For those who argue that school shootings are a gun problem, it’s worth considering that in the aftermath of World War I, countless individuals had access to guns without experiencing these widespread, senseless acts of violence for no reason. Therefore, it’s clear that your argument has inherent shortcomings. Moreover, I believe altering gun laws could potentially lead to the establishment of a black market, encouraging individuals to seek illegal firearms, and resulting in an increase in overall violence.

  • odium@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    Let’s imagine you’re a suicidal person.

    Option A: you live in the US

    You try to purchase a gun. You google gun show, here’s the first result. You can go through it yourself to see how many gun shows there are near you. You go to one, find a private dealer, and now you can purchase a gun without any background checks.

    You can now kill yourself using the gun. If you resent the world in general or hate a religion/race/ethnicity/etc in particular, you can kill a bunch of them in a public area before you suicide.

    Option B: you live in any other developed country

    You try to purchase a gun. The only way is to go through background checks or do it illegally.

    You google how to do it illegally. No criminal ever publishes this because the cops would find them if they did. Do you know any criminals who have guns? Probably not. On the off chance that you do, they would sell it for a really high price since it’s illegal and thus harder to obtain. Most suicidal people would find this method to be too much effort and choose a different suicide method.

    You try to steal a gun from a licensed gun owner. If there are very few licensed gun holders, this is hard to do. If there are a lot, you might be able to get a small hand gun, but you will still have difficulties getting semi automatic or automatic rifles which could result in larger mass shootings. Also you could get caught while stealing, or if the owner notices their gun is missing, they can report it to the police. Security cameras might catch you stealing it. All these are ways law enforcement can catch you before you actually do the shooting.