>> In the interest of "proper analysis," I'll ask once again. If they were gone overnight, what about our lives might be missing or newly harmful?
For me, nothing at all. I would in no way be affected. But for those who use them, however, they do, their rights under the 2nd Amendment would have been taken away without any real reason (because we have no evidence they are "the" problem). Some people just collect them; does that give less stature to their freedom to own the weapon? I don't know.
I won't attempt to put the words in your mouth but one COULD argue, "We're taking away a person's right to enjoy shooting his AR15 at the range in exchange to save the lives of school children."
But that argument does not hold water because there is no evidence that it will save even one school child's life. If there were, then we could at least discuss that trade off. Here, even that isn't a viable discussion.
The argument that we will respond to future data points by changing the legislation strikes me as fantasy. We did that before with assault weapons and here we are again.
I would ask, "How about we ban first-person shooter video games?" Who would be harmed by that? The idea that a kid exposed to 30 or 40 hours a week of it, over a period of months or even years, might not be desensitized to violent acts is strange to me.
Charles Whitman (Texas Tower shooter) was autopsied and found to have a brain tumor which some doctors believed caused his behavior. Everyone has something. Lots of these kids have been on modern antidepressants which may be part of the problem or a mere symptom of the underlying cause (depression).
I don't object to making changes but I question the efficacy of doing so based on a public outcry following an emotional event like this. And without a provision for metrics which can provide information as to the effectiveness of it so that if it is determined the AR15 wasn't the problem, those rights can be restored. |
