I believe that Guns can be used to Save Lives. Do You?

Harry - we agree on that. The statistics are very clear that almost all mass murders are committed by people who are known to be mentally ill and to have made clear, Overt threats of doing violent acts.

These people can be stopped if families, friends, and mental health providers are allowed to make reports and do so.

In the 1970s numerous bad cases of abuse of mental patients in mental health facilities occurred. As usual, state and Federal legislators overreacted. Within a period of about two years almost every mental hospital in the US had closed. Further, new laws made it almost impossible to involuntarily send someone to a mental health facility for evaluation and treatment.

Still, 65 of 67 of these murderers were under treatment, but because the doctors feared violation of patient privacy rights, they have not and are not reporting these ill people, they are then not put into the Federal Instant Check database that would prevent them from buying, owning, or possessing firearms.

It's pretty much the same on this side of the pond, lickitysplit. People are rarely committed to be detained in mental institutions; they are usually left free, for care in the community, and many of them don't take their medication, end up sleeping on the street, and a lot of them get jailed, more often for fairly minor offences, but it is not where they should be; that should be in a hospital. It has more to do with cutting costs, particularly in the current economic climate. Not all mental patients have violent or homicidal tendencies, and some cope perfectly well in the community, but many of the ones who are psychopathic slip through the net and are still out there. However, as we have strict gun control in this country, very few of them get their hands on guns. Also, the notion that gun crimes are conducted primarily by mental patients in your country is not universally accepted in the US. Sure, guns can and do save lives, in the hands of the right people, and the right circumstances. However, I came upon this paper by Professor David Swedler of the University Of Illinois, on behalf of the London School of Economics and USA Politics and Policy, in which he concludes that killings of police officers are not related to gun crime, but to the number of guns. He is not calling for specific laws, but suggests that legislatures should take this into account when formulating policy.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2015/09/18/homicide-rates-of-police-officers-are-much-more-associated-with-gun-ownership-than-violent-crime/

He said not that gun crimes are primarily by the mentally ill, but rather mass murders. The biggest number of gun crimes is committed by minority group gangsters. We have a huge population of black and Hispanic hoodlums which is allowed to flourish in this country because of progressives' attitude that minority status automatically confers victim status. No, in saying that, I'm not slamming all blacks and Hispanics. Most of them are law-abiding. But the black "leaders" are more ardent for the welfare of the hoodlums than the welfare of the law-abiding. I do not believe that gun control laws will ever disarm these hoodlums, because they are not in the business of obeying laws in the first place. They do not need access to legal guns; they could always get all they could ever want from the black market.

As I understand it, because it is so difficult to get guns at all in this country, gang-bangers took to using antique guns, and the government brought those under the control of the firearms act to close that loophole. I think the change was in June last year. Gun control does work if it is thorough enough. Given the huge amount of guns in the USA, it will be a long and difficult process to get there. The differing gun laws in different states makes it harder. It would help if it could be brought under federal control, but I know there would be resistance to that. I'm not trying to tell America what to do, I'm just giving my opinion.

One thing that gives me skepticism about gun control is this: under the Soviet Union private gun ownership was banned. As the grip of totalitarianism loosened at the end of Gorbachev's rule, the Armenians and Azerbaijainis got to be seriously at odds. In spite of the prohibition of guns, armed militias sprang up overnight, and they were fighting even before the formal collapse of the USSR. It suggests to me that where there is a demand for guns, the black market will very speedily meet it.

To be honest, Mr. Clarity, I don't know much about what the gun laws were in the Soviet Union, so I don't think I can fairly comment on that. But yes, laws can always be broken. I just think it is the duty of the government of a country to do the best it can to protect the population, and certainly, here in the UK, strict gun control has been very successful. A lot of Americans have argued that guns are necessary in case they need to overthrow a tyrannical government. I am all for overthrowing tyrants, but I don't really buy that. I think the army is going to be a bit better armed than the militias, and I reckon the government would decide to take the second amendment away pretty quickly if it believed something like that was about to kick off. I wonder what you think about that?

The gun laws in the USSR were no ownership allowed for private citizens. I agree that the scenario of private gun ownership being enough to stop tyranny comes with doubts. What's equally important is that a population have a fighting spirit like the founders had. Right now, Obama is destroying American democracy and republicanism and getting a major assist in that from the power-usurping Supreme Court, which cast tens of millions of Americans' ballots in the latrine with its imposition of redefinition of marriage. (It is only the latest outrageous usurpation by the Court.) Obama has also usurped the legislative power by ruling by decree, a violent break with the Constitution and precedent, and he unleashed the Internal Revenue Service to persecute his political opponents, which is far worse than Watergate and constitutes the worst political criminality probably by any administration in US history. He has broken his oath to uphold the laws by forbidding the enforcement of immigration law, and he has indeed released thousands of convicted illegal alien criminals into the populace so they can breed future Democrats rather than deporting them. Because the press is mostly leftwing and runs interference for him and browbeats all his foes as "racists" for criticizing even his most egregious deeds, the public response has been muted. The more effective way to impose tyranny on the US is not to announce you're staging a Communist revolution, but to pretend to work within the American system even while you are ruthlessly dismantling it as Obama is doing. It's a frog-in-the-kettle effect. I have to admit sadly that guns are not much use in the face of this craftier approach to tyranny.