I have had some difficulty in developing any enthusiasm for this subject. When human-caused tragedies like the shooting in Minneapolis last week take place, it is natural to search for reasons and there has been no lack of explanations. Minneapolis officials immediately blamed lax gun control laws. Other blamed mental health issues, drugs, and the problems posed by excessive societal focus on self-actualization.
I did a little research on school and church shootings. What I found is that they back to the beginnings of the Republic but have been quite rare. Even rarer are shootings in which children are the primary targets. It might be prudent to recognize how difficult it is to draw meaningful conclusions from rare occurrences.
Are they increasing in number or savagery? I can’t distinguish between those and greater public publicity.
The picture that appears to be emerging from the Minneapolis shooting incident is one in which a family was crying out for help. Apparently, the police had been dispatched to that home on multiple occasions to deal with mental health crises.
I agree that the shooter should never have been able to obtain firearms legally—the multiple police calls to that home should have been disqualifying. But even more importantly mental health resources should have been offered to that family. If they had been and had been accepted, multiple other families would not be in mourning today.
Good public policy should be the least restrictive measures that have a chance of working not the most restrictive measures which if implemented with undeviating perfection have a minimal chance being effective. Let’s think about what those might be.
I’m a staunch 2nd Amendment rights person. I own a 9mm.
But I don’t understand why reasonable qualifications should not pertain. Those would include wait periods and background checks. An imperfect screen, but not very restrictive either.
I think we have to acknowledge that there a certain number of mentally/psycogically impaired people who will do harm no matter what.
I own multiple guns. Still go to the range occasionally (though now that I think about it has been a while). I think the 2nd Amendment should not preclude limits like Drew suggests. Personally, I think if you want to conceal carry you should have to go take a class on safety. The NRA has good ones and I have taken a couple. However, we now have so many guns and they are so easy to obtain I think that part of the issue is pretty much moot.
The mental health side of the issue is also difficult. We just arent that good at predicting who will actually become violent. For every person who does shoot people there are many more who have similar profiles. Also, our system of mental health care is generally lacking and we arent willing to pay to change that. I would like to think we could set a low bar and all agree that it is OK to take guns away from people with a similar profile or not let them buy guns but the gun advocates have generally shot that down as we would be denying guns to dozens of people who never go on to shoot people.
These random mass shootings are just a part of our world now. While they are uncommon it is probably the largest risk most of us have of getting shot. If you dont go to bars, buy/sell drugs, spend a lot of time dissing people on social media you have close to zero chance of getting shot.
Steve