Gun Control & RKBA

Regarding suicide: It is not gun violence when person blows their head off anymore more than it's knife violence when somebody slits their wrists.

A robber using a gun as a tool of intimidation and violence is a far different problem from a depressed Nebraska farmer using it as tool of suicide. There are core differences and they must be addressed differently.

I am aware that gun suicides are usually successful. Men tend to not to do the "cry for help" suicide attempt and they don't care as much about the mess they're leaving. So, *boom*. If only we had better mental health care in this country, but because of Republicans and conserva-Dems seem to usually be running things, I guess Medicare for all isn't in the future. But that's okay, because you're positive that we don't need silly things like mental health as along as we take away all the suicide hardware.


Second point: Um... have you seen how many bills go to the Senate to die? Bills expire at the end of the Congress, that is, every two years. The Senate is slow as hell in a good year, and the longer it takes the more the insurance industry has time to mount opposition. The bill needs to be worked on, hearings held, amendments passed... M4A would be a huge fucking deal to pass and it will take Herculean effort to get it past McConnell and his evil minions.

Third point, grandfathering. I bring this up because it is in effect as I type this. States that have banned what they define as "assault weapons" generally require the registration of existing "assault weapons" by a certain date (e.g., three months after the bill becomes law). Then, that registered "assault weapon" cannot be transferred to any private party in the state. It can only be sold to fedeal gun dealers or turned over to the police. This is called "grandfathering" and it's happening now. It also happened under previous real and proposed Federal bans. So, no deflection. "Every accusation is a confession".

Fourth point... this is exactly why nobody wants to give your side an inch, because you'll take a yard. You're not addressing the issue of mass shootings by taking away hardware, so when it fails (as it inevitably will) you'll then promote more bans.

Fifth point: guns are the tools of the violent. Taking away guns does not take away the people that are violent. Trying to take away so many guns that the violent criminals will eventually be disarmed is about the most ineffective way I can think of to address the issue. As I stated in my previous post to you (replying to a different post) we need to make our society better so that all violence will decrease. There's a reason that the blue states tend to have less crime; it's because they tend to take care of their people better.


Final point: there are several classifications of multiple-victim homicides with different causes. A study commissioned by the Clinton administration and completed and released during the Bush misadministration defined "mass shooting" as 5 or move victims not including the shooter and not related to the shooter. At least, that's how I recall the definition. Some of the advocacy groups have their own definitions, such as 4 people killed excluding the shooter, or 4 people shot, not necessarily killed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting?wprov=sfla1

And then of course there are the circumstances. A guy that kills his family then himself has different motivation and root causes than a {insert ethnicity or race here} that decides to go shoot every {enter a different race or ethnicity here} in a Wal-Mart. And that's different than disgruntled employee guns down everybody in his department, which is different from angry student guns down students and staff at school, which is different from wanted killer fleeing from the cops leaves trail of bodies across the state. I think that last is generally called a "spree killing".

So that's an issue that makes it more complex. The Mother Jones spreadsheet pinned to the top of the Group has information like that.

I don't have any really good solutions, unfortunately, except just generally make society better so that we are not so stressed. I mean, it's really easy to kill 5 people with a revolver if you're wiping out your family, and that it sadly what happens all to often.

I want to save lives by making life better. I'm not content with "misery levels steady but the homicide rate dropped 5% over the last 10 years".