General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I'm gonna say it and I don't care what gun nuts think... [View all]TeamsterDem
(1,173 posts)since I have nothing to do with their son's death. I didn't pull the trigger - nor would I have done so. You're attempting to make my gun ownership relevant to Trayvon Martin's death when the fact is I live thousands of miles away from the scene of the crime, so of course my gun ownership literally has nothing to do with it. I am not responsible for his death, thus I don't have to explain anything to his parents - although I would offer them my condolences for their loss.
At age 17 my best friend was murdered with a handgun. The killer was caught with an unregistered 9mm Glock. Your solution is to outlaw Glocks whereas mine is to punish the person who used it to kill someone. That's what we do in this country: Punish the guilty but not the innocent. And interestingly, my best friend's parents are avid gun owners/enthusiasts who say it would be ridiculous to strip gun owners of that right simply because some people misuse them.
It's just like cars: They can be used as get away vehicles, operated by drunks, and in extreme cases as battering rams intentionally wielded to kill someone else. Should we ban them too?
Or how about hammers? I've read stories where people have used hammers to kill others. My God, let's get the FBI to arrest everyone at Home Depot!!!
The sad reality of any society is that not everyone could have always been saved by some measure of law. For example drunken driving: It's already illegal, yet people are inexplicably still doing it. While it does have the effect of limiting the amount of deaths caused by drunken driving, it's still not 100% effective; simply making something illegal doesn't always mean you're safer. And in fact when criminals know that a given target is unarmed, I'd submit to you that your abolition of 2nd Amendment rights just made that household less safe. It's a balance, unfortunately: Sometimes it gives a killer an easy tool, but sometimes it helps a law abiding citizen protect themselves.
Trayvon Martin was a victim of a racist creep who abused his gun rights. He wasn't within his rights to do what he did, so banning everyone's rights to have them is the wrong answer to the problem. In my view psychological evaluations should be a part of the background screening process to own a firearm, but I'm realistic and admit that not even that would work 100% of the time. Yet banning guns altogether wouldn't suit that goal either because guns can be purchased on the black market, and given that most hard drugs are already illegal but still flooding into this country, I suggest to you that the cartels would simply step in to fill the demand in much the same way as bootleggers avoided prohibition.