Quote:
Originally Posted by Edward64
For those that are for total-or-near-total ban, I'll ask the question - why penalize the law abiding, presumably sound of mind citizens from owning weapons after we enact more rigorous controls? Why put the effort on restricting the 'good guys', put the effort on taking guns away from criminals and mentally unstable.
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Because the walls separating those two groups are formed out of thin air, and plenty of bad guys have committed mass murder with a gun that was legally purchased and owned by an adjacent and/or directly related good guy. There's also a significant number of bad guys that spent the entirety of their lives as good guys, until they snapped.
Secondarily we are also already crucially and purposely failing how we handle the mentally ill and have intentionally and systematically dedicated less and less of our resources to supporting them, pushing gun control into that arena would most likely result in significantly less attention and resources for both issues, rather than more. Any 'fix' for firearms that invokes the collective mental health of America has to begin with (or at least acknowledge the necessity of) an absolute overhaul of the American mental health system & culture and the lack of resources involved, before we can even begin talking about some sort of focused, incidental firearm legislation.