There's a lot of debate right now for gun control. I'm not especially educated on the topic and I don't pretend to be

There's a lot of debate right now for gun control. I'm not especially educated on the topic and I don't pretend to be.

There's arguments that stricter regulations should be made on guns to make them more difficult to obtain. Calls for guns to be banned and what have you. There's the obvious opposition that people feel they should keep their guns to be able to defend themselves.

I'm not sure where I stand on the issue. While on the one hand gun violence is a problem and there's been so many mass shootings over the past few years that it's all routine and barely piques my interests anymore.

I don't know if banning guns or making stricter regulations would make a large impact. I feel like if people are already deranged enough to the point where they feel the need to commit a shooting spree, they will likely obtain the guns to do it by any means possible. I.E. obtaining guns illegally.

I know that the guns from the Vegas shooting were all obtained legally. Would a more detailed and necessary background check have prevented it? Perhaps, but a lot of what we're learning from the shooter is that he was a completely normal guy with no signs or symptoms of someone who would go off on a mass shooting.

What do you guys think the solution to gun violence is? If any? Should we ban guns? Would stricter background checks help?

We should outright ban all guns

I'm pretty much in the same boat as you. I grew up in a gun-friendly household and i own a gun myself, (hell, my dad's career used to be centered around guns).. but i cannot deny that we have an obscene gun violence problem relative to countries with stricter gun laws.

Might be bait, but what about the argument that people can get their weapons illegally?


They're banned for people to obtain legally. But criminals would still be able to get them through their own means.

It doesn't seem like it really solves the issue. I'm not trying to sound like a gun toting conservative , but it sounds like it would just take guns away from people who obey the law but allow criminals to continue to have them

Again, the Vegas shooter was able to obtain all of his guns through legal means. So who knows if a gun ban would work or not.

Yeah. It's really complex. I know that the culture in America is much different than in other parts of the world. There's a huge population difference and many different cultural backgrounds all co-habitating with another.

While it's true other countries have less gun violence, they also have smaller populations and less diverse cultural background. I think a lot of those things factor in to gun violence.

I definitely think it should be a more stringent process. Anyone can get one so easily. It's ridiculous. Should adult be able to get one hand gun? I think so. Why not? Its all you really need for defense. But you should have proper training with it. Same with hunting rifles. Should everyone be able to easily amass a stockpile of assault rifles? No. Wtf do you need an assault rifle for? Thats where this issue comes from. Yes crazy people will do crazy shit, and yes they will get their hands on some guns. But we don't have to make it so fucking easy do we? Maybe if it was hard to do there would be time for the psycho to have second thoughts.

Yeah thats true. But its population for its size isnt really very big. India would have way more violence if that was the case.

Yeah, I think I agree with your stance.

It should be more difficult to get fully automatic rifles at the very least. I'm always confused at people who own an arsenal of weapons. I don't get what you need all the firepower for.

If you have a handgun or shotgun for self defense or a rifle for hunting I can understand. But why you need an automatic assault rifle is kind of beyond me.

I under there's interests people have. Some people have an interest in guns and like to collect. I just feel a line should be drawn somewhere.

I don't think the population:size ratio is the biggest factor when it comes to America's gun violence.

I think the ethnic background in India is a lot more singular and unified in compassion to America.

India is full of Indians. Much the same as Germany is full of Germans, France is full of French, etc.


There's so many cultures all thrown together in America. That's why they call it a melting pop.

funny thing is that the main argument "I need guns to defend myself" fucking flopped during Vegas shooting. No one could do jack shit. No one shot back at him or anything similar to that until police came. In situations like these your guns are fucking useless, all you can do is run and that's it. If guns were banned, this would've never happened.

I see your point, but I think you're overlooking the situation. There's lots of points to be made.


It was a music concert and people are obviously not allowed/checked for weapons upon entering the venue. Nobody there was armed because they weren't allowed to be.

I think when most people talk self defense they think of things such as handguns or maybe knives. Even with those things there, I don't think anyone would've be equipped to defend themselves against a guy perched in a hotel overlooking the venue from a mile out firing at them with long rifles.

>Should we ban guns?
Gun control is a do-nothing solution. It doesn't fix any of the underlying issues, merely papers over them while giving politicians a quick and easy talking point for their next election cycle.

>Would stricter background checks help?
No, background checks search for a criminal record or record of mental illness; you can't preemptively screen for those. Without any evidence of either it doesn't matter how scrutinous the background check, they simply can't show what isn't there.

>What do you guys think the solution to gun violence is? If any?
As callous as it sounds, mass murders like what happened in Vegas are statistical aberrations accounting for a fraction of a percent of total gun homicides. The vast majority of firearm homicides are directly related to criminal activity. We know what lowers criminal activity: a good economy, meaningful education, and employment that offers competitive wages and opportunity for advancement. Unfortunately providing these things takes a long-term, systematic approach that costs money and won't produce results for years. There is no political will to invest in people like that as politicians can't just point and say, "I made things better," because it's entirely possible that their career will be over long before the benefits come to fruition. So instead you bullshit gun control initiatives that treat banning magazines over a certain size as a public safety victory and 300 people still get murdered in Chicago in a year.

As far as mass murders like Vegas go, it's almost entirely due to the dearth of access to mental health treatment and the extreme stigma held against people who have mental issues or have sought psychological treatment. Paddock is an outlier as currently there isn't any evidence of mental issues, but if you look at all the mass shooting perpetrators you'll notice that most of them have mental issues or were receiving or had received mental health treatments.

>As far as mass murders like Vegas go, it's almost entirely due to the dearth of access to mental health treatment and the extreme stigma held against people who have mental issues or have sought psychological treatment.

I agree completely! There's a huge stigma ingrained in society against people with mental health issues. I think a lot of that stems from all the negative proponents of certain illnesses and a lot of self diagnosing that goes on.

I'm not sure how exactly you "normalize" mental illness and remove the stigma against it though.

The guy was well into 7 figures. He could have bought any guns he wanted illegally. So I think that had they been illegal, he still would have acquired the guns by any means necessary.

this whole gun topic is so controversial and there's so many arguments for both sides (for and against guns) that debate could literally be endless. You could give an example of a cuntry such as... Uzbekistan, the last shooting there was probably during WW2. However places like Russia, regardless of a gun restrictions, still have occasional shootings, such as GTA terrorist group that would simply stop in front of cars on a road and shoot the shit out of victims. My point is that if guns were illegal, such acts (mass-shootings, shootings) would occur a lot less. But it's important to take into account the fact that guns have become a part of a culture, so banning guns could potentially cause rivalries amongst general population.
As i said, this topic could be discussed for days with enough arguments for both sides.

Yeah, that's one of the issues I have gun control is I feel that if a person is banned from obtaining it legally, they can still get in illegally.

Much the same as certain drugs are banned. People will always find ways around that and get what they want.

When alcohol was banned during Prohibition people still got their alcohol and a lot of crime was centered around the fact that it was illegal. The war on drugs is a separate topic, but there's parallels you can draw when comparing it to gun control.

Even countries who have "banned" guns have gun crime. So that plan is a failure. Not to mention that 2/3 of gun deaths in US are suicides anywya. It's just a more convenient way to kill oneself, or other people, so it's a widely used tool for these things. But killing of others/self won't go away if guns do - the perpetrators will just find other modalities. But what WILL get worse is robbery, rape, carjacking, etc. if guns are taken away.

Normalization of mental illness and removing the stigma of it starts with not treating it as a separate category of illness. As long as there is such a distinction between mental illness and bodily health it will never go away. It's a cultural thing and it's been getting better over the years but it's still pretty bad. The mental illness chic crowd does actually ill people no favors either. Easy access to treatment would also go a long way; if everyone could plop down a copay and see a therapist like they can a general practitioner people wouldn't feel so weird about it.

That's what non-Americans don't understand. We share a border with Mexico and have a large scale import/export trade system going on.

Even Australia STILL finds weapons years later. And not just old weapons that weren't turned in, but ships bringing them in by the boat load. So if an isolated (by land) country cannot keep weapons away, how will the country with #1 weapons manufacturers, arms dealers, and gun owners solve their gun problem?

I am a gun owner and I am opened to ideas. But I did nothing wrong and will never turn in my weapons, even if the come by force. I feel like it will always remain a state issue, because the majority of people in my state carry, or at least own weapons to keep at home. So I don't see Ohio banning guns any time soon.

Simply put, prohibition never works.

>America 1920s
>Mexico today

Yeah. The only solution to gun violence is to arm everyone.

The solution is simple: Ban guns and take away existing guns or face the consequences of more people losing it.

There is absolutely no reason for everyone to own a gun. Yes, obviously people will keep guns and guns will be around for a long time but at least you're solving the problem on the long run.

Americans are too attached to their amendments using weird arguments like if you can change one amendment you could also alter freedom of speech etc.

I understand how your culture developed on shooting guns, but take it from us older countries that you need to adapt.

Gun crimes will exist, illegal guns will be accessible and especially in your country for 50 years or so but at least police forces will be able to handle the situation.

>Checked
I do agree that it's gotten better of the years. Mental illness isn't treated with as much scrutiny as it once was.

I do think access to it is very important. It's very difficult and expensive to see a therapist in contrast to how easy and generally affordable it is to find a general practitioner to provide care for you and it certainly it not met with any of the same scrutiny.

No, there is no COMPLETE solution. Anomalies will always exist, such as the Vegas shooter seems to be. However, we CAN "arm" everyone with truth and positive values and work toward a society where nobody feels the need to shoot anybody.