I would go so far as to lay out a clearly thought out agenda at the feet of liberals. That requires foresight. I think it is more likely a severe case of ADD. They can focus on guns...but not when they are contextualized and the whole concept of violence is thought out...that would take too long.
Stone, I can't speak for liberals or their agenda, but I can tell the evolution of my thinking. Frankly, I have never spent a lot pondering gun policy. I have spent far more time shooting, cleanings, and shopping for guns. When the national conversation turned to guns, being a political junkie, I listened to the rhetoric and considered the various proposals. I don't have some absolutist notion about he 2nd Amendment (and neither do most gun owners who approve of the full-auto ban) but neither would I accept a gun ban. My knee jerk reaction was to support the mag limit, but the Assad weapons ban never made any sense to me. But when I looked past the rhetoric and into the facts, it became clear that the mag limit proposal, even it could prevent 100% of mass murders, would not even register a .006% reduction in gun deaths. However, in my research into gun deaths, it became clear that 2/3 of all gun deaths were suicides. So being a pragmatist, I felt that if people want to reduce gun deaths, it makes sense to address the kind of gun deaths that are most prevalent (suicides 20000 per year) not the kind of gun deaths that are least prevalent (mass murders 20 per year), regardless of the fact that mass murders get all of the attention.
First I had to see if a difference could be made and there are three areas that one must understand to consider this question. 1. Underlying mental health issues 2. Are gun suicides merely a method choice that would be substituted if guns were not available. 3. Can anything be done to reduce gun suicides that would reduce overall suicides.
What I learned, and you can peruse the information across the thread, is that if guns are easily accessible for a person experiencing suicidal impulses, in many cases, if they do not have a gun handy, they get past the impulse before acting on it, and live on, usually happy that they did not kill themselves. This is all empirically researched statistically supported fact in the US.
But how do you translate this information into policy that would save lives? The obvious answer is that if guns are not available o anyone, then they would not be available for people experiencing suicidal impulses. But I don't like that solution. As much as I would like to prevent suicides, I am not willing to I've up my guns, nor support denying anyone else's right to own guns. From there, I attempted to find a way to reduce suicides by reducing gun suicides, by without infringing on the rights of anyone.
Basically, it became apparent that many people who commit suicide do not want to die before or after the periods of suicidal impulse and if they were aware of certain facts about people who experience suicidal impulses, they could make decisions get that could better allow them to survive the impulse. So I suggested that people who were contemplating a gun purchase be provided with this information. It would be completely up to them whether they made any decision using this information.
And that is the evolution of my thinking on this, a way to address gun deaths, the supposed goal of our national discussions, without infringing on anyone's right to own or buy a gun.
If someone would use this information to try and push policy proposals farther is out of my hands and would not receive my support. But I hardly think that a possible future bad policy is a good reason to oppose an immediate good policy.
