That’s the usual, facile, explanation. I have 40+ guns. Am I 40x the danger to society? The nut with a .22 pistol is 1,000x as dangerous as me, because you just about can’t make me shoot you.
I think “too many guns” is the slogan-y way of saying there are too many guns that are easy to get and too many people trying to get those easy guns. While inherently someone with an arsenal is more dangerous because they have more firepower, they aren’t more risky simply because of the extra firepower. Issues come from people who have some issue and easy access to a firearm making them more risky. Also, people’s risk changes given health, circumstances, etc. To illustrate with the absurd, take two people: one is highly stable and rational and the other is enraged. The first has a nuclear warhead, and the second has a dagger. The first is definitely more dangerous, but the second is more risky.
Educate children on the realities of firearms. Bring home the seriousness (and horror) of pulling that trigger on another human being.
I can get behind this. Like you said, guns are a fact of life in this country (not that that’s a great thing, but it is what it is), so I do think some level of education on what shooting means, as well as some level of firearms training with air or paintball guns is helpful. I think this would help stop some of the weird gun fetishization on the right.
Here’s the nasty part; I don’t have any good ideas.
I appreciate the honesty, but I don’t think there are any simple ideas to fully fix the problem (save for repealing the 2nd Amendment and taking all guns out of people’s hands). There’s huge support for universal background checks, and there’s the Assault Weapons Ban. Unfortunately, this gets back to the cultural issue. Weird gun fetishists will try to sink anything that even remotely makes purchasing a weapon even a hair more inconvenient.
At the end of the day, I think there’s the root and proximate causes for what we’re seeing. The root cause is a cultural problem with gun fetishes and individualism above all others. The proximate cause is…there are too many guns.
I think “too many guns” is the slogan-y way of saying there are too many guns that are easy to get and too many people trying to get those easy guns. While inherently someone with an arsenal is more dangerous because they have more firepower, they aren’t more risky simply because of the extra firepower. Issues come from people who have some issue and easy access to a firearm making them more risky. Also, people’s risk changes given health, circumstances, etc. To illustrate with the absurd, take two people: one is highly stable and rational and the other is enraged. The first has a nuclear warhead, and the second has a dagger. The first is definitely more dangerous, but the second is more risky.
I can get behind this. Like you said, guns are a fact of life in this country (not that that’s a great thing, but it is what it is), so I do think some level of education on what shooting means, as well as some level of firearms training with air or paintball guns is helpful. I think this would help stop some of the weird gun fetishization on the right.
I appreciate the honesty, but I don’t think there are any simple ideas to fully fix the problem (save for repealing the 2nd Amendment and taking all guns out of people’s hands). There’s huge support for universal background checks, and there’s the Assault Weapons Ban. Unfortunately, this gets back to the cultural issue. Weird gun fetishists will try to sink anything that even remotely makes purchasing a weapon even a hair more inconvenient.
At the end of the day, I think there’s the root and proximate causes for what we’re seeing. The root cause is a cultural problem with gun fetishes and individualism above all others. The proximate cause is…there are too many guns.