No.You're politicising an issue (this post originally having been written on the day of the shootings) which is far more complex than "some guy killed 20 today". You wished to do so while the bodies were still warm.
Shame on you.
Do you want to know why the country (my country, the United States, where you don't live) exploded with gun control talks Friday? Because after more than three mass shootings in less than six months, because after we witnessed a horrible tragedy no one wants to see again, the only thing to do is to ask why it happened and what can be done to prevent it in the future.
Ezra Klein said it well in a Friday piece for the Washington Post: "Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. 'Too soon,' howl supporters of loose gun laws. But as others have observed, talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn’t 'too soon.' It’s much too late."
At any rate, it's Sunday now. Do you feel like continuing to be pedantic and contribute nothing to a discussion about another country's problems, or do you want to actually engage in some legitimate discourse?
Why does working to help those with mental health problems have to be an "instead?" Improving mental health support and decreasing easy access to guns aren't mutually exclusive, and it's obvious they're both huge parts of the problem.BigLutz said:How about working instead to help those with Mental Health problems, I mean I think we all agree they shouldn't hold guns but we may be needing to work on reporting and helping those with troubled behavior from early on and maybe placing them on a "No Fly" list for guns in which they can only obtain them after a certified test. Because as had happened with this shooting, merely having laws preventing these people from buying guns will only cause them to get them through the black market or to merely steal them.
However, gun legislation is more immediate, both in terms of feasibility and safety. So that's where you see a lot of discussion right now. It's not THE fix -- it's just the most pertinent and the most, to some degree, achievable.
You're right that there are always other ways for even "no fly" individuals to obtain them, but why shouldn't we make it more difficult? And not just for them, but for everyone, to reduce saturation.
And I want to be clear right now: This is not an indictment of gun-owners or hobbyists. This is not a cry to ban guns entirely. This is, however, a debate about whether substantially increased gun control would limit gun-related homicide and mass shootings, which every piece of statistical evidence seems to suggest is true.
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