Our world is on fire with the question of what to do about gun violence in our country. It seems like all you ever hear are the two extremes; take everyone's guns away or arm our teachers so they can take out shooters. How are either one of those viable solutions? How is it that we have become so polarized that all the solutions that really come up are the crazy unrealistic ones. It is not realistic to train and arm teachers to protect our students. That's not their job and it was never their intention to be a trained armed citizen to protect our youth, they're here to teach, and we barely even let them do that. Taking all our guns away could also quite possibly be thee most stupid idea I have ever heard and honestly it just won't ever happen. You may say that I'm just another gun lovin' son bitch but honestly I have never shot a gun in my life, but what I do know is that it works just like anything else that is under regulated in this country. Just like heroin, although it's illegal everyone still has it and it's still a growing epidemic. People will always find ways to obtain illegal firearms but we can do a hell of a lot better job regulating them.
Our current system is absolute garbage, just like the government likes to run things, like a steaming pile of hot garbage. Matter of fact most of gun policies are decided on at the state level. The federal government has almost no say in how our states currently handle gun control, in fact most states don't even have clear and cut policies about what guns can and can't be purchased and where they can and can't be carried. When I say most that means more than half, and that is according to an article written by the Guardian. While I can imagine that a good portion of gun shop owners may operate within gun regulations and adhering to background checks, this is a large market and heavily unregulated, there will always be loopholes and people who operate in grey areas.
Right away I can tell you that regulation and how we should go about this is the easy part in all of this. Guns are now treated like cars, every gun when bought must have a title to it and be registered to its person. Once in your possession you become responsible for anything that happens with that gun. I also think that the number of assault rifles produced or imported should be heavily limited as it currently exceeds the number pistols. Limit the supply of assault rifles and increase the price therefore limiting the gun to people who truly understand the use and power of that weapon. In truth most of your gun lovers (ex-military, ex-cops, or current, hunters) all have the most understanding of how these weapons are used and where it is appropriate to use or carry.
However, this is when things become a little harder. I don't think our current generation is as understanding of the power and the use of guns. I think we are significantly less comfortable and knowledgeable about guns because most of us have only used a gun in a video game, or had limited use in an informal setting. That's because we live in a new era of weapons but our loose laws and regulations were from a different era. With all that being said I think it is important for regulations to include the passing of a vigorous gun safety and accuracy shooting tests. The U.S. government could work with current gun ranges to instate a program to educate and license gun owners. There is way more to gun ownership than holding it and pulling a trigger.
Thee hardest part in all of this is deciding who does and who doesn't have the right to own a weapon. Felons and convicts are some obvious characters but what about mental illness and who is mentally ill? We have to have a real discussion about what makes a person mentally unstable and how severe someones situation needs to be to label them as mentally unstable. Is it someone with mild autism? Is it someone who happens to be on medication for the thousands of reasons that we hand out medication for these days? Is it someone who is in a deep depression for the hundreds of thousands of reasons their are to be depressed about? We need to have a huge conversation about this because "mental illness" means a thousand different things to millions of different people and mental illness seems to be a result of all the shitty things we do to each other or the crap ass job we do of caring and educating our youth.
If you want to find a reason to call someone mentally ill these days you can find a way to check all the boxes off the list. It's all subjective to the person's own definition and criteria. This conversation is going to bring up all the other problems that we have in our society, schooling, over medicating, parenting practices, drugs and poverty, it's all connected.
So let's cut the bull shit and lets really dig into the nitty gritty, let's be honest and real about all of our short comings and ask for help with what we don't know. Let's stop pointing the finger and yelling at the other side for "causing" this and meet somewhere in the middle. We're all too unique and different to just pick one side.
