The topic of gun control does come out quite a bit with every spree shooting, as do many of the arguments. According to some statistics guns are dangerous.[footnote]The chances of a handgun killing its owner is twice as much as the chances of it killing an assailant. (The chances of it doing either is fairly remote. Most families with handguns survive without incident.)[/footnote] Our crime rate with guns in the US is ridiculously high compared to that of the rest of the industrialized world (even those with rampant private gun ownership). It's all true.
And yeah, there's a lot of common counter arguments: guns have uses too, especially against vermin and hungry megafauna, that the police are short staffed, that our government gets rambunctious when they're not nervous about someone trying to shoot them out of spite. That there's a gun culture, and changing that would be a problem. Indeed, the United States has had a frontier most of its existence, and that has given us an individualist culture. We still have plenty of rural and downright wild areas and our institutionalized hazard control services cannot possibly cover all occasions.
Myself, I'd even go on to argue that not only do we not have enough police to intercept crime (or even carry all cases through the justice system), but recent events regarding phone cameras, regarding child-run lemonade stands, regarding the arrests of spontaneous dancers, regarding the Occupy raids and, heck, regarding the Megaupload arrests have made it clear that the police are not (necessarily) our friends. They segregate themselves from us civilians, and are more interested in throwing people in jail than seeing justice done, and they go where they are directed by lobby-controlled administrators, not where they are necessarily needed. So, for now, it appears the long arm of the law is hedging towards the service of tyrants than of the people.
But all this is moot when it comes to gun control, because the whole reason we would restrict access to firearms is to allegedly protect us from ourselves. And people not only need to engage in dangerous activities for the purposes of industry (agrarian or otherwise), but we also like to engage in dangerous activities. Perhaps crazy, perhaps stupid, but definitely thrillseekers, we jump out of airplanes, and go undersea deep enough that we have to depressurize for weeks. We climb rocks and go to parts of the world where we have no business being. Just to see it. Just to be there. And sometimes we like to appreciate the instruments of warfare and lob some artillery at some old wrecked cars.
The question eventually has to be raised: What is the determining factor that that makes one dangerous thing acceptable, and another dangerous thing not? The ability to kill others? Then cars would be outlawed, as they cause more death and injury per capita, per car or per owner (however you want to measure it). Intent of a device? Well then you start getting into thought crime, and this logic breaks down comes when civilian weapons are more effective despite their multipurpose nature (better range, do more damage, more accurate), than military ones.[footnote]An designated marksmen [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle] for that intermediate range between ordinary riflemen and snipers.[/footnote] We can't regulate things just because someone thinks their existence is evil, otherwise a lot of fringe culture, from AD&D to Rock & Roll to Pogo dancing to video games become subject to regulation because someone finds it distasteful and thinks our kids will be corrupted under its influence.
Incidents such as the won't stop this. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Aurora_shooting] and it is impossible to regulate enough to stop someone determined to do a lot of damage.
The sad truth is, the US has reacted to consequences [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11] of having done so. Having not endured war in our homeland (not since the era of mechanized warfare, at least) we haven't been able to take terrorist attacks in stride the way it often is in Europe. In the meantime, just as the victims of the 9/11 attacks were hardly a blip in the statistical safety records of airlines, the Aurora cinema shooting will hardly be an anomaly in the violent crime statistics in the United States, the highest rates are due to domestic incidents and gang warfare. And if you're truly looking to save lives (rather than react to the most recent drama), heart disease, cancer, respiratory illness and strokes are killing us far, far more than bullets.
238U
