>I really do understand the frustration and anger against the mindless insistence that any attempt to regulate the possession or sale of very very deadly weapons is an infringement on basic human rights. I believe gun ownership should be extremely selectively limited to those who have proven themselves to be otherwise responsible citizens, who are trained in their use and security and who are willing (and required) to take complete legal responsibility for every round fired.
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>I also believe people should only be allowed to have children once they have passed a whole lot of threshold tests, especially regarding mental health and history of abuse or violence, since the most antisocial act most people ever commit is procreation and that the responsibility for those children and the legal sanctions against any abuse of the innocent should be a first priority for a civilized society ( and would solve about 90% of everything else )
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>But I don't expect either of my wishes to come true.
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>While it is possible to further control or at very least track the legal sale of firearms in the US the volume of guns available right now, if another one was never manufactured or imported, is still astonishing.
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>So that brings us to confiscation, which would feed the very paranoid fantasies of the the gun nuts and would be ignored by criminals except that they would be drawn to add the gun business to their narcotics and other enterprises. It is not a practical solution.
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> Politicians are not proposing solutions they are making noises to sound like they are doing something about the problem, which is more a product of misunderstanding and lack of willingness to treat mental illness, child abuse, poverty and a nihilistic culture among a permanent underclass.
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> And the very same politicians who make the loudest noises about "doing something about gun violence" are often the least likely to support strong legal sanctions against violent criminals who use guns. And those who yell the loudest about how dangerous modern society has become are often the least likely to genuinely want to address things that really contribute to that danger.
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>America and Europe have very different histories and I think that explains a lot of the cultural differences.
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>Most of Europe has often gone through periods of rather strong state control and guns never proliferated the way they did here. Every wave of invaders, occupiers or ruling class bullies disarmed the local citizens as best they could. That may indeed have been the positive side - once the invaders, occupiers, etc were driven out by people who *did* have guns and the will to use them, of course :-)
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> But we have a lot of them and no occupier has ever taken them away (well, they tried in Lexington and Concord but that didn't work out - the royal troops were trying to seize the armories, but of course the citizens had a lot of guns that weren't *in* the armories.
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>All the talk in the world about "regulation" or "controlling" firearms is meaningless if there is not the willingness to make using a gun for bad purposes so unappealing that it might become less popular. We currently have some pretty impressive gun laws in many places but enforcement is, like the rest of law enforcement, lacking will and does not make any proper distinction between people committing offenses against property or moral regulations (drugs) and those who are really harming others and who are predators and abusers.
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>But a man with a gun breaking in to a house has little to fear from the state compared to what he is prepared to do to the homeowner - unless, of course, the homeowner inflicts his own justice - in which case the legal risk in now on the homeowner ( though the phrase is popular "It is better to be judged by 12 than carried by six")
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>Of course no one need (or should consider using) an AR 15 with a 30 round clip for home defense, or for that matter a pistol, unless one is very well trained with it. A shotgun is quite appropriate. Moving to a better neighborhood is an even better solution. I don't fear people with legal concealed carried permits but though I've always had one I've never carried a firearm outside my home unless it was required by my job.
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>Very few people in this country need a gun or know what to do with one. Some who don't need them still feel better having them and at least are sane people who know how - and when - to use them, so they are not the problem.
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>But there are lot of people who have them who shouldn't and it is too easy for them to get away with using them for illegal purposes. Anyone who can't buy one legally can pretty quickly find one for cash without the paperwork. If someone want to round up all those people and drop them in the ocean ( or any more enlightened society across the ocean <g> ) I'm all for it.
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>There are also some folks who have guns,don't think about them much or sexually fetishize them, but know how to use them for their proper purposes. They would be damn glad if they were the only ones who had them
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>If it were possible to make all the guns in this country disappear ... except mine ... well, ok ;-)
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>But I'm just a cranky old man who would be willing to outlaw hunting animals if they would declare open season on criminal predators and child abusers.

A really well written and argued post, im2co.