Well, if guns are outlawed, then police officers and the military will have access to guns. Most guns used to commit crimes are stolen in residential burglaries. All the people who argue that Americans have the constitutional right to bear arms are interpreting the law in a specific way, but there has never been a conclusive court decision giving individuals the right to bear arms, and in fact the clause about the militias is very important in that sentence.
We are the only western industrialized society with this absolute insanity and frontier mentality about all being armed. Children get guns from their parents, and sometimes steal them as well. Regardless of what the other factors are, if the guns were not available, these school massacres would not be possible.
Incidentally, guns are MORE available today than they were. City children did not used to have guns at all, and now they do. Rural children had access to hunting rifles, but not to assault weapons.
Here is a quote from a column I cited at Feelings:
According to a 1996 Police Foundation poll,
Americans privately own between 190 million and
220 million firearms. So it's not surprising that,
according to another study, the overall firearms
death rate among children 14 and younger is 12
times higher in the United States than in 25 other
industrialized nations combined. In real numbers,
14 children in America are killed with guns every
day, and four times as many are treated for gunshot
wounds. About 400 children die every year in
unintentional shootings."
sfgate.com. |
