So, yes I'm still unemployed, which gives me lots of free time. And in this free time I have taken up watching the news. I have to say that I am so over all of the politicians and their sudden interest in gun control. Could our politicians maybe focus on, oh I don't know... eliminating national debt; fixing the health care system; fixing social security; marriage equality; better ways to deal with illegal immigrants; plans for reducing our dependency on foreign oil; ways to decrease unemployment; ways to fix the welfare system... I could go on, but I think I've illustrated my point - I don't think gun control laws are really what congress should be focusing on.
Wait, does that mean I think gun control is unimportant and the tragic shootings that have happened lately are trivial? Frankly to a certain extent yes. But, before you jump down my throat about being an insensitive bitch consider this from the CDC's report on deaths for 2010: 138,080 chronic lower respiratory diseases, 780,213 major cardiovascular diseases, 574,743 malignant neoplasms (aka cancer), 38,364 suicides, 35,332 motor vehicle accidents, 8,369 deaths related to HIV, 26,009 deaths from falls, 11,078 deaths by firearms. I think it is a tragedy EVERY time someone loses a loved one. My point being that death by firearms is not the biggest fish we have to fry - in fact we probably shouldn't fry that fish, baked is healthier.
There seem to be two sets of anti-gun people, those who think we should ban all guns and those who think we simply need more restrictions on gun ownership whether that be implemented through stricter laws against specific types of guns, laws regarding the possession of guns or laws regarding the acquisition of guns. I would happily side with the "ban all the guns" folks if they could effectively eliminate guns from the planet. No military guns, no law enforcement guns, no one who could build their own gun in their garage... if you could wipe guns off the planet, then great I'm on board. This however is up there with an infallible justice system where we could effectively apply the death sentence, but that's a whole other topic.
My problem with new and additional gun control measures are that the majority of firearm related crimes are perpetrated with illegally acquired weapons and the people who orchestrate and go on shooting rampages are on the whole mentally unstable. Additional legal restrictions are not going to affect these people at all because they're already operating outside the legal framework. The only thing I see in front of the senate committee that even seems useful at all is the increase in federal penalties for illegal gun trafficking. The rest of it is just nonsense. I don't know what every state requires for gun ownership, but US law already requires background checks for licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons, and states should have registration for owning firearms (maybe they do, I've already done a lot of research for this post and I'm le tired).
Point being that I know lots of people who legally and responsibly own weapons, and I fully support their constitutional right to do so, and I intend to join their ranks someday.
