EDIT: It's getting a little disheartening how often I wrote this stuff against adding more gun-control laws. I now think we would benefit from licensing, registration, and better communication between law enforment agencies. And I think we need to do more since the current situation has been awful for decades. We need to do something.
Something I'm seeing more often in the news right now are stories about anti-gun organizations trying to plead for support by talking about ending gun violence. And then they talk about passing laws to make more guns illegal for American citizens to own.
I very much support the idea of reducing gun violence. I want to support a culture and society where violence of any kind is diminished as much as possible. But the approach these anti-gun organizations seem to be taking is wrong. It's objectively wrong.
Just look at it logically instead of emotionally. Gun violence is already a criminal act, and many other criminal acts can receive harsher punishments if committed while in possession of a fire arm. The thing we want to stop is ALREADY ILLEGAL. And what will the result of making more specific types of guns illegal be? It's not going to reduce violent crime rates with guns. What it's going to do is reduce the number of law abiding responsible citizens who can have the kind of gun. So... uh... all it'll do is make it so that all of the good guys can't get the gun legally. And as we've seen repeatedly around the world and in history, taking guns away from the law abiding citizens means that the criminals who will always have access to guns have far less to fear.
More gun laws won't help us. They won't make us safer. They won't reduce violence done with guns or any other tool. And it's because the problem isn't one that can be addressed by legislation. The problem is people. There are just people in the world who are willing to hurt other people to get what they want. To reduce gun violence, we need to educate people and do our best to raise our kids well. We also need very much to make asking for help with emotional/mental problems an easy thing to do. Instead of making fun of someone who needs therapy and medication, we should be applauding them for having the self awareness to ask for help.
I very much support stopping violence (not just violence committed with guns). I would like to support an organization that tries to do it the right way.
