According to the The Atlantic and statehealthfacts.org, even states with just one (so-called) gun control law experience significantly fewer gun related deaths. What does that tell us? That we have just as much to worry about from legal gun owners as the ‘criminals’ that gun control opponents claim we need to fear.
http://www.newsday.com/opinion/columnists/cathy-young/young-gun-control-wouldn-t-make-us-safer-1.3870987
What is to say that gun control laws would stop anything? People still get their hands on illegal drugs AND illegal weapons already, and making them illegal would make people want them even more. I think strict gun control laws would give way for the government to control us as a police state. I think what would be a better idea would be to train people around the gun users to see signs of a person “losing it” so that they could alert someone before anyone gets hurt. In my opinion, most people in the world could stand to go to therapy anyway. I know I need to.
For starters, I think it’s a pretty bad idea to stifle discussion of the topic by invoking slippery slope fallacies, especially when information has already been submitted into the discussion to back up the point I was making, but I’d like to expand on it. I think you’re right about teaching people proper respect for a weapon.
Before I got my hunting license, I vividly recall once, jokingly, pointing my brother’s rifle at him. (Though I had first asked whether or not it was loaded) I didn’t learn until I took the mandatory Missouri hunter safety course that it’s unethical to ever point a weapon at anyone. That was in 2004, but looking at more recent statistics, there were 283,253 deer tagged in Missouri in 2008, and only fifteen hunting accidents. (All nonfatal, and this is in a state where 90% of the hunting is done with firearms.)
The Missouri mandatory hunting safety course is a day-long course with a quiz at the end, and you basically just learn to respect the weapon and handle it safely. And, I’d argue that in light of those numbers, it makes sense that (at minimum) every legal gun purchaser be required to demonstrate competency with a weapon. With as much success as we have experienced requiring hunters to learn safety, why wouldn’t we require all gun owners to demonstrate such competency?
Another problem I have is the notion that we shouldn’t track ammunition purchases. In Missouri, you might recall that we’ve had a history with methamphetamine production. As a means of countering that problem, our state regulates the purchase of OTC meds used in the production of meth. (It’s tracked electronically.) We can draw a correlation between large-volume purchases of cough syrup and meth cooking to get someone on police’s radar, but 6000 rounds of ammunition doesn’t? (Heck, people get on watch lists for putting excessive postage on an envelope.)
I think we can be reasonably certain that someone buying that much ammo isn’t simply popping off squirrels in their back yard. Furthermore, if they have to go through illegal channels to get it, they’re that much more likely to be found out ahead of any potential incident.
