Yeah. If they don't play nice take away their toys. They can have them back when they learn there's a world outside of their borders. :D

Wuddya mean? We've been destabilizing everything outside of our borders for years, y'all are literally on the radar.

let's just do a magic potion to make people less violent while we're at it

You're playing in a purity politics contest while "other gun control advocates" are actually trying to get something done.

So you can have your purity. It means nothing. The fact of the matter is yes while obliviously we would be better off without citizens owning guns, that's not in the cards because of the constitution and the political realities of america. And while we might even be better off without any governments or militaries existing in a hypothetical paradise where humans can be trusted not to rape and pillage... We live in the real world where that is once again a non starter.

So in the meantime we have one issue which we could look at which is that the homicide rate in the US is much higher than other western countries because of the prevalence of guns and because of how easy it is to leak guns onto the black market through straw purchases.

A true way to do gun control in an effective manner is like mindy said, maintaining a proper registry/database of legal guns and making it harder for said legal guns to change hands without setting off a red flag. That could at least make it not as easy to get illegal guns with the serial numbers scratched of sold for the expressed purpose of committing gang murders that can't be traced through ballistic forensics.

But of course instead of that we will debate the hypothetical possibility that we need our guns to fight off a tyrannical govt and how said database is just the first step of the govt systematically disarming the populace so they can freely trample on our rights. So, in short, we deserve every shooting that happens because we **** our selves over with these pointless culture wars instead of trying to pragmatically solve a very real and obvious problem.

That's a hell of a well-thought-out and effectively presented post, jwb, and it does serve to illustrate the dichotomy of a country that professes itself the guardian of global democracy and yet is the only one (so far as I know; could be wrong but certainly one of the few) where people can happily roam the streets with guns (concealed or otherwise) and not be approached by the police for carrying what could be a potential murder weapon.

Change is hard tho

Do you live in a hypothetical world where governments don’t rape and pillage?

Maybe the internet reaches parallel universes and I didn’t realize.

It doesn't matter. They aren't going anywhere.

I guess you don't consider Switzerland a country? :rolleyes:
You Irish are weird you don't think about continental Europe. It's all about Ireland and the land of the leprechauns -- wherever they live.

Like I said, as far as I know. Which often isn't far. I'm happy to be set straight, but I don't make it a point of checking to see how many countries allow guns to be carried legally by civilians. If Switzerland allows that, well, I guess that's just how the Swiss roll, innit?

Times change so that guess you never know but I figure if Reagan taking a bullet didn’t do it, and Newtown didn’t do it - six year old gray matter splattered all over the classroom didn’t do it - it sure doesn’t seem likely. The human suffering that was endured by the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was meticulously documented. But still, I think it’s true that crime kills way more people than war.

Final analysis: People just love things that can destroy people.

If people were cockroaches we’d be jacking off to giant spray cans of raid.