It's not about whether or not removing guns will lower loss of life. For argument's sake, let's say that banning guns will completely eradicate mass killings. America is founded on principles and sometimes those are challenged, but we never back down from them. It's also about what is necessary to reduce mass killings. If the same outcome of banning guns can be achieved another way, then America is obligated to use other means. It's like the 1st Amendment's freedom of speech protection. We could greatly reduce the amount of violence and threats in the country if we controlled what everyone said. But we don't do that because we shouldn't. It's fair to question the Constitution and current interpretations of it. The Supreme Court used to rule that the Constitution does not guarantee any rights to women and people of color. But I see the 2nd Amendment debate as a bigger debate. The 2nd Amendment serves the purpose of protection the country. Loss of life shouldn't be the "fog of war" because it doesn't have to be, but for now it sadly is.
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That quote there - “America was founded on principles...” - is something I don’t agree with too much. When the principles we are founded on are challenged we should reevaluate them, not just refuse to back down from them. Theoretically we could say the same about other principles regarding oppressive laws in other countries... they were founded with those principles, so they shouldn’t back down from them when public opinion begins to change? We should be willing to look at any of our laws and look at their validity for today’s society.
Comparing the first and second amendments is like comparing apples and oranges. One of these is not just a pillar of our country, but a pillar of most modern societies (there are some exceptions, but we tend to view these countries with disdain... as we should, I think). Free speech is seen as important by most societies, so it’s importance is well displayed. However, the latter does not have nearly the same presence outside of the United States (in this case the freedom to own guns, of course interpretations and wordings differ), which makes me much less confident in it. I think one of the reasons you and I don’t really see eye to eye is that I am unconvinced of the value of the second amendment. You say it’s meant to protect the country... which is plausible, but I believe it to be a rationalization. I don’t think the citizens could actually win a war against the government, regardless of the rifles they could have, and I believe it’s pretty unrealistic to imagine a coup of millions of people storming against the government. Besides this, even if 5 million people decide to rally against the government, they likely wouldn’t represent the people. If the only defense for leaving the 2nd amendment untouched is rising up against the government, then I feel pretty good about saying we should change it to save lives, because that ideal doesn’t seem valuable in comparison to people’s lives. Of course, we may be able to change other things such as mental health to improve things, but I don’t see the value in people having rifles/dangerous firearms regardless, so I’m still in favor of changing the 2nd amendment, loss of life factored in or not.
That's the problem, though. We can't just say let's violate rights because it would take too long to fix a problem. Why can't we use that same logic to argue that terrorism is a major threat to America, and most terrorists claim the Muslim faith, so let's violate the 1st Amendment and ban Islam from America? Every action of such a magnitude as altering the 2nd Amendment or it's interpretation causes precedence to be set that can be dangerous in certain situations.
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As I said in an earlier part of my post; we can’t defend ideals and rights just by saying they are ideals and rights. We have to show they’re value, and continue to show they’re value for as long as they are exist. As I said earlier, comparing the 1st and 2nd amendments is not a valid comparison. I understand creating precedent is dangerous, but this could also be setting the precedent that people’s lives are of the upmost importance and we, as a country, are willing to make changes to that end.
As for what the problem is, I already explained what I believe the problem is. To me, it's cultural. It won't be fixed by government. Technology is the problem. It dehumanizes and radicalizes people. That's why mental health care is so important now. Technology is causing the problems. It's actually funny when I hear people say video games and movies make people go on killing sprees and I'm thinking that it's stuff like facebook and Twitter that make people go on killing sprees. There's a whole separate world online. Back to me plugging the great show - Legion on FX. The last episode had a great segment that pretty much makes my entire argument about technology.
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Okay, yeah, I won’t deny that a lot of societies problems are cultural. But what can we really do about that? We can try to provide people with help, but we can’t force people to get help. Providing help is only as good as people being willing to use what’s provided, and I don’t really think a lot of killers would seek out psychiatric help. Besides this, what sorts of ways would we limit Facebook and twitter (whomever) to improve mental health? Do we want to regulate those people when we may not even understand how they’re exactly impacting mental health? I’m all for working on social media and it’s bad impacts on the human psyche, but I think that it’s simply not enough. I just haven’t really been convinced that firearms carry much value at all to the average person, and until that changes I (personally) won’t understand not restricting access.