Two things (or three)

[alex_antonin]

My roommate told me there was a massacre in a gay bar recently. She also was complaining that people were like “Gun control! Gun control!” on the idea that, as she said, “Evil people can just steal guns.” She had a lot of trouble with the simple concept that if you stop selling guns legally, it makes it a lot harder for these people to get guns

Comments

[kengr]

Slight flaw in your "just make guns illegal" idea.

as I've pointed out before lots of gangs have guns that they couldn't possibly have obtained legal, and that would be hard to pick up on the black market (because they are fully automatic, and thus required all kinds of paperwork).

So how do they get them? They're smuggled in with the drugs the gangs sell.

Given the sheer *tonnage* of drugs shipped in every year, the guns are a minor additional detail.

A lot of survivalist types get smuggled guns (and things like grenade launchers) as well. Also some of that sort of thing get stolen from the military & police.

Note: as for the pedophiles & abusers bit, note that there are also people who somehow think that mothers couldn't *possibly* abuse their own children.

[kengr]

Oh yeah, the friends & family as molesters doesn't spread well because it is "unthinkable". People *literally* don't want to believe it.

Mostly because if they did, they'd have to think a lot harder about things than they want to.

[alex_antonin]

Something else that occurred to me is this: Were you aware that people can be inconvenienced into deciding against killing themselves? It's true. Makes me wonder... sure, someone sufficiently motivated will find a way to commit murder, but if we make getting a gun extremely difficult, even next to impossible, who knows how many people could be inconvenienced into deciding against committing mass murder?

[kengr]

Sorry, but we already have proof that doesn't work very well. Either they'll use something else that may limit the casualties a bit (example, the guy in England(?) who attacked folks in a fast food joint with a machete) or they *raise* the casualties by using a bomb

[benicek]

Try and buy an assault rifle in England and see how far you get. Certainly a few criminals here have them, and paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland still have stashes of them from the days when Gaddafi was helping to supply and smuggle them. But a lone nutter without organised crime connections managing to get one and evade the decade in prison he'd get for possession? It's very unlikely.

[alex_antonin]

Exactly my point!

[kengr]

So why do the police still have Armed Response teams?

[benicek]

To combat the small amount of gun crime that still happens.