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cloudboy -> RE: Gun Control - Mental Illness - Aurora (8/3/2012 6:27:15 PM)
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quote:
More likely, on average, that he'd never have planned that mass destruction in the first place if guns hadn't been available. Aims changes along with the means of achieving them, as I've said before.
As an example: I have a store shed with breezeblock walls. At tool shop, once, I saw an angle grinder. I hadn't heard of these before. These can cut through concrete and brick. It was then, and only then, that I developed the desire to turn my store shed into a study, with a window, the hole for which would be made by an angle grinder. The existence, possibilities and *availability* of the tool engendered the desire, *not* vice versa.
I've heard about guns, and what they can do. But if I were to be walking past a gun shop on the way to work, every day (which is unimaginable in the UK) . . . yep, I think I might start fantasising a bit about such a tool and what I could do with it. I hate certain people, as little or as much as the next man. I almost certainly wouldn't pursue the fantasy, on account of I'm quite balanced. But only 'almost certainly', not 'definitely'.
OG: the bottom line here is that you're not stating some obvious maxim, there. You're stating an opinion. It's coming across as an assumption that seems so comfortably obvious to you that you don't think it even needs thinking about, because you assume that it'll be just as comfortably obvious to anyone else. That is wrong, as far as I can see. Just saying.
GUNS are here to stay in the USA, and there's no way to put this horse back in the barn. At least GUN nuts haven't gotten behind selling hand grenades, stinger missiles, bazookas, IEDs, and other forms of "self defense" that might somehow, too, be squeezed behind the 2nd Amendment, individual rights, and notions of personal freedom and opposition to government tyranny.
The mental health angle at least promises a solution most Americans can get behind.
There is also a flip side to GUN control, namely that gun violations can often put good people behind bars.
Also, the strict gun laws in Norway run counter to your thesis. The determined killer there found his weapons and executed his plan. (OsideGirl's point.)
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