It's very important that every single one of us would raise the awareness on this subject!I just watched the CNN news about the shooting in Las Vegas, it's heartbreaking.I don't understand why people still allow this to happen?!People should stop writing how sad they are it happened with #thishastostop hashtag and really try make a difference by showing an example,unite and go against this whole thing.Guns should just be forbidden and people who sell them online or at the black markets be highly punished.There is no waiting till the next shooting anymore, seriously something should be done already..
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Do you have any idea how many people have died in mass shootings this year vs. people who have died in total? I'm willing to wager you haven't, but it's a tiny fraction of a percent. This is a problem, but it's not one that requires the punishment of non-threatening property owners.
I'm not talking about punishing people who own guns now, I'm talking about punishing those who are gonna illegally sell weapons to people with mental problems without even checking it.
Alright, then you and I are in agreement. Don't impose any restrictions on the purchase and ownership of firearms until a crime has occurred. I can definitely agree with that.
He bought all of his weapons within the law. We cannot test for all types of sociopath behavior. The man's father being a bank robber though should have been enough. Police knew about him and ignored him. I don't see how they could have done anything though to prevent it. If he didn't use guns, he would have made a bomb. No bomb? He could have flown a plane into a building. Predators do not think like we do. They are sick. Laws will never stop them either. Bullets do however.
What about those who feel guns are, by design, very threatening offensive killing machines? Owning a nuclear bomb or a chemical weapon is threatening. On a much smaller scale, so is a gun. I'd argue tools designed for non-lethal self-defense are even less threatening. The type or property we own does say something about the intentions and mindset of the property owner.
Except they're not threatening. People threaten others. Inanimate objects are incapable of doing so. Case in point, owning an M1A4 Abrams tank does not constitute a threat until I threaten someone with it. Until then, it's a conveyance with some weaponry on it.
Okay. So if everyone owned an M1A4 tank, do you think violence with them would increase? And if the answer is yes, should we then be okay with everyone owning an M1A4 tank or should we work to discourage mass ownership of such a powerfully destructive machine?
I'm talking at a statistical level here, not in terms of individuals.
Again, the particular implement used isn't the issue. If all handguns were magically destroyed overnight and the means for producing them were forever wiped from the memory of mankind, that wouldn't stop the mass violence problem. This is plainly demonstrated by acts of mass violence in recent years perpetrated in places where firearm ownership is extremely restricted.
If everyone had a baseball bat, would violence with baseball bats increase? Yeah. That's not a meaningful conclusion for addressing the problem.
But if it was a nuke, it clearly would be, right? The ease of access to the weapon and it's destructive power directly influence the well-being of everyone else. If the choice of a madman is a nuke, a gun, or a baseball bat, there's clearly going to be a massive difference in the well-being of everyone else.
I don't know that the mass violence problem can be "solved" but I do think we can make smarter, data-driven decisions on how availability of (and our social attitude towards) various tools useful for destruction impact the outcome of well-being of everyone else.
Violence happening in places where firearms are restricted (I assume you mean cities in the US) is an important data point, but we also don't have checkpoints between states or cities to car-search people, etc. If the US has tons of guns, it's pretty easy to go from one state to another with them. In other countries where within the entire country it's difficult to get guns, that's also an important datapoint.
No. It wouldn't be. Nukes don't do anything until they're used. Same with guns, knives, tanks, or anything else.
Again, the issue is the "madman," not the nuke, gun, or bat. While the particular implement will have an impact on how much damage is accomplished, ultimately these implements are inert and harmless until they're used.
I meant other countries, particularly Germany and France lately here. Your focused entirely to heavily on implementing controls on the weapons themselves, which should be a secondary concern.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you. What's the goal you have in mind for addressing your concern about the availability of firearms? Put another way, if we're talking in hypotheticals, what would be a solution you'd be interested in seeing?
You don't need a tank to murder a large number of people though. You just need fertilizer and some fuel oil. There's absolutely no way to stop people from making explosives. It is literally impossible.