Originally Posted by
Bladesyphon
As much as I really don't want to get into a topic like this, I think there are a few things to be said here in terms of what's going on, and why flat out removing guns isn't going to help anything.
But first - my condolences to the family and friends of the victims of this act of heinous violence. No child should ever feel threatened when they go to school, and it should, ALWAYS, be a safe place where they can go to learn, be with their friends, and live what should be some of the best years of their lives, something I was gifted to have back when I was in high school from 2001-2005.
Anyways, onto the subject at hand - Yes, I agree as does I'm sure most people here that stricter gun control should be put in place. Frankly there's really no reason for someone to own an automatic rifle that is in anyway usable. Note that I said usable, because I'll be the first to say that I think Guns, and really any weapon for that matter, are sleek, gorgeous, and just plain pretty to look at, and even hold. But there's a difference between liking a weapon, and wanting to use it to harm another person. It's why people who own swords dull the blades, and I feel that while we shouldn't flat out bar people from owning guns, weapons that are beyond something like a hunting rifle, handgun, or buck-shot shotgun, should be gutted to the point of not being usable.
That said - I also don't feel that tighter gun controls are going to solve this problem, at all, and there's a simple reason for that. We as a species are very, VERY good at finding ways to kill one another. If someone really, truly, wants to end the life of a person ,or a group of people, they are going to find a way to accomplish that goal, guns or not. I think people seem to forget how easy it is for someone to make an explosive device at home (IE: Pipebombs), bring it into school, walk into a busy lunchroom, and blow themselves up, along with everyone around them. We see this all the time in the news in other countries, usually from religious extremists, but it's not wholly isolated to them.
Let's take the shooter in yesterday's incident (his name will not be used, I'm not giving any more attention to him then I need to). Let's say that we lived in a country where we had strict gun controls, but still didn't address the major problem here - the fact that he was mentally disturbed, terribly distressed, and orphaned. He still would have had that desire to inflict harm to people he felt wronged him. He may not have had a gun, but he would have found some other way. Perhaps he would have used an IED, or maybe not. Maybe he would have j ust walked into the school with a knife, and started slitting kids throats, stabbing them, and causing grievous injury that way. Perhaps in this situation, seventeen children wouldn't have died, perhaps only five or six would have died before he was stopped.
But does that matter? Children.Still.Would.Have.Died. To the parents of those kids, nothing about yesterday would have been different. Their world would have still be destroyed. Their child's lived would have been ended, and they'd still be grieving. Then what? Would we talk about stricter knife control? What if it was an IED, would we then look at how he learned to craft it from the internet, and start having stricter internet regulations? Frankly, - yes, that's what would have happened. And why is that?
It's because I truly do believe that the problem we have in our country is that we refuse to acknoweldge the root of the problem - The gun is a tool, the person behind the gun is the murderer, and more often then not in settings like this, the murder is done due to the gunman having serious mental issues that NO ONE has addressed. Now do not get me wrong, I am not taking sympathy for this gunman at all, but the motive to any murder is extremely important, and going back as far as Columbine, we know that the majority of these killings are done by people who are mentally compromised, severely depressed, and need help. But they never receive that help, and I honestly could not tell you why. I'm not sure if it's because we're afraid to acknoweldge that mental health is an issue, or if it's simply because it's easier to blame guns, video games, violent media, or any other scapegoat over it.
But at the end of the day - killings like this won't stop until we start addressing the root problem - the person doing the killing, and why they're killing people. Take away guns, and they'll find some other way to cause these violent crimes. Guns are a tool, and there are plenty of other tools out there that can do the job a gun can.
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