Unoriginal thought for the day: "The world would be better off with no guns".
Obviously, taking guns away from everyone in America is impossible. We can never outlaw guns. Even if we wanted to, a good half of the country would revolt. It'd be disastrous.
The problem we have with guns is that we love them soooooo much as a people. A few of us like killing other people with these guns, and using them to commit other terrible crimes like burglary and rape.
This has led to a police force that expects every single citizen to be armed. In order for police to stand up to that constant threat, they've needed to take steps to make themselves more powerful than the average gun-toting joe. And like we see pretty often, police officers do stupid things.
This isn't a new story. It's how we win wars. We couldn't win World War II because the Japanese had a lot of people to throw at us and a lot of experience fighting in wars. So we created a new, more powerful weapon, and used it. You'll notice in our war-loving history as America, the wars we've done well in (for the most part) are the wars where the winning side had a new-fangled technological advantage. Machine guns. Bigger airplanes, more airplanes. So why does it surprise anyone that we have militarized our police force? We now have a citizenry that has more guns than ever before, so our cops think they need that technological and militarized advantage in order to win the war on crime.
The problem with this never ending circle of "I need more guns because there are more guns", is that there isn't any clear solution. As I said at the outset, we can't outlaw guns. There are too many people out there that like having them, some of them even for legitimate reasons (hunting).
One thing we can do, but seem incapable of, is enacting laws that limit several things:
- The number of guns a person can own. You can only use one at a time anyways. Unless you're Max Payne.
- Limit the kinds of guns people can buy. Uzis should not be for sale.
- Limit the number of bullets you can buy at one time.
- Limit the places where you can carry a gun. You don't need a gun in Target.
By limiting the guns of the citizenry, we'll make the police force less reactive. The problem, as I see it, is that the police expect people to have guns. More accurately, the expect people of color to have guns, it is obvious there is a race component going on in these police shootings. If we can limit the number of people actually carrying guns, and where they can carry them, over time the police will become less likely to use force. At least in theory.
Another way to go, that is much more likely to happen, is for police to get better training and for them to be better tested for mental problems. We need to test gun owners for metal issues as well, but putting police through that process should weed out the hot-heads who are just there because they like the idea of shooting someone. Training cops to better handle situations, adding in real consequences for when something bad happens (like jail), are both sensible solutions that can be enacted without taking guns away from cops.
What do you think?
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