The gun control that works: no guns

By some measures, it began in Lexington (the linked Economist column is "Lexington"), when the British government moved to seize citizens' arms.

We must better understand how it is that those who would choose to harm many people reach such a decision. Guns are a tool. So was anthrax, in the post-9/11 mail scare, and it could have been much worse. Mutual respect, understanding, education, kindness, and vigilance are our greatest bulwarks against tragedy.

Banning guns won't solve the problem.

As you were.

People are not a constant. They're not #defines, they may be sane today, insane tomorrow and sane the day after that.

They are impulsive, prone to error and there are a thousand circumstances in life where otherwise perfectly normal people do things that we later label insane.

Temporary insanity is a plea that is heard sometimes in the courts. The basic idea is that during the act the person was insane but is now sane.

This is usually to either get a reduced sentence or none at all. The concept hinges on the fact that we are prone to mood swings, sometimes extreme ones. And that in a fit of anger or worse than that someone can do things that they would normally not do.

And that's the sane people, claiming that. Imagine those that are not 100%. So if you mix a large number of guns with a large number of people without much training, oversight, discipline or checks you're asking for trouble. Some of them are bound to be unstable, and even they don't know about it, yet. But you'll read about it in the paper when they do find out.

The 'right to carry arms' is a card played by people that are afraid they will no longer be a allowed to play with their toys, and cynically used by politicians to get them to vote against their own best interests.

There is no way that an armed revolution will be initiated by them, or if it were initiated would be won by those with their guns. Even a large number of them vs the military is a foregone conclusion. If that were the case it should have happened when that was still possible. Now it's just a relic, a symbol of a nation born from violence unable to let go of its past. The only way to win a conflict like that is to get the military to side with you, or to fracture it to an extent that the outcome is no longer a certainty.

And every year a hundred or so (or even a few thousand if you count the injured) people will die because of this stupidity.

In incidents of 1 or 2, or 28.

In a civilized country individuals do not need guns, should not need guns and should not have guns. If you do insist on that then you should also take responsibility for every time an insane person managed to get hold of one (note that the kid that did this didn't use his own guns but the guns legally owned by his mother, now murdered with her own weapon).

edit: this thread has already been flagged off the homepage.

All shooters of shooting incidents I can think of had easy access to guns. The only exception is Breivik. But he was planning his attacks for years.