Shooting of the Day

Out of context: Reply #1993

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  • Fax_Benson2

    I don't know anything about guns but it seems to me that tighter controls (wrong word) are as much about the message and perception and breaking the link with these episodes as about physically taking guns out of people's hands. That's a point that pro-gun people seem to deliberately gloss over and anti-gun people fail to make strongly enough.

    It doesn't look as though this guy just snapped and decided on the spur of the moment to collect and use an arsenal of weapons. When people develop a mental illness / grudge / political motive / revenge fantasy or whatever, they seem to do so at the same time as developing a gun plan because developing a gun plan is viable. It's a legitimate and practical way of making your fantasy real. It allows the person to keep building their narrative because the story arc is so familiar.

    I just can't see how you can separate the will from the act when one so inspires the other. I'd agree that tackling the reasons behind why people get to such a mental state are probably more important than gun legislation, but why treat them as totally separate issues?

    Somehow you need to legislate with the aim of breaking that link rather than breaking the link between people and their guns. It seems reasonable to not let people buy sleeping pills in quantities large enough to kill them. To not serve alcohol to people who are already clearly intoxicated. To not let people fly kites at airports. The gun issue needs to be put in such common sense terms, because talk of control or restriction immediately shuts some people's brains down.

    Fax_Benson 2Permalink
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    • tldr; waffleFax_Benson
    • nah, makes sensescruffics
    • good points well madefadein11
    • But see, you make sense. That will not fly in 'Murika. It's the same 'but knives/cars/bombs/to... picks can kill' and 'people kill, not guns'formed
    • and the always reliable 'if you let them (govt) take away one right, we'll soon have zero freedom'.formed
    • "tackling the reasons behind why people get to such a mental state are probably more important than gun legislation" This nails it for me.Ianbolton
    • And as we're in a world of individualism i think it's even harder for governments to even consider how to control or know what's in peoples headsIanbolton
    • part of the issue is the times we live in ask for easy and simple solutions.pr2
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