>> Also any argument like "mental illness" or "ease of access to firearms" needs to explain why the same does not apply to the rest of the world
- Well Afghanistan people have access to lot of guns , lots of it and maybe even tanks. But they don't go to school that much. And in Serbia the population is thinly spread across vast swatches of ice. Not exactly LA.
Lets simply stop talking and just bring a bill to buy back all automatic guns and destroy them. This country needs it.
There aren’t really any automatic weapons in the US, unless they were manufactured before a certain date and you have a particular hard to acquire license. You may mean semi-automatic. I assume you don’t know many gun owners. I grew on a farm in the south and Incan assure you that when people there say “come and take them,” they mean it. At this point you’re talking about a lot of very armed veterans and hunters, it just doesn’t seem practical. If you could wave a magic wand, who knows it may work but that isn’t really an option.
I think there have to be other approaches here that can actually happen. The element of cultural memesis and role of the media in making anti-heros of these deranged young men is worth examining. It’s also pretty clear that the current approach to bullying in schools isn’t working at all. It also seems like it’s just too easy for some young men in their late teens to just fall through society’s cracks, I don’t know what the answer is there.
I'm also from a smaller city in the south. I can also confirm that when people say "come and take them," they are serious. No one is going to be interested in a buy-back program, and a lot of people will defend their household if they know authorities really are coming to take their guns. A lot of men in southern culture would feel comparatively helpless if they knew they couldn't defend their home with a gun. Not saying it's logical, but that's the mentality.
Ironically, my home town in TN is a lot safer than where I now live in the Bay Area, where legal gun ownership is restricted and frowned upon. I don't think that's _why_ it's less safe here, but it's interesting to see the opposing mentalities.
What I’m saying is that you very quickly need to enforce a law like that with the state’s monopoly on violence, which seems to run contrary to the problem you’re trying to solve.
- Well Afghanistan people have access to lot of guns , lots of it and maybe even tanks. But they don't go to school that much. And in Serbia the population is thinly spread across vast swatches of ice. Not exactly LA.
Lets simply stop talking and just bring a bill to buy back all automatic guns and destroy them. This country needs it.