Assault Weapons Ban Lacks Democratic Votes to Pass Senate

[RiverNoord]

73. A temporary list is a permanent list...

in today's society. There is no practical means to ensure that:

1) Data backups won't remain available practically indefinitely.

2) People who have authorized access to the database don't abuse that access.

3) People who do not have authorized access to the database acquire access.

4) Laws would not change and a database previously designated as temporary retroactively could become permanent.

The statements I made such as 'the really bad stuff is obviously done by people who are mentally ill' were intended as my representation of what I consider to be common, everyday reasoning of most people faced with the news of mass shooting events, not necessarily my own personal view.

I agree with some of your points. Yes, the overwhelming majority of mass shootings are caused by persons with substantial mental health issues.

However, firearms are vastly easier to come by in our country than in virtually all others with similar socioeconomic characteristics. I exclude from this group countries such as Venezuela, Iraq (post-invasion), Brazil, Somalia, Sudan, etc... Seriously, just show up at a gun show and if you have the cash, you get the gun. No questions asked.

As to addressing social and economic issues - I'm all for it. I'm all for a vastly more equitable society with much less severe income equality, no racism, no demographic environments where financial opportunity is much more accessible through criminal enterprise than legal, legitimate trades or simple labor. I'd love to see people magically transformed into non-jealous, possessive, occasional nut jobs where intimate relations are concerned, so that there would be no domestic violence (although the unintended result might render the species nearly incapable of procreation).

The thing is, regardless of how equitable a society is, in all such respects, people will still get into fights. I was a divorce lawyer for two years - it was all I could take... When people get into squabbles, feuds, and fights, and there are guns around, violence that may erupt from such circumstances tends toward gun violence. The simple fact is that guns in a home vastly increase the probability that a member of the household will, through accident or intention, be injured or killed by firearm.

We human beings are easily swayed by power or the promise of power. It's part of what we are. Merely holding a gun provides most with a considerable sense of increased power. The gun itself modifies human perspective on power, and possession tends toward use. Gun violence has gone down slightly in most regions in the United States, but that won't always be the case - not with the vast numbers of guns in circulation and the kind of political and economic fluctuations we will face in the future.

If you want to reliably reduce gun violence, you must reduce the number of guns available to generate that violence. Anything else is just papering over the cracks.