[quote=“anon50609448, post:286, topic:80545, full:true”]
Anyway, I certainly don’t claim to know what laws could change the current situation in America. Compliance with laws always relies on buy-in from the populace. There are tons of laws on the books just everyone just ignores. It would be nice to try to take guns away from people who are demonstrably unsafe with them, but how you could enforce such a law I would have no idea.[/quote]
I wish there were better answers, but I have no idea either. I think what we’re doing now already grabs the low-hanging fruit of ‘don’t let criminals buy guns’. I can’t even claim that has actually helped though considering it isn’t hard to buy a gun on the black market. From what I’ve seen, the best thing we’ve done to reduce gun crime is reduce lead exposure, which in turn reduces crime, particularly aggression related crime. The lead hypothesis is truly fascinating and has a lot of data to support it.
I think the best we can do is address the causes of crime in general, rather than the tools it utilizes. Income inequality is a major contender I believe. I’m not in favor of revoking current gun control measures. I don’t want everyone on the block owning fully automatic 50 cal weapons. There are lines to be drawn, but it is a complex issue without any easy solutions as far as I can see. I don’t support ‘doing something’ just because people want something to be done. An ineffective solution is just throwing money away that could be better spent elsewhere, just appease voters. We do that far too much.
I don’t support the no-fly lists as they exist now either…or much of the oppressive security theater we engage in over air travel. I think the terror watch list might be a useful data filtering tool for some organizations to track potential threats, but if we’re taking away citizen’s rights, the system needs to have a fair basis for inclusion and a clear process of appeal.
The way I see it, If I die from a bomb on a plane or a bomb in a security line headed into the terminal, I’m just as dead either way. All the security theater we engage in can’t reliably stop someone from making a bomb and using it in a crowded place. I think we have Republicans to blame for most of that annoyance now. I don’t mean to hate on our government’s security policies as a whole. We do some good stuff as well. Controlling the use of prepaid phones is a good example, as it is perhaps the only easy option for long-distance triggering. Similarly, buying large quantities of materials commonly used in explosives raises flags and checks. A lot of our data gathering and threat analysis work is actually useful in stopping threats as well, even if the data gathering gets taken too far sometimes. Of course, a broken clock will be right two times a day, and I’m sure some of our worst security policies have still managed to stop a few threats.
