Obama as he's being informed of the Orlando shooting

I don't think you guys understand what a lot of us non-yanks are advocating. The last time I spoke up, I was told "Don't give anyone more reason to believe their crazy narrative that the government will come and take their guns." To some extent, that's exactly what a lot of us are suggesting.

Not just gun bans - enforced buybacks of semi-automatics. Stringent licensing procedures for whatever guns are still available. Universal background checks. Exceptionally harsh penalties on unregistered sales (e.g. sales at gunshows). Curtail manufacturing. Make ammunition for unlicensed weapons scarce as hell. You can't remove guns from gangs immediately, but you can make it a damn sight harder for them to continue to use guns into the future.

We get told this would never work because there's an ingrained and widespread gun culture. As it that ends the debate. Fight the culture too. Attack the NRA, and not just on specific policies - break its back as an institutional power. Consign gun collections and firing clubs to a niche like model trains. Give permits to farmers and hunters too, and leave it there.

So what about Switzerland, where there are lax gun laws and no big problems? Wonderful, but you've got it the wrong way around. They don't have problems, so they don't need to address gun ownership. The US patently does have a problem with mass shootings. How do you fix the underlying social issues there? Half the country has been shrieking "mental health" for a decade. So what? They have a majority in Congress and can push for all the "mental health" funding they like. What have they actually achieved? What happens when the cause is religious, as is increasingly the case?

Remove the ability of mass shooters to act. That should be your single most immediate concern, while you deal with the culture behind the killings.

I fully expect that this is a very controversial view. If you don't agree, fine. But stop mischaracterising us all as suggesting more laws with no teeth, like banning CCW or creating more "gun free" zones.

/r/pics Thread Parent Link - i.imgur.com