Quote:
Originally Posted by doggin94it
And that's the problem. People always think there's some solution that can solve all the problems of the world. If only we'd done X, Y would never have happened.
Real life doesn't work that way. Do X, and instead of Y you don't just get "not Y", you also get A, B, C, and D. The question isn't "do we want crazy people to be able to purchase guns legally" - it is "how do we balance the need to prevent crazy people from purchasing weapons they use to kill innocents against the need to allow legal gun ownership for the vastly greater number of non-crazy people"?
That's a much harder question to answer - and it's why the majority of the time you'll end up with shouting camps on either extreme ("ban all guns!"/"from my cold, dead hands!") who don't even bother trying to do it.
|
Agreed.
I am constantly reminded that a lack of guns never stopped those in the middle east who wished to engage in violence. They simply built bombs.
In our own nation, we have no shortage of serial-stabbers, serial-rapists, serial-beaters, or even "Vehicle-as-means-of-mass-murder". For every tool of death dealing we could ban, like guns, there are literally hundreds more awaiting potential use, some with far graver potential lethality (chemicals/biologicals/bombs).
In an odd way, the common availabillity of guns may ever inadvertantly serve as a barrier to more mass-death-causing vehicles for the truly crazy. A gun is easy, building a bomb of chemical event is much harder, less obvious. The law of unintended consequences could (not for sure fo course) result in a worse situation, where those who desire to kill do so in far worse ways to far more, like blowing up something or the like.
We must be wary of all possible outcomes of change we seek. Today guns, and tomorrw a guy steals a fully loaded gasoline truck and drives it into the theatre instead.....you just don't know.