General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The latest murderer [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)I have relatives who hunt regularly, and I happen to love venison. I used to live in an area of Europe in which we ate a lot of venison. My husband's uncle was the senior hunter in the area of Europe in which my husband's family is from.
My point is that criminals get guns that are stolen, lost or sold on a market that is irresponsible. If gun owners had to register their guns regularly, say every year, the fact that a registered gun was lost or illegally sold would be known to the police.
If guns were registered, the police would be able to stop suspicious people and check not only on their car registration but also their gun registration. In fact, police could look for unregistered guns in cars.
I don't think you can stop the deaths from shootings, but I think you could decrease them. Other countries do not have such high incidences of mass murders from guns. We could lower that number if we made it harder, more embarrassing and more difficult for fanatics and unstable people (and maybe their families) to get guns.
I am not opposed to guns for killing animals -- coyotes, deer, other animals that can be harmful to people or pests.
While we are at it, I like to garden. I live five miles from L.A. and have to put up with raccoons and squirrels eating up my garden. When I asked my very elderly mother who has gardened for many years what I should do about it, she advised me to shoot the squirrels and find someone who knows how to cook them. I treated that like a joke, but I suspect that is what her dad did when she was growing up.
No. I am not totally anti-gun. I just want the assurance that guns are used responsibly and accounted for. I live in a city and there have been a lot of horrible gang shootings in my area. That makes me feel very different about guns that I would feel if I lived in a rural area like some members of my family. It's not that I am opposed to gun ownership. It's that I don't want a lot of guns in my densely populated area of a big city. Other than squirrels and raccoons, there is no game here. People can have guns, but they should only take them out of the house to go elsewhere, say to a lake, to hunt. And I would prefer no one had guns in my immediate area. Because the fact is that mostly criminals have guns here. And if the very fact that have a gun was reason to arrest them, then criminals would still have guns -- until they were arrested and sent away. That would be fine with me. I think that it would be great if mere possession of a gun on the streets in my crowded area of the city was enough to permit a judge to sentence someone to prison.