If you knew a bullet was going to cause your death, would you be pro gun?

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38. An estimated 80 million citizens own 300 million firearms in our nation. ...

While it is rare, some people who usually have serious mental issues do use their weapons to massacre others and the results are tragic. A high percentage of the remaining gun homicides in this nation are caused by gang warfare between drug gangs fighting over turf.

There is little that strong gun control can do to control criminal drug gang activity. Mexico has extremely strong gun control yet the cartels manage to smuggle in firearms not only from the United States but from other nations usually in Central and South America. Such gangs often use new fully automatic rifles, bazookas and hand grenades which are not sold by mom and pop gun stores in the United States. Controlling drug gang activity is a job for law enforcement but we should also consider legalizing some drugs such as marijuana as our War on Drugs is and has been a total failure.

The majority of those who have ran amok and committed massacres were waving red flags long before they went on their killing sprees. Obviously we need to develop a more responsive mental healthcare system in our nation that reports those who have truly serious mental issues to the authorities and their names should be entered into the NICS background check system for firearm sales. (Note: this is already the law.)

Of course better law enforcement to control gangs and a better mental healthcare system would not eliminate all firearm tragedies. When under the influence of alcohol or in a moment of anger, people often do stupid things. Sometimes they grab a firearm and misuse it. (We once tried to ban alcohol in the United States but were wise enough to drop that attempt as it was just as bad a failure as our War on Drugs.)

In 2009, there were 15,241 murders in the United States and 9,146 were caused by a firearm. (Source: http://www.juancole.com/2011/01/over-9000-murders-by-gun-in-us-39-in-uk.html) Therefore it is obvious that Americans do kill other Americans without firearms although these weapons were used in 60% of these crimes.

I feel that our best approach is the better control who owns firearms in our nation. We can best do this by tweaking and improving existing laws and by better enforcing them. We should be able to reduce the number of firearms tragedies significantly by using this approach.