people back to life.
So Ted Cruz isn’t selling a solution to gun violence at all. He’s essentially saying that we should just live with it, and be satisfied with enacting vengeance upon those who perpetrate it.
It’s very easy to tell who shouldn’t have a firearm after they demonstrate they shouldn’t have one. It’s much harder to do so a priori. Not without deploying sets of criteria that will no doubt have a ton of false positives, and be easily warped to apply not to the intended targets but to anyone the powers that be happen to not like. It’s easy to say “no guns for mentally ill people,” but then, how do you define mentally ill? Many people who commit crimes and who are later determined (rightly or not) to be “mentally ill” were not diagnosed as such before their crimes. What level of “mental illness” do we specify? Does ADHD qualify? GAD? Some form of schizophrenia? Bi-polar? Hell, we can’t even agree half the time on what those terms mean.
Now, maybe if we approached it from the health care angle, we could get somewhere. A universal health care system with everyone having access to mental health care…hmm, that might actually mesh nicely with this sort of approach to guns. But that won’t happen.
I really don’t think there is any solution possible unless and until we totally change the culture. There absolutely has to be a culture war over guns, and gun culture has to lose, decisively. Nothing else will work.
Pretty simple, really. Making guns about as easy to get as Juicy Fruit is going to put loads of guns in the hands of people who will commit these acts.
Very well said. If we just upped guns to the licensing/insurance requirements we put around cars we would be much better off.
Problem is that pesky 2nd Amendment right. Licensing/Insurance simply takes the guns out of the hands of the poor and let those who can afford them have them.
Sort of like saying we should support a poll tax because easy access to voting shouldn’t be in the hands of poor people because they most likely make bad life decisions.
Well, that’s pretty much the view off many of our so-called Founding Fathers, who definitely did not want the hoi polloi casting ballots.
What if the problem is that all, or perhaps most people are potentially disturbed and violent, and the difference in the outcome is actually whether they have access to a gun or not? You don’t see many stories about people losing their minds and beating a bunch of people to death with a tire iron or a golf club because killing people that way is damned hard.
