New Musings on Gun Control

[Kevin]

Of course, the implication of your argument is that we should make access to weapons as difficult as getting a machine gun.

Yep, I agree with you.

The problem is, and has always been, access to extremely lethal firearms, as your argument implies. I'm all for making things such as the AR-15 style weapons as hard to get as a machine gun for that is essentially what it is. Good idea!!!

The issue is not the problem of evil people. It is evil people with access to a very lethal firearm. This is not mysterious and we need not ponder the issue at length - that's been done for decades. Evil people are not reaching for jello to provoke mayhem in mass jello slinging events. They are reaching for a gun. The problem is evil people having access to highly lethal firearms. That access needs to stop.

So you have three choices:

1) Identify the evil person ahead of time and restrict that individual's access. This is impossible, according to the very people that would be charged with making that determination, with a success probability no greater than flipping a coin.

2) Restrict access to the most lethal firearms. A nonstarter among gun rights activists who seem to be comfortable with other people dying as long as their unencumbered right to a firearm is not infringed.

3) Make firearms less lethal. Back to magazine size restrictions. Not a perfect solution but one that preserves the right to a firearm but makes that firearm less harmful to others if misused. Essentially, this is a product safety approach, rather than a banning approach and the one I favor.

Choice 1 is undoable except in very rare cases. Time and again, after a mass shooting, the refrain is "I knew he was having problems but never thought..." Choice 2 is unacceptable to too many people, despite the argument at its base - that mass shootings are just the price we must pay for the freedom to enjoy guns in this country. So, choice 3 is the default.

But that is, like, just my opinion, man, as The Dude says!