Until the United States ends its love affair with guns (and the belief that they solve problems), we will continue to see regular mass shootings and thousands dead from gun violence.
And yet firearms-related homocides are down 49% since 1993 while number of guns has gone up even more than that. Seems like we're moving in the right direction to me. Where we're really fucking up is on mental health. The vast majority of (the relative handful of) mass shooters are more-or-less obvious cuckoos for cocoa puffs. The problem isn't so much that nearly all of them passed the background checks, it's that they were even on the streets at all. If they're too dangerous to be allowed firearms, they're too dangerous to be out on the streets. Because it's not as you can't buy illegal firearms to go along with your crack, smack, or meth -- criminals do so all the time. It's because if you're too dangerous to buy firearms, you're too dangerous to be allowed access to knives (especially large ones, or swords), gasoline and matches, fertilizer and diesel fuel, or even rat poison. Reason? It's because the person is dangerous, not the tool he/she might decide to use. Rationale? See El Al Airlines security. It's the person that's a danger, not the tool he/she might decide to use (and which just might be something not yet considered a threat. Attacking tools and not the tool mis-users is lunacy. For example, only a couple of decades after the invention of a practical pistol (wheel-locks), and well after the Habsburg Emperor had banned them from civilian (i.e., non-noble, non-wealthy-and-connected, non-military) ownership, he was being begged by lower-level governments to rescind the ban on private ownership because the highwaymen didn't care about the so-called ban. The only people being hurt by the ban were the law-abiding, and the only people being helped were the outlaws. Go figure. Santayana seems to have come across this situation. Something about history...
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And yet firearms-related homocides are down 49% since 1993 while number of guns has gone up even more than that. Seems like we're moving in the right direction to me. Where we're really fucking up is on mental health. The vast majority of (the relative handful of) mass shooters are more-or-less obvious cuckoos for cocoa puffs. The problem isn't so much that nearly all of them passed the background checks, it's that they were even on the streets at all. If they're too dangerous to be allowed firearms, they're too dangerous to be out on the streets. Because it's not as you can't buy illegal firearms to go along with your crack, smack, or meth -- criminals do so all the time. It's because if you're too dangerous to buy firearms, you're too dangerous to be allowed access to knives (especially large ones, or swords), gasoline and matches, fertilizer and diesel fuel, or even rat poison. Reason? It's because the person is dangerous, not the tool he/she might decide to use. Rationale? See El Al Airlines security. It's the person that's a danger, not the tool he/she might decide to use (and which just might be something not yet considered a threat. Attacking tools and not the tool mis-users is lunacy. For example, only a couple of decades after the invention of a practical pistol (wheel-locks), and well after the Habsburg Emperor had banned them from civilian (i.e., non-noble, non-wealthy-and-connected, non-military) ownership, he was being begged by lower-level governments to rescind the ban on private ownership because the highwaymen didn't care about the so-called ban. The only people being hurt by the ban were the law-abiding, and the only people being helped were the outlaws. Go figure. Santayana seems to have come across this situation. Something about history...
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