is ow where I stand.[/QUOTE]
You need to keep in mind that when Leo says we need to impose consequences, "severe enough to be too fearful to risk," he is talking about astonishingly shocking penalties applied with equally astonishing swiftness. He isn't talking about merely the death penalty in "beyond all doubt" cases in which mass killings and other murderous crimes are committed and the offender's guilt it without question, because he knows the death penalty isn't a deterrent especially when you have to wait 10 or 20 years for the sentence to finally be carried out. He's talking about a wood chipper on the courthouse steps that gets fired up immediately after the verdict is read and the sentence is proclaimed.
Be that as it may, it seems that, to many people, "gun control" isn't about more laws, it's about one simple law that simply controls who can and cannot have guns in the first place. Law enforcement and the military? Yes, absolutely. Everyone else? No.
They know that the one simple law won't happen, so they go at it with gun control creep, where a series of gun control laws creep up on you to where it's suddenly more trouble than it's worth to own a gun and you are discouraged from even wanting one. Things like background checks, permits (for a guaranteed right, mind you), limiting magazine size, outlawing certain types of ammunition, and criminalizing how a gun looks.
It's exactly the same as the creep of mandating that a woman view an ultrasound before getting an abortion, mandating that abortion clinics have full emergency room facilities and doctors with hospital admitting privileges, having a waiting period before being able to get an abortion.
When you can't get your way right now all at once, creep is the historically tried and true method for getting some personal satisfaction immediately and for starting the road to getting your way eventually.
So, before we can even begin a debate on "gun control," we need to have the term itself be defined. If it is defined by the logical and accepted definition of as being laws or policies that regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, or use of firearms, then obviously we're talking about either more laws or the changing of existing laws. One of the reasons the "wacko right" (and many not-so wacko, for that matter) says "NO!!!!" to even discussing gun control is, the Constitution plainly states, "...the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," and any kind of gun control is either an intentional or de facto infringement.
Did you know that in five states (Alaska, Arizona, Kansas, Vermont and Wyoming) you do not need a permit of any kind to purchase, possess, or carry (open or concealed) a firearm? These are states which take "shall not be infringed" most seriously.
Also, did you know that there are two countries where individual firearm ownership is considered to be a natural right rather than a privilege? Those countries are the United States and Yemen.
As the National Research Council noted in 2004, the question of whether gun control policies increase, decrease or have no effect on rates of gun violence turns out to be a difficult question, and one without an easy answer (despite those who always have an easy answer at the ready). There is simply not enough data with which to form any valid conclusion. It's quite easy to conclude that the more guns there are in an area the more gun deaths and gun violence (including suicide) there will be, but that's the same as concluding there more cars there are in an area the more car accidents there are. More people are killed in kitchens with kitchen knives than with any other weapon. More people are killed by falling coconuts in countries where there are coconut trees than there are in countries where coconut trees do not exit.
This is not rocket science. In places where there are lots of guns, there will be higher rates of gun-related violence, but that doesn't mean there wouldn't be the same level of violence if the same area had no guns. As the Research Council, who performed extensive research of all of the research published to date, also noted, "the absence of significant correlations between gun ownership and total homicide, assault, or suicide rates...[leaves] open the question of possible substitution effects." In other words, other means (knives, baseball bats, etc.) could have been substituted for firearms used in the commission of homicide or suicide. The totality of the research also shows that in areas high gun ownership and high concealed and carry are present, there is no correlation between an increase or decrease in gun shootings like the school and theater shootings. Many people, thanks to flawed logical assumptions and John Lott's 1998 "More Guns, Less Crime" book, that laws allowing law-abiding citizens to carry a gun legally in public may cause reductions in crime because potential criminals do not know who might be carrying a firearm. It turns out that is true in some cases but not true in others. There is not enough data to make a definitive statement either way.
The research on the impact of 18 major types of gun control laws on every major type of violent crime or violence (including suicide) found that gun laws generally had no significant effect on violent crime rates or suicide rates. Gun laws certainly had a significant effect on gun crimes and gun suicides, but the violent crimes and suicides happened just the same using other methods.
My personal belief is "shall not be infringed" should rule the debate on gun control, and that people are going to be people with or without guns (which the history of pre-gun history confirms). You don't have mass shootings in Japan because people there aren't allowed to have guns. So how do they accomplish the same result as a mass shooting? They release ricin gas in a subway or shopping mall. Getting rid of assault rifles and large magazines and any other form of infringement on gun possession is an ineffective feel-good measure at best. It's treating the symptom rather than the cause. I remember once Al Sharpton was asked what happens when the guns are gone and people start using knives? He responded with, "Then we go after the knives." His thinking is hardly unique. But the logical progression after that is eliminating anything that can be used as a weapon, including rocks, water, dirt, trees, cliffs, and eventually, people.
