I’m always a little perplexed by the argument that says “if they don’t have a gun they’ll use something else.”
Because, yeah, isn’t that the point? Guns have much more killing potential than other weapons (knives, cars). You said it yourself... let’s minimize the loss of life. Shouldn’t we make it harder on killers to access weapons that can kill with such potency? I understand the argument of stopping government oppression, but to me the issue of people dying so constantly seems to outweigh our rather archaic need to be armed as citizens. I don’t believe weaponery to even be the most important tool in fighting your own government... strikes (gas stations, hospitals, food production, ect) would be far more potent, without the loss of life. We, the general populous, are what drives society forward... if we wanted to halt the entire country we could just stop going to work. We don’t need guns to do that.
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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.
Our other issues, to me, seem like a much more complex challenge to solve without drastic changes and (likely) would not be solved in a timely fashion.
(1) If we cannot solve the multitude of issues causing this violence quickly, what should/would we do then? Should we just let this continue, and hope for some good fortune? This doesn’t seem like a problem where we can just wait and pray for regression to the mean.
(2) What do you think would be actual solutions for tackling the reasons behind violence? What do you think are the real reasons that we are seeing all of this violence? You said that America is struggling to tackle the real problems causing the violence, but notably left off what these problems are. To be able to debate with you I need to know what you’re suggesting instead.
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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.
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.