Ooh Haloman800 in full on rant mode. Love these threads.
Then why is it politicians and the media always use mass shootings as their platform for banning guns? Still, let's look at your points.
As you mentioned later in your post, If someone wants to kill themselves, they'll find a way. Idiots who commit suicide don't trump my rights to own guns.
So will criminals.
3) 600 people accidentally shoot themselves every year in the U.S.
And 33,561 accidentally die in car accidents every year. We need to ban assault vehicles, don't you care about the children?
On suicide and "another way"... except they don't, at least not as effectively -- there is a reason nets are put up under bridges/trains are isolated from various platforms, many people use pills as a cry for attention, unless you apply some medical knowledge (horizontal slashes across your wrists will work but is hard and does seem to be the more common way), guzzling bleach tends to leave you with a sore throat and a wicked rash but still alive to communicate through it all... not all gunshots are fatal but effectiveness, immediacy and ease of use is high. All sorts of things are banned for percentage probability type reasons -- many drugs are banned despite some even being non chemically addictive at normal doses, however they seem to get banned because some people can not handle their shit and do things they should not when impaired. Interestingly though banning does not seem to work the best there, or at least not US style banning, where such things would seem to work OK for weapons. Back on suicide then intervention is quite effective in many cases if you survive or even never get there in the first place, rather more difficult to talk someone through a blown off head.
But cars/vehicles have many very useful alternative uses and indeed the economy is pretty dependant upon transport. Also come back to me in about 20 years (assuming you have not died in a hail of gunfire) when self driving cars are all the rage and try to advocate for manuals then. The main reason for owning weapons tends to boil down to it is fun, and I can certainly get onboard with that, but the question that then gets asked tends to be at what cost does this fun come.
On mass shootings then places that ban them do seem to see a reduction in them, Australia being one of the more noted examples. Most times I see stats there brought up people seem to latch onto the none since the ban thing and that is a very nice stat which I hope sticks, much of that would be quite a bit
On criminals then yeah they can. I do not know the specifics for unregistered weapons around you (it varies by state, even county and how much you might have pissed off the local sheriff/prosecutor) but it is considerably less harsh than the UK. Said harshness does seem to be a fairly effect counter measure in most places that have tried it.
There are other comments from other posts, the border one actually made me laugh, but I will start with that. Though I think I will also end with a comedy video
I was thinking of mid-September when they both shared 37%, and figured he would have continued climbing
@
Psionic Roshambo:
