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sunrisehawk My name isn't Oliver North and yet because I'm a conservative, you stick his words in my mouth... My experience on this and other sites is that there is little debate and discussion. We have those who believe that without the second amendment the Constitution is merely words on paper that are subject to the whims of whomever is in power. We also have those who have utter faith in government and/or fear gun ownership by citizens.
When you say "questioning, not blaming", I tend to believe that you're repeating what Oliver North is saying. I am happy to debate anyone who will acknowledge reality, rather than open up with an exercise in hair splitting.
I posted this recently, but I will re-post it here:
We have a group of Americans, who believe that they need a weapon for self-defense or hunting. This group is not out purchasing assault weapons, high capacity magazines, or even joining the NRA. While I believe that their weapon is not going to help, in the face of determined criminals, this group of people is not really part of the problem.
We have another group of Americans, who get off on weapons, and use the 2nd amendment, as an excuse to buy war weapons, collect them, fantasize about them, etc. This group does not give a rat's ass about the 2nd amendment, but wants it as a fig leaf.
We have a group of politicians, who like to use one or both of these groups, to reach office.
I know that finding a middle ground is going to be difficult, but over the last 80 years we have went from virtually no restrictions on guns to extensive regulations, including near total bans of guns owned by the average citizens in places like DC and Chicago. Yet violence in those highly restricted jurisdictions are often as bad or worse than a school shooting weekly.
I am not sure how we developed collective amnesia. Did we forget about the wild west? the early 20th century Chicago and New York? the selective enforcement of gun laws in the Jim Crow era, to use weapons to intimidate/lynch, etc.?
The issue is to both protect our children in schools and to address the problems in society that are significant factors in turning a few of our young people into evil killers. If you want to blame inanimate objects for this, we're not going to find solutions because most people do not believe that guns, knives, or other weapons force people to use them. If you want to look for what causes people to commit these horrible acts, then I and most conservatives will stand with you.
The NRA narrative: a gun cannot kill a person, a person must use it to kill a person. Duh!
The other narrative: A mentally unstable person, hell bent on mass murder, without weapons, is not going to cause much damage. The same person, with an AR-15, or two, and a bump stock, and 100 round magazines, is going to cause a lot of damage.
Note the emphasis on the type of weapons/magazines, etc.
Of course there's a need to deal with mental health issues. Unfortunately, the conservatives, do not prioritize this. We don't even have a national healthcare plan in place. The conservative solution (and it may not be yours specifically), is to blame it on bad parenting. You don't believe me? Listen to what Ollie is saying. Are you an NRA member?
While we need to deal with all these issues, the type of guns available, magazines, etc. is an orthogonal issue, that must be dealt with as well, and I would love to have this discussion, whenever conservatives are willing to set aside the silly and obvious narrative of "guns don't kill people, people kill people".
