Not every person wants to carry a gun.
Not every person would be skilled with a gun.
This seems self-evident.
Not all mass killers are diagnosed as psychotic or seriously mentally ill prior to the killing. In fact, most aren't.
Not all people diagnosed as psychotic or serious mentally ill becomes violent. In fact, most don't.
This is also self-evident.
Conclusions below the Orange Squiggle of Complex Issues.
We basically have 4 choices:
- The government ensures that people who might be capable of mass violence don't have access to guns. This requires a massive security apparatus monitoring us all to see who is potentially dangerous, and has to extend to people not being treated for mental illness.
- The government ensures that weapons suitable for killing lots of people in a short period of time are not owned by private citizens
- The government requires that every place which might attract a killer has sufficient armed guards to defeat a surprise attack by a killer in full body armor, skilled with his weapon, and the weapon is the most lethal thing legally available to citizens. We have to assume worst-case bad guy, don't we?
- Dead kids on a semi-regular basis
Let's face it, (1) is the worst possible choice, even worse than (4). Total police state with the government depriving lots of citizens of rights because they might be dangerous, in the opinion of some bureaucracy? I don't think so.
And that really leaves us with a choice between (2), (3), and (4). If you find (4) unacceptable, you can choose then between
(2) Gun control, or
(3) A very expensive regime of private and public security guards - at schools; churches; theaters; concerts; sporting events; parks; malls; stores; left turn lanes where lots of cars back up; et cetera.
If we're going to go with (3), then I propose that the people who reject (2) pay the necessary taxes. We will register guns; we will tax guns; and the tax on a gun will be proportional to the square of the number of bullets a skilled user can fire in a minute under optimal conditions.
Control mass-killing guns, or tax the hell out of them. That's how I see it.
PLEASE BE POLITE TO ALL VIEWPOINTS IN YOUR COMMENTS