That's your opinion and you're welcome to have it. But that doesn't mean everyone else in this thread should just bend over & take it.
Your portrayal of self-defense shootings is also extremely simplistic.
Which opinion? That lawmakers are justified in making laws for the collective security of the majority of citizens? If you think that's unreasonable then I don't know what to tell you. That's how government is meant to operate.
If you disagree with my portrayal, which honestly is just based on law enforcement material, then say why, don't just call it into question and then shove on.
Because they consider it their right as a citizen and subjectively value the positive effects more than the negative effects?
Why does their right as a citizen to own a gun carry more weight than other people's rights as citizens to not get shot?
That's wrong in my country, at least.
The vast majority of firearms used in crime are:
- Converted "alarm pistols" made to fire real ammunition.
- Smuggled from the eastern block & balkan.
- Improperly "demilitarized/deactivated" weapons which were sold as display pieces and were then reactived.
Between 1600 and 2100 guns are stolen in Belgium per year according to
this, which looks as though it forms a substantial contribution to your illegal gun market given the amount of guns that are illegally traded every year over there. The same document also says that improvised or illicitly manufactured guns are an extremely small source of illegal guns by comparison. Granted you have specific problems with illegal military guns coming up through the Balkans.
I don't think that is the case. I think that it wouldn't matter if there was a gun available or not; in absence of a gun they would use a knife—or a spoon if they want the other person dead.
In (most) prisons, they don't allow the inmates to have guns... but the murders still happen. A prison is a good microcosm for the US with a hard gun ban; and technically even without one, as the authorities are all armed and the residents are not (but make due).
It is not a gun culture that is the problem, rather... it is the willingness to kill over a dispute—and that is a bad parenting issue.
Prison death figures would look quite different if inmates had access to guns rather than spoons, I would wager.
Maybe it's worth considering whether both of the things mentioned are problems.
The issue (among others) in this country is that mental-health and related issues are hugely stigmatized, and if you're shown to have any you're ostracized from the get-go. Unless you're a celebrity of course, at which point your hoards of followers will send you heart emojis so long as you continue entertaining them.
Every school shooter has some cocktail of mental problems. Be it being a loner, being bullied, being a schizophrenic, etc. You can lobby and introduce as much legislature as you can conjure up for gun control and it still won't address the core issue of the problem. There is _zero_ interest in this country in helping advance mental-health relief for those that need it. Look no further than our VA which is a JOKE for Veterans that struggle with PTSD.
Further, in order to address the _entire_ issue of gun related problems you have to be wiling to invest in the socio-economic problems that cause gun related crime (unrelated to school shootings). Detroit is practically a meme at this point. It's a band-aid solution to crime that isn't even caused by legal weaponry. The communities that are rife with crime all suffer from the same tell-tale issues. Shit schools. Shit community services. Shit community outreach. Shit community engagement.
I certainly am not about to disagree that addressing the underlying socio-economic and health issues which provide the impetus behind most violent crime is worthwhile. I think that almost goes without saying - it should be a primary focus for basically any government in any country at any given time.
Gun law is really not designed to reduce crime, nor is doing so is even its stated purpose. It's simply a pragmatic approach to the fact that crime can never be eliminated entirely; it's there to reduce the risk of violent crime causing fatalities, nothing more. Having multiple approaches to solving the same problem is not necessarily redundant.
