You make some good points. After reading all the nerdy comments on this subject I can come around to the view that it is not gun ownership per se that is the fundamental problem. Rather, it is the American attitude to using guns. Plenty of other countries have liberal gun laws without having our problems because gun owners don't consider that aiming them at people will ever be a valid option.
We can see even on this nerdy site comments from fanatics who (encouraged by the NRA) are prepared to shoot police at their front door if their guns are threatened. One of them even thought that his military service had somehow earned him the right to have guns at home. More likely, it earned the rest of us the freedom and security to not need to have guns at home.
I am sure that most Americans who think in a paranoid way about guns are delightful people in everyday, life and are no threat at all when everything is going well for them. However, they hold a belief that their firearms empower them to deal with problems from other citizens or even from the government. This creates an instability in our society that every nown and then allows someone to go crazy with a gun.
So, even though gun ownership is not the problem, the invalid beliefs about gun empowerment has to be addressed in such a way that protects gun owners and the rest of us as best we can.
We need to provide strong guidance to these otherwise good people about what their guns can actually do for them, which is not much other than make them killers and land them in prison. Given that there are no real uses for a gun at home or on the street, the best way is to make it extremely difficult to possess one in those situations.
Making fire arms and ammunition extremely expensive would be useful. Licences that permt ownership should be available, but extremely expensive and require extensive background checks. Penalties for breach of the new gun laws should cause financial ruin and bring severe social stigma.
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RE: Take all the privately own firearms and destroy them
Brandon,
You make some good points. After reading all the nerdy comments on this subject I can come around to the view that it is not gun ownership per se that is the fundamental problem. Rather, it is the American attitude to using guns. Plenty of other countries have liberal gun laws without having our problems because gun owners don't consider that aiming them at people will ever be a valid option.
We can see even on this nerdy site comments from fanatics who (encouraged by the NRA) are prepared to shoot police at their front door if their guns are threatened. One of them even thought that his military service had somehow earned him the right to have guns at home. More likely, it earned the rest of us the freedom and security to not need to have guns at home.
I am sure that most Americans who think in a paranoid way about guns are delightful people in everyday, life and are no threat at all when everything is going well for them. However, they hold a belief that their firearms empower them to deal with problems from other citizens or even from the government. This creates an instability in our society that every nown and then allows someone to go crazy with a gun.
So, even though gun ownership is not the problem, the invalid beliefs about gun empowerment has to be addressed in such a way that protects gun owners and the rest of us as best we can.
We need to provide strong guidance to these otherwise good people about what their guns can actually do for them, which is not much other than make them killers and land them in prison. Given that there are no real uses for a gun at home or on the street, the best way is to make it extremely difficult to possess one in those situations.
Making fire arms and ammunition extremely expensive would be useful. Licences that permt ownership should be available, but extremely expensive and require extensive background checks. Penalties for breach of the new gun laws should cause financial ruin and bring severe social stigma.
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