WOW: Guns to surpass car accidents as leading cause of deaths among young people

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183. The choice is to try to finds a number of different ways to reduce gun violence. ...

This might include:

1) Universal background checks on the sale of all firearms.

2) Improving our NICS background check system to insure that the names of those who should not be allowed to purchase firearms are updated on a timely basis by the states and that includes the names of those legally adjudged as having significant mental problems.

3) Devoting more funds for the police agencies to combat the straw purchase of firearms and to stop the smuggling of these weapons into the streets of our inner cities to be sold on the black market.

4) Substantially increasing the penalties for anyone involved in the illegal purchase or smuggling of firearms. I would be suggest that such people be charged as an accessory to any crime committed with the firearms they dealt in (although this might prove legally impossible).

5) Legalizing many drugs in order to take much of the profit motive out of the drug trade and consequently reduce the violence that the drug gangs cause in our society. We lost the War on Drugs decades ago and most realistic people understand this. We learned no lessons from the Prohibition era and we seem to lack the will and the intelligence to stop this failed effort as our nation did when it effectively repealed Prohibition by passing the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933.

6) Developing a mental healthcare system that allows people to seek help for mental problems from a mental healthcare professional at an affordable price rather than seek treatment from a GP who will give them what often proves to be a dangerous prescription drug.

7) Requiring any person who buys a firearm or ammunition to have proof of completing a firearm safety course.

To me it makes far more sense to push for such laws and tactics than to overreach and try for a fairly useless ban on assault weapons.

I realize that those who wish to see strict gun laws such as exist in many nations understand that banning and confiscating all firearms has to be accomplished in small incremental steps. That effort has failed even after truly tragic events such as the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.

I will admit that sometime long in the future gun confiscation might happen in this nation but I am more worried about reducing gun violence right now. As I have said firearm violence has fallen significantly in recent years and is now at a level last seen in the late 1960s which was a fairly peaceful time. I feel we can do far better and cut firearm violence maybe in half and reduce the level of suicide as well through better mental healthcare which is affordable to all.

But few on the gun control side appear to have any real interest in passing simple solutions such I have just suggested that might make a real difference in the next five to ten years. Instead they push for bans on assault weapons and the number of rounds a magazine can hold. I'm sorry but the chances of another assault weapons ban passing at the federal level are slim to none. Not only is the effort to pass one futile but it also causes unintended consequences. The sale of firearms and ammunition absolutely skyrocketed after our recent tragic shootings led to the Democratic Party push for another AWB. Instead of improving our gun laws we accomplished nothing and now millions more firearms are in civilian hands. Undoubtedly many people who just purchased their first firearm will end up committing suicide, murdering a family member or having a tragic accident as they know little about firearm safety. Some of these weapons may be used in a mass shooting.

The gun control movement and the main stream media to incrementally disarm Americans reminds me of Don Quixote tilting at windmills. It's a noble effort and that's all.

I personally would like to see a time similar to when I grew up in the 1950s and 60s when most gun owners had good reason to own their weapons. They were hunters and target shooters or lived in extremely dangerous neighborhoods.

All the gun control effort has accomplished over the years with its push for gun bans is that the gun manufacturers have profited, the NRA has gained members and many gun owners have left the Democratic Party and will never return.