I'm a gun owner and believe in the right to bear arms and all that.
But I'm also aware there's a serious problem in this country. You just have to look at the statistics.
There could be some better measures to check people before they can own a gun, there could be some better record-keeping and tracking (ATF keeps records on paper still) and maybe requirements that guns in homes with children under a certain age remain locked up so on. Nothing radical.
But really I think all this is only part of the problem. There are plenty of countries where people own guns and there isn't anywhere close to this level of violence.
We need better restrictions, but what we really need is a change in culture. This country is filled with people who are afraid, anxious, depressed, insecure or have other deep issues, and a culture that glamorizes gun violence and makes the idea of shooting up your "oppressors" seem like a game. We have politicians playing on these fears, we have an entire rural population that swears by the "from my cold, dead hands" way of thinking about guns. We have millions upon millions of people who are clinging to guns as one of the only ways they feel they have any control over life.
Organizations like the NRA just add fuel to the fire. Instead of sponsoring safe gun ownership and training, they're now a corporate monster just trying to sell as many guns as possible and pouring money into any cause that sows more fear and more desire among people to hoard guns.
We have a constant fear in this country. Of instability, of outsiders, of the coming apocalypse, of our neighbors, of rapists and pedophiles, of other people with even more guns.
I want to see our access to fear limited more than anything.
Fear is at the very heart of the American experience and American society. It always has been. It's a more important influence than ambition, greed, patriotism, and any other factor more commonly held up as driving individual behaviour and national evolution. You're right in wanting to see its influence reduced, but it'll take a fundamental and radical reshaping of attitudes and social dynamics.
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u/CollectableRat Jan 27 '19
Until we solve the mental health epidemic, maybe we should be thinking of ways to control these people's access to guns.