Gun control

Lots of talk about gun control lately.

Lots of passion involved from lots of people.

Lots of not getting to a decent conclusion from either side.


Why is that?

I think there are two problems.

1. There is a lot of stupid partisan politicking going on. Lots of people saying, "This is obvious" and "There _is_ no other solution."  That's just plain not helpful.  Lots of people rejecting each other's stats out of hand rather than thoughtful discussion.

2. Failure to define the problem.  The problem has been defined as "guns" when really we're talking about multiple problems and guns are a thread that runs through them. The solutions to "guns" is different depending on what the problem is.

Terrorism is one problem, and you'd not solve that by getting guns out of people's houses.

Suicide by firearm is another problem, and you can solve that by getting guns out of people's houses.

Mass shootings by insane people who get angry at society are yet another problem, and it appears that greater attention paid to ammunition stockpiling might help red-flag some of these people (but not all).

Inner-city gang violence is another problem, and there are great programs, like Ceasefire, that appear to work if they get enough funding.

Until we have more research about the actual causes and courses of action to deal with these problems, "guns" is not going to get fixed, as far as I can tell.  You have to deal with the overabundance of weapons in our society AND the whatever-it-is that convinces a person to shoot.

So I was going to write more but this guy did it for me, so go read this: http://www.meditations-on-life.com/american-politics/gun-control-arguments-pro-gun-control-vs-anti-gun-control/