Gallup: Americans Support President Obama’s Gun Reform Proposals

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14. Mental health is certainly a part of the problem

As is economic inequality, political disenfranchisement, and a host of other issues. But ready access to weaponry of massive destructive potential is also part of the problem. A child who wants to beat up his sister needs to be taught to not want to beat up his sister. In the meantime, however, only an idiot gives him hand grenades to play with. You speak, as do all gun advocates, of "extreme anti-gun positions," choosing to blame anything and everything rather than guns. Yet the proposals on the table are ones which address the very problems you reference: mandating improved access to mental health care, authorizing research into the causes of gun violence, and developing information sharing protocols to facilitate more effective background checks in order to keep guns out of the hands of persons predisposed to violence. Nonetheless, these proposals are being received by the gun community as "extreme anti-gun positions," the first step in a Stalinist conspiracy to enslave the nation, an urgent call to form citizen armies to resist government tyranny. And we are to understand that it is the administration that is "extreme"?