I have grappled with the gun issue a while and see no reason not to implement intensive restrictions and ban assault rifles and such. I think I lean more towards the gun-control side of things as of right now and for those of you who agree, I am curious how you respond to the following argument from gun activists. I hear it often and don’t really have an adequate response and am curious what your thoughts are. The basic idea is the following:
“No matter what gun laws are put in place, it will not change the fact that criminals and people who wish to do harm will always be able to illegally acquire guns.”
It doesn’t really change my views all that much but it seems like a good point. Is there any form of gun control that would help make it more difficult for criminals to illegally attain guns?
Looking forward to some responses as it’s definitely an important discussion to be having as a country right now.
There is no short term solution. Gun activists and some republicans keep claiming that if we restrict gun access it won’t solve anything right now and that is true. Because of how easily accessible weapons are nowadays it’s going to be hard to take it out of both illegal and legal market in the near future. but you have to start somewhere. If we don’t restrict/regulate guns now, a problem that could be solved in the next 5-10 years will only be solved in the next 20-25 years because of pure inaction.
There’s also the side that Ash pointed out: why the heck have laws in the first place? If the criminals are going to break them anyway. That for me is the ultimate argument against the argument you’re pointing out and there’s no way to counter it.
We have to start somewhere though. I don’t think most mass shooters would go completely out of their ways to acquire guns. I think some of them just did it because of how easy it is to acquire such guns and the amount of exposition they probably had to weapons in general at an early age.
Think of the John Lennon murderer. He basically was so obsessed with him that he decided to kill him. If he had no gun that wouldn’t have happened, for example. And I’m pretty sure he legally acquired that gun.
I’d like to get back at this. Legal guns turn into illegal guns through various channels and the more legal guns there are, the more of them flow through these channels and turn illegal. Illegal guns are cheap and easy to aquire because legal guns are cheap and easy to aquire. If the number of legal guns is reduced, the number of illegal guns will go down over time, too and prices will go up. Take for example the last mass shooting in Germany, two years ago. The shooter killed five people with a glock handgun, which he bought on the darknet for more than 5000 dollars (he was presumably scammed a few times, which would drive the overall cost further up). What kind of gun could he have bought in the US with that much money and how many people would he have killed?