And if you really think that gun control lessons in school are going to lead to responsible behavior in adult live and have any effect on school shootings down the road at all I do have several bridges that I would like to sell to you. That's almost as ridiculous as expecting people to lead a healthy lifestyle by giving them a couple of nutrition lessons at school. (I am a teacher btw ... you simply will not modify peoples behavior that easily.)
As ridiculous as teaching kids about sex and expecting them to be more responsible about their future sex lives?
You misunderstood. I never said that. What I said is that with lax gun control laws like the US some guns are inevitably going to end up in the hands of teenagers and kids.
All the more reason why you should make sure that when they do, the kids know how to not kill themselves or members of their families with them. Again, the analogy with sex ed really couldn't be much closer.
What I did point out afterwards was there is not a single good reason to give liberal access to guns to either teenagers or adults. - certainly not to Assault Rifles... let's not forget just how ridiculous the gun control situation in the US actually is.... Assault Rifles of crying out loud ...
And where did you get the impression I'm saying that teaching kids to use guns is the entire solutions? Where did I say I'm against banning assault rifles?
This is a situation with multiple, interconnected problems. It does not require a simple one-off answer. I happen to personally think the guns do need to go but anyone who has paid the slightest bit of attention to the gun control debate in America will know that's never going to happen. Gun culture is far too ingrained in the American psyche to get rid of it with a sweeping change. And the position of the anti-gun lobby has become so entrenched that a suggestion like teaching gun safety in school which should meet no opposition is shouted down with rants like yours by people who view it as the thin edge of the wedge.
So basically it comes down to "Do you you want to see a raft of middle of the road changes brought in now which reduce the number of deaths? Or do you want to shout and scream for the final goal and therefore ensure it never happens?"
My bet is that America does the second one. And that's why despite being a very staunch pro-gun control advocate I'm having a go at the left on this issue about as much as I usually have a go at the right. Cause they're being just as stupid and reactionary as the far right Republicans they so despise usually are.
The very ideas of teaching gun safety in schools and having gun safes and people to come to houses and check weapons just seem so absurd to me as a resident of the UK.
Just because something seems absurd doesn't necessarily mean it is. Arguing on that basis would disqualify many of the discoveries of 20th century physics. You always have to look deeper and see if it actually is absurd.
What worked in the UK will not necessarily work in the US. I pointed out earlier that both sides put a lot of effort into comparing the US with other countries. And that both sides are being equally stupid in doing so. The US is not those countries. The solutions those countries had might not work in the US.
Even at the time of the Hungerford massacre the UK had a much smaller percentage of the population who owned guns. They also each owned a much smaller number of guns in general.
We don't have a written constitution so therefore we didn't face issues on those grounds.
We don't have borders with two countries which also have a large number of guns.
And most importantly, we didn't have this belief that everyday citizens have any need for a gun.
So after Dunblaine it was pretty easy to get rid of the weapons in the UK. America is not the UK.
Simply put, I feel American citizens are not fit to possess guns
I don't think it's fair to say that every one of the 310 million people in America are not ready to own guns.
It's not ordinary people that are the problem, it's ordinary people who have become mentally ill. Buying a weapon with a mental illness is pretty much impossible as long as the seller is legally authorized to sell weapons. But that doesn't stop then from obtaining one from the black market, which is pretty easy to do. Keeping weapons out of the hands of someone who is very intent on obtaining one is very hard unless they are thoroughly watched, which is also very expensive to do.
Sorry but I'm going to have to agree with Lorric on this one. As a culture, America can not be trusted with guns. Sure there are some individuals who do act responsibly with them but in general America don't treat guns with the necessary respect. It's something I feel America needs to realise in the same way that the UK did after Dunblaine.
And like the UK did, America then needs to decide what to do about it. They need to decide whether to become a society that can be trusted with guns (like the Swiss) or to become one that decides it's not worth the price (Like the British). But introspection is hard. And it's much easier to say that this isn't a problem with society. It's just criminals and the mentally ill and they can always get hold of guns.
It's a cop out. Sandy Hook didn't occur because of a mentally ill person obtaining weapons on the black market. They were obtained from the possession of a non mentally ill person who completely failed in her responsibility to make sure that the mentally ill person she lived with couldn't access them. She paid for her lack of foresight with her life but no one seems to want to blame the victim so no one wants to acknowledge that she could have prevented it.
Furthermore, if the black market makes it so easy for the mentally ill to get hold of weapons, surely that in and off itself is an issue. Cause someone who isn't a criminal shouldn't be finding it that easy to get hold of a gun.
