Gun control is a "third rail" in many political jurisdictions in the USA. Many Americans will vote against any agent who would disarm them; those voters are unlikely to see disarming to diminish the (very roughly) ~0.000001% chance of death by mass shooting as a sensible--or even Constitutional--trade.
That would pretty much guarantee that people who need mental health services would deliberately avoid getting it to prevent it from showing up on their records, e.g. a security guard who needs to carry a firearm for their job.
Uh, what do you think a psychiatric exam is? There's no crazy-o-meter that they stick into an orifice to objectively determine whether you're mentally ill or not. You simply get asked a series of questions which you can reply to in any way you like.
"socially awkward people aren't allowed to have guns" as a policy would be a flagrant violation of a constitutional right.
The scary thing is that mentally ill people can intentionally mask their illness in order to pass exams.
It's a common founding myth among gun rights people that "The American People" are pro-gun, but it's just not really true. It's a particular driving issue for a particular subset of the republican base, and beyond that opinions aren't as strong, but are broadly pro-gun-control.
It was a flawed list of too-specific rules that were self-contradictory or incomplete in a bunch of places, and indeed that became part of the mythology about it in gun circles.
But it also directly outlawed clones of the Kalashnikov and AR-15 rifles that have been preferentially used (for fairly obvious reasons) in much of the recent violence. It worked, within its domain.
No one likes the ACA either, but you can still buy insurance with a pre-existing condition. Same deal. The gun folks like to conflate "flawed law" with "useless law", but that's not how it works in practice.
As it is, the House is more representative of the population of the US than the Senate, so it's fair to say the biggest barrier to increased gun control right now is the quirky nature of the US political system, not popular sentiment.
That bill would do nothing to combat these mass shooters. I can't think of any offhand that have bought their weapons through private sale. Most don't have a criminal record so they just buy them from random gun shops.
So if it won't solve anything related to these incidents, what's the point?
No, it wouldn't solve everything. But if we wait to pass a law that solves everything, we'll never pass anything.
> have drafted and passed a complete background check law have not considered any of this, or looked at any data
Yes, generally because the people proposing gun laws know nothing about guns.
I have watched national politicians tell townhalls that it's perfectly legal for someone to order a gun online right to their door without a background check, that is a felony.
I have watched them tell people that fully automatic guns are easy to obtain, which they are not.
I have watched them tell people that banning the AR-15 should be our #1 priority, when in reality more people are punched and kicked to death each year than are killed with rifles.
So yes, politicians generally talk out of their @$$ to pander to their bases and get votes. They are not experts on most subject matter so I wouldn't expect them to have any info that isn't widely known.
If you want to viscerally understand their viewpoint, call to mind the reaction that you have when someone in the conservative camp goes "Look, it's snowing, so much for global warming!" -- and then substitute "snowing" for "school shooting" and "global warming" for "politically-induced mass starvation."
I don't buy this argument, but only because I don't think armed resistance would be effective, and there's a lot that I know I don't know on that front. What I don't believe is that this tradeoff has an obvious undebatable answer.
I guess it is the phrase "to disarm them", which is somewhat provocative, since no-one would seriously advocate taking away all guns. Even Japan, with just 5% of the gun violence of the US, allows some citizens to have some guns.
Another issue is with your stated statistic of death via mass shooting. This obviously ignores maimings and other non-deaths, and also deaths from guns in non-mass events, such as burglaries, accidents.
But most of all, it ignores the psychological impact from the threat of gun violence.
What happens to a young child's mind from having to participate in active shooter drills? From having adults explain to them that this is a real threat, and that they better be ready for it? No child should have to carry that burden.
And maybe that leads back to some agreement with your point. If the actual danger from guns is as low as you say, then why have these drills at all?
While I believe this to be true, virtually any sort of "turn in some of your guns" event in the USA would... not be viewed with any nuance at all. Even machine guns were more-or-less exempt from turn-in, provided they were registered by a certain time. Moreover there are already very, very many semi-automatic pistols, revolvers, rifles, and shotguns in circulation--it's not as if a lot of folks have a bolt-action 22 cal rifle and just a few have semi-automatics--the sort of guns that can be fired and reloaded somewhat rapidly, that's what we've got. Setting aside the fact that a rifle is more powerful and aim-able, but harder to conceal, compared to a pistol, I'm not sure what characteristic of a "bad" gun the American government could successfully put forth.
All that said--from whom would you propose to confiscate what guns?
> Another issue is with your stated statistic of death via mass shooting. This obviously ignores maimings and other non-deaths, and also deaths from guns in non-mass events, such as burglaries, accidents.
Well, agreed! Mass shootings and terror attacks inflict many fewer casualties on the American population compared to robberies, gang and drug violence, alcohol and smoking, fatty foods, traffic accidents and DUI, swimming pools, etc. However, it does not seem to me that these other perils are used to buttress the case for banning the instruments of such trouble. I don't mean to be glib, and indeed it is hard to imagine a bad actor using an undoctored swimming pool against innocents, but it does seem to be the case that the electorate lacks the will to stamp out certain risks. And this lack of will is not really related to the measurable impact of the problem.
> What happens to a young child's mind from having to participate in active shooter drills?
We could reflect on the schoolhouse duck-and-cover drills for nuclear war in the 1950s and 1960s--like, isn't contemplating nuclear annihilation and nuclear winter much more terrifying and existentially dreadful than locking the classroom door? Maybe it isn't a good idea to traumatize children with visions of a terrible but statistically very remote fate. On the other hand, local police and school districts must be seen to be doing something, so maybe it is practically unavoidable.
thats all they're doing
>public is not made aware of this very tragic problem
everyone is quite aware of what the problems are, many view the children murdered during Sandy Hook as the end of the conversation. The decisions were made.
most first world countries have solved these problems, the US meanwhile...
‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
Do you think it would take less than 9 hours to pour some diesel fuel on fertilizer and flatten the entire WalMart?
People will just move on to other weapons: knives, bombs, etc.
Norway has very restrictive gun laws. Breivik managed to get enough fertilizer to make a bomb that was mostly a distraction, but still sent 8 people to grave and injured hundreds.
UK is having a knife problem: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42749089 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48186035
You are at 10x higher chance of death by vehicle.
The -only- reason it is seen as a tragedy because people feel those deaths were somehow avoidable.
Also, knife crime in the UK is not higher than the US.
Yes the deaths were avoidable. We know they were because every other first world country doesn’t have this problem in anywhere the same degree.
How do you explain much lower homicide rates in different US states, many on par or better than "every other first wolrd country?
If you drill down deeper, by county level, or even more granular - the picture becomes much clearer still. You should research it, see what variables drive it, instead of arriving at conclusions without any data.
Why do such discrepancies exist, sometimes literally across the street?
The problem is much more complicated than "guns bad".