Criminals shouldn't have access to guns and that's the way it is now, its illegal for criminals to possess guns so we need to enforce that. We need to enforce it while not infringing on the rights of law abiding people.
You imagine there is a clear distinction between criminals and not. A regular person, that happens to be overly angry one day, when given access to a gun, might go off and start shooting and become a murderer. Without a gun, they might just wave their fists or even just do nothing and cool off. Guns make it EASIER for someone to become a criminal.
All those high school mass shooters, without access to guns, while clearly would have issues, may not have become mass murderers ever in their lives.
So you're saying close to 100% of the people who had shootouts at their school or who have had drive by shootings on their streets, that its their first time. If that's true than that means the vast majority of the people who have experienced shootouts are not people who have experienced them before. So close to 0% of the people who are in shootouts have been in shootouts before. That means its a once in a lifetime thing for most people who even experience shootouts although for most people in this country its a zero in a lifetime thing.
Let me see if I got this... Yes, all those kids ONLY had to go through mass shootings in their high schools once. So, not biggie, right? And those 8 kids a day that DIE from guns ONLY die once. Uh huh.... and?
It does something. While I and others like me might not be able to change the minds of all the 1.7 million households we can at least change some minds. There are procedures for doing that. For instance, in some cases when you buy a gun it might come with a trigger lock or chamber lock.
Those people don't seem to care about the locks. Perhaps because they are thinking of your example of someone having a knife their their child's throat and they don't want to fiddle with the locks when the guns are needed for self-defense quickly... And in any case,
trigger locks may only make things worse in other ways too.
No it doesn't. If criminals don't have access to guns they will just use other means such as bombs. Bombs can be homemade and they often are in the case of criminal use. Back in 1990 there was a case of somebody using gasoline that you can buy at a gas station and lighting up a dance club and killing 89 people, more people than have ever been killed in a mass shooting in the USA.
Yes, you won't eliminate all ways to kill people in mass. But the point is it would reduce killings and injuries because without EASY way to kill, there would be LESS killings. High school kid could try to set the high school on fire but it's much harder to really kill the ones they want to kill that way. Or if some angry person pulls a gun on you in the heat of an argument, it's unlikely they'd run home and start running after you with a set of matches. Yes, there is always the uni bomber but that's a RARE case, much less prevelant that gun kills.
First of all, for your idea to work they would have to offer enough money per gun for people to want to turn them in. They would certainly have to offer at least as much money per gun as the person spent when they bought the gun and probably much more. That being said, do you know how much people would take advantage of that? Many, I would say perhaps most gun owners who turn in any guns in such an instance would only turn in some of their guns so they can get some good cash but not turn in all their guns. So we would use up lots of money and there would still be lots of people with guns.
Possible but with harsh punishment for owning, it would further pursuade people their guns may only get them to trouble. Also, over time, having less guns in circulation helps too. Today a dad with 10 guns could give a some to each child, each of which could give one or two to each grandchild. If people did what you said, there would be only 1 gun available for the offspring.
If by valid you mean practical and feasible than no its not valid its just a pipe dream. There is no way to get enough people to agree with your idea and any attempt to pass the kind of ban you talk about would be met with such a backlash it would never pass. And besides, I don't know of any country that has a total gun ban except perhaps communist countries.
Yes, but even much stricter gun laws that other countries have resulted in much lower gun death rates.
