Economics about mass shooting
- Thread starter OddTrader
- Start date
You are making some more or less valid arguments as to why a person might CHOOSE not to have firearms in their house. I would never criticize a person who is not comfortable having guns in their house. Where we diverge is you want to make your choice mandatory on the rest of us.
For good reasons or bad, we come down on the side of accepting certain risks for the perceived security a firearm brings. Like any tool, they are dangerous if mishandled. However, there are thousands, probably tens of thousands, of incidents every year where the availability of a firearm saved someone in distress. Often, the firearm does not even need to be used. Simply displaying it or firing a warning shot is sufficient.
Gun ownership rules become much stricter from the legislative side. For example, in Europe I know of a family member who tried to obtain a gun. He had something like 6 months of training and an exam, one mistake and you fail. After than someone from the police came to interview the neighbors about what they have heard, what they perceived. Strict as it may sound, it's actually a good thing.
Current gun owners should re-take the examinations under new strict rules and as I assume, many would fail.
With this the public perception or acceptance of guns would change. It wouldn't be as normal for someone to own a gun because simply, there would be much fewer guns out there.
I'd say the only country that hasn't implemented strict laws is the US. Even in Switzerland, the example Americans love to bring up, the gun is at home, in a safely locked compartment and it can be checked by officials. Unlike in the US where you can pretty much keep it anywhere you wish.
I wish you guys good luck and let's talk again when the next massacre happens, let's see if it will break new records as well.
Current gun owners should re-take the examinations under new strict rules and as I assume, many would fail.
With this the public perception or acceptance of guns would change. It wouldn't be as normal for someone to own a gun because simply, there would be much fewer guns out there.
I'd say the only country that hasn't implemented strict laws is the US. Even in Switzerland, the example Americans love to bring up, the gun is at home, in a safely locked compartment and it can be checked by officials. Unlike in the US where you can pretty much keep it anywhere you wish.
I wish you guys good luck and let's talk again when the next massacre happens, let's see if it will break new records as well.
This is, again, an uninformed and incorrect statement. You cannot keep a firearm "anywhere you wish". I will admit that there are very lax restrictions on how to store a firearm at home, and there are many people who own a gun that have no idea how to use, store or clean it. I would love to see some sort of forced training requirement. A parent who stores a firearm in an easy to get to place where a child can find it is not only subject to the horror of that child killing him/herself with it, but is also subject to some legal action should negligence be proven.
But the vast majority of gun owners take proper care of their weapons and store them correctly. You're always going to have the news talk about the exceptions just by the nature of the news reporting. That does not make it the rule.
On a side note, my wife told me she wanted to get a gun, and I replied there was no way in hell I would get her one. She has shown no inclination to learn how to fire one, declined my many attempts to train her or get her training, and as such she is - in my opinion - not entitled to own one. She could go around my back but she'd have no idea how to do it.
NYC today, huh?
And NOT a two-ton truck?
9 people dead; X-times-that seriously injured?
And a "light-duty" pick-up truck?
Okay, then: Let's all outlaw these deadly motor vehicles, too.
And then, let's plaster the killer's name and cause all over every screen we can manage (between commercial messages for Coke, ARBI's!!, Nike and Pepsodent), and then
WONDER AT THE NEXT ONE as the publicity dies.
OR, we could remove the killer's identity -- as if they never existed.
We could focus on the victims and their lives, not their deaths.
We could stop rewarding sociopathologies, and stop blaming inanimate tools.
(And stop disarming the rest of us, who still have, according to Locke, the right
to life, liberty, and property.
Did you sit on that post quoting yourself until a terrorist attack by pickup truck happened?
It's reality. It's gonna write the headlines no matter what you and I might do.
"Clue!"