Dte, I'm typing on my phone so forgive any spelling mistakes.
Thanks again for taking the time to finally respond to my original point.
1- that logic only holds if all owned guns are dangerous ones, that is, there are no "good" guns. Which is better: 10 guns on the street with 9 owned by "good" people and 1 owned by a criminal or 1 gun on the street owned by that same criminal and 9 defenseless victims?
I completely agree with that logic. But then you should also agree with the fact that the criminals could take the gun from the "good" guy and use it against them or that someone in the family who isn't as "good" could easily take the gun (as was the case in sandy hook - as far as I know). Right ?
2- I agree. Those laws are already on the books. We do a lousy job identifying nutjobs during the application process because leftie political correctness means we're not allowed to call someone a nutjob even if they are. Even if people have been "bad" in the past, we don't do the whole personal responsibility thing so all is forgiven. While many laws have been tweaked so there are stiffer penalties for crimes if guns are involved, if a guy's willing to go to prison for 10 years for robbing a bank, is he really going to give two shits if it's 12 years because he brought a gun along? Want a deterrent, shoot them with their own gun if convicted (that's an intentionally extreme example to illustrate the point).
I'm putting a disclaimer for this one
: I am not advocating doing nothing.
First of all, like you said is making the punishment harder going to stop people from committing crime ? If you are willing to sit 10 years in jail, would you mind 20?
In my view what needs to be better is installing values of life and how society is important, so that people do not want to harm it. A point Sam made about her own independence. I've been taught that if I take care of my society, then my society will take care of me. Yeah it's not perfect. But if everyone only thinks about themselves then it will be very easy to hurt someone else if it would be to my advantage. It fosters negativeness towards others rather than positiveness to focus on yourself. Maybe it's something I was taught from my Jewish heritage. Give to the community as much as you can so that if you or someone you know needs something they will be able to get it. Help people out. I don't always think about myself.
Yes a crazy person could come and shoot me and if I had a gun and gun training I could possibly stop that person of they don't overpower me and use the gun against me instead. However, punishment isn't always the answer. There's a saying in Dutch which I think also exists in English, it goes something like this : to prevent is better than to cure. It's usually for illnessess but can easily be used in this case. It's better to improve your society and put more effort into education than to try and punish people who do bad things as rehabilitation is very hard.
I'm again, not advocating against not having a gun at all or to stop all punishment. I'm just saying that your viewpoint of making the punishment harder is in my opinion the wrong way to go about this. It's a bit like treating the symptoms to some diseases instead of its underlying condition. However, just like the human body, you probably have to do a bit of both for the situation to improve.
I still think that better gun control, not necessarily more Gun control or less guns, is a good way to start as I do not think having so many guns is a good recipe.
3- I'm not big on critiquing someone else's parenting because we never know the entire real story. Based on what we think we know, if you demand an opinion, I think the mother screwed up by making guns available to a nutjob. It would be difficult to acknowledge that your own kid was a nutjob and we have no way of knowing just how easy it really was for the kid to get her guns, but with that 20/20 hindsight I'd say she screwed up. I'm not sure how you go about fixing that problem (assuming that we're right about the problem) without getting into a serious Big Brother situation. I do know that "punishing" responsible gun owners to try to reach the bad apples seems like a bad solution to me.
Well, a simple way to help find out is to have some sort of gun checks just like building maintenance checks or tax audits. Someone could come randomly to people who have guns registered and check where they are kept. If not safely kept the. A warning could be given with a recommendation. Of it happens again, a fine and of again the. The gun could be confiscated until the person reapplies for a permit and pays a fine. Responsible people should not have much trouble from that.
What do you think ?
4- The operative word in your last sentence is "could". You also needed to append ", but at what price?" You tend to minimize the price. I tend to minimize the benefit. Different strokes.
What price do you mean ? Your civil liberties ?