It doesn't come off as not being interested but as a desire to stifle the discussion. We live in a pretty messed up society. We have problems in our development from the time we're first put in the womb (some people with drug use and/or malnutrition) all the way through the time we are set free to fend for ourselves. Think of all the negative ways a child can be influenced, how these things grow and corrupt us as a community. Then we repeat the process and allow the same corruption to occur to the next generation of children. It just strikes me as odd that people will only see the final stages of how this personal corruption reveals itself as a problem. I see access to guns as one of the *many* things we can do to make a positive impact on our community with respect to mass killings, but it's ludicrous to me that we're not supposed to talk about how messed up we are as a society and ways that we need to fix that. Go GATORS! ,WESGATORS
What about the mother of a two year old innocent child who was killed due to gang violence? I wonder what she thinks about when hearing that "guns are the leading cause of death of children."
OK, just so I am clear. Any discussion about funding/upgrades to the NICS, reviewing the specific components of the Baker Act or the link between mental health stability and current law in regard to obtaining a firearm are worthless?
People can talk to their heart's content, but its pretty worthless in a country that doesnt even want to fund school lunches for kids and treats healthcare in general as a privilege for people who can afford it.
I'm not sure that @wgbgator 's post below yours was a joke. This was posted on April 1, but I don't think it was a joke: Go GATORS! ,WESGATORS
No - I believe that such equivocation in this particular context (a thread about yet another mass shooting) to be a pretense for stifling discussion about the U.S. gun violence problem.
you are right that a bunch of them are gang related. But does that make it any less ok? and a lot of people shot by gang members are innocent anyway. And 3 million kids are exposed to gun violence annually. That’s an almost unfathomable number. The underlying numbers from that study. Child & Teen Gun Safety as a society, I just don’t understand how we can rationalize or OK that. But yet we continue to.
I dont know if its repealable or not, but people should at least act like it is if they want meaningful reform to happen.
Downtown Gainesville shut down after 2 late-night shootings - The Independent Florida Alligator My son recently just stopped working at this club in Gainesville. All his friends are thankfully ok. Also here in little ol small town Polk a stepdad killed his stepson and then himself last night after a standoff. We have a gun problem period.
The point is the majority of those numbers were driven by suicide and young adults shooting other young adults in the midst of other criminal acts during a year when most of the country was locked down and we saw increases in violence and suicide nationwide. Take away guns and you don't fix suicide, nor do many of the other countries in the comparison have the drug and poverty-driven gang violence that we have. Also note that they compared the US in 2020, which was the Covid lockdown year and just about the definition of a statistical outlier in MANY categories, to other countries in 2019, pre-covid. It isn't that 4000 deaths don't matter, but that study has so many statistical "smells" it is virtually impossible to see it as credible, nor does it seem possible to develop a study that slanted in data set selection without trying to do so.
So, if we didn't have any guns, everything would be perfect? Nobody would be killed anymore. The answer is no, they would use a knife or whatever else they could get their hands on.
The way I see it, it's all inter-related. I 100% agree with you that we have a "gun violence problem". And for the first two pages that's what everyone talked about. I just think we need to have honest discussions about all the components of said issue. Why can't that be done on this thread as much as any other? Agree to disagree I guess.
No we don't have a gun issue we have an insanity issue not one of my rifles will unlock the safe they are stored in and discharge themselves but crazy folk will
Yes, there are plenty of people here who say guns are not the problem. I don't think it's a false to state that people hold this position. Just look at the post above me. I quoted it below.
