@KNOWITALL First of all, I never said no one should have a gun. Law enforcement and soldiers should certainly be armed. And I won’t go into my views on a soldier talking about all the “great shots” he made “for his country” – but no, I wouldn’t call it bragging. That’s a whole other issue entirely. I’m talking about civilians owning guns.
And I’m not sure why anyone would say that American violence has always been “necessary.” What about what we did to the Native Americans on their soil? What about all the people we’ve killed because we constantly want to push our democracy onto other countries? Americans are bullies and always have been. Freakin’ world police… Greatest country on earth? Far from it.
I love how pro-gunners always go right to mental health. Let’s do mental health checks before someone buys a gun. Let’s get better mental health assessment in schools. Sounds good on paper, but…
1.) Mental health records are confidential, as they should be
2.) There’s no accurate way to decide which mental illnesses should disqualify someone from buying a gun
3.) Some of the most potentially dangerous mental disorders, like schizophrenia, don’t develop until the late teens or early 20’s (or later), so mental health screenings in elementary school wouldn’t be very helpful
Let’s talk about the two 4-year-olds that shot and killed other kids because their gun-enthusiast parents left their loaded guns out, one because daddy was showing off his weapon collection, both in the last week. Until we can ensure that gun owners have an acceptable level on intelligence and common sense (puh!), then maybe it’s the case that civilians don’t really need guns.
And the fact still remains that Americans have more guns per capita and more gun-related deaths than any other developed country. Give me a reason why that is necessary. The only reason we need guns is to protect ourselves from other people with guns. There’s a solution for that, but none that’ll ever be put to use in America. Republicans will see to that.