Your Thoughts on Gun Control

 
The following quote were taken from a series of public comments on gun control borrowed from other online forums.

"The existence of guns is not, and never will be, a root cause of violence. The perpetual lack of reinforcement of proper values and social alignment toward individual activities that prevent the escalation of moral bankruptcy or mental sickness into these types of events, however, is. It is unfortunate for us all that our leadership ignores actual root causes, and blames violence on inanimate objects instead of people. We should all take a close look in the mirror here"
- Joseph W.


"Everybody jumps at the NRA. How many of these `mass killings' have been conducted by one of their members? Here we have an emotive knee-jerk reaction - get rid of the guns, completely ignoring other extenuating aspects, such as the fact that only the criminals and the government have guns afterward. Guns are not the problem, although America seems to have an ongoing love affair with them. Guns are inanimate objects. I could have one sitting on my kitchen table for decades and nobody would come to harm. It is how the individual employs that inanimate object that is the problem. The problem is within the social context that produces the individual and that needs to be changed. Deal with the real problem and lose the symptom. Nobody carries a gun or a knife unless they feel that they need one. In Switzerland, when a young man does his national service training, he keeps his rifle and takes it home in readiness for when Switzerland is threatened. Behind every front door in Switzerland, there is a gun. Switzerland also has one of the lowest homicide rates on the planet. But then, they have a healthy social context. Clean up your social problems, America, and your kill rate will disappear. A close look at one or two of your more horrific mass killings didn't even employ a gun. One employed a pick-up truck. Are you going to ban all them also?"
- David C.


"Guns do not kill people; no more than knives, cars, planes or even hands alone kill or harm others, mentally ill individuals do. Guns alone do not kill, and the presence of guns do not cause people to go insane and kill each other. The issue here is mental health, and the national conversation should be around finding and helping people who suffer from depravity of mind that would consider hurting or killing a single individual find alternatives. There are plenty of instances of legally armed citizens stopping crimes, and other studies that show a 15-25% reduction in crime in states allowing conceal carry. Stricter guns laws are not going to stop sick individuals from killing others, they may then make bombs, drive cars into crowds, and certainly you remember, planes into buildings - this happens without guns. And there are plenty of instances of these behaviors. We need to focus our efforts on mental health issues and helping people on the edge."
- Kimberly O.


"I believe we as a nation are missing the real story behind all those shootings and it is the state of the mental health system in this country that should be examined and discussed. The one common denominator in all these shootings is a person that needed and in some cases received mental health treatments. From Virginia Tech to Aurora Colorado we have a trail of young people that needed help and did not receive treatment that they needed. If we take guns away we just make them choose another weapon. Yes there needs to be a discussion on what to do about violence and intolerance in general and guns are part of this discussion but lets not forget that all these shooters were all mentally ill. The health system and their parents failed them. We need to do a better job not to hide from the stigma attached to mental illness and we need to do a better job to have counseling and resources available for those that need them. Check your local Health System and see what kind of resources are available.. You will find there is no money in mental health services and most large Health Care provider only offer limited services because the reimbursement is very poor. It is easy to blame guns for violence but guns are just the instrument"
-  Andi A.





The second amendment was written because Liberty is more important to our founding fathers than Life. Gun's defend all of our freedom's including the right to free speech. Every soul that died in Hitler's occupation of Europe is crying out, and every repressed citizen of North Korea cries at your opinion. Please value what you have and don't throw it away in fear. Liberty before life. Ask the democratic Chinese that were slaughtered for their belief. As the people of Libya, or Syria who are fighting for freedom this very moment. How far would they get without guns? They know many will die in their struggle, yet still they fight.
- Jason M.



From your article....

"Despite the carnage, some even claim that more guns are the answer -- they say, if we armed the 7 million teachers in America, we'd all somehow be safer. Mother Jones actually looked at 62 -- yes, 62 -- mass shootings in the last 30 years: "In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun." "...

You failed to mention that 61 of the 62 shootings were in "gun free" zones and therefore the law abiding gun owners left their guns at home because they were obeying the restrictive laws laid out before them but ironically also causing them to be helpless victims. Somehow the criminals were still able to enter these so called "gun free" zones with their guns anyway so I guess it doesn't work like an invisible force field like the politicians who create these zones would like to believe. The only case out of the 62 shootings that was not in a "gun free" zone was when Congresswoman Giffords was shot outside of a store in Arizona and in that case there was already at least one man beginning to draw his concealed weapon when the shooter was taken down at which point he put it back in his holsters so as not to be mistaken for the shooter himself, and later explained to police he was going to dry to disable the shooter to stop this horrendous act as his only intention in being a gun owner was to protect himself and his family from criminals. How crazy this must seem to you that just because he owned a firearm he wasn’t somehow tempted to join in on the shooting but only wanted to protect himself and those around him from harm. Even if guns were illegal, the people who are committing crimes already aren’t paying attention to what is legal so all you would be doing is disarming the law abiding citizens and making them easier targets for those who don’t care about the laws to begin with. By the way, Connecticut has the 5th most stringent laws on firearms in the country…. We don’t need new laws, we need to actually enforce the ones that already exist. Are you going to tell me that because marijuana is illegal in most states in this country that millions of people aren’t still using it every day? The horrible events of 9/11 were burned into all of our memories without the use of a single gun…. Timothy McVeigh took down a building with a truckload of fertilizer…. Why don’t we talk about doing a better job of raising our children in this country and giving the ones that need extra help and attention, due to whatever they may have gone through, exactly that? 62 out of 62 of the shootings happened due to some type of mental illness, why don't we talk about that? Let’s start treating the illness and not the symptoms….
- Justin L.