The Shrine

Good one from Vox

Basically boils down to: more guns and ease of getting guns means it's easier to make really bad decisions that end lives.

ManaMan wrote:Basically boils down to: more guns and ease of getting guns means it's easier to make really bad decisions that end lives.

In other news, the sky is blue, water is wet, yadda yadda yadda :p

But good video.

Here's her channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/zeldaxlove64

I have long been in support of ending gun violence...

But I still want to see more evidence that people are as willing to support reform in the military and police before I support any substantial modification of the 2nd Amendment at a serious Constitutional level.

There were more than 300,000 deaths from firearms in the United States between 2000 and 2010, resulting from our 300 million firearms and ~50-100m gun owners. That's a big problem and we need to address it.

But there are 210,000 deaths on record in our foreign wars since 2001...resulting from just 1.3m U.S. military personnel and their actions, and 800,000 reservists...and that's just on the record. A *lot* of killing in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, et cetera, has been kept off the books and lied about as everyone should well know - some observers estimate the total body count could easily be actually over a million.

I have seen more than one embittered veteran on social media brag using terms like "a good shoot" and then planting guns on the bodies of civilian victims to justify the killings...

The numbers imply that our military is killing a lot more people per capita than our people are...but just about no one calling for civilian gun control is also calling for a reform in U.S. war policy or military violence. I have met a lot of embittered military personnel over the years in this country, and heard from various veterans I know about some very very very troubling developments in the Armed Forces right now, psychologically. And I cannot support fundamentally taking away the right to bear arms from citizens until that military violence is reformed.

That being said...I definitely support reforming our national gun culture. A lot of the problems we have are due to the worship of violence, the fetishization of power, and a culture of bullying and hate. And those things need to be confronted head-on.

One idea I've heard proposed recently is that that guns be treated like cars. Both are very, very dangerous pieces of equipment capable of causing immense harm to human life; so both should require a license and regular training.

It's Constitutionally supported via the well-regulated-militia clause of the 2nd - I think it's an idea worth discussing.