Well, I'm going to approach this topic logically. I fully expect people to get angst-ridden over it and screech about "thinking of the children" or "but muh guns doi hoi", because I tend to take a middle ground on this. Also, I'm a damn, dirty foreigner, who loves maple syrup, and whose police dress like
discount Walmart Red Coats, so... Up up, and away!
#1: Switzerland. Because that glorious country of
tax evasion-enabling banks hills and valleys
will be cited at some point as a beautiful, progressive country, full of fucking guns. Which, is true... Sort of. First, assuming Wikipedia's numbers are at least semi-accurate, there are
2.5 times as many guns in the US than there are in Switzerland per 100 citizens. Which, thinking about it, is kind of a bit fucked up when one realizes that Switzerland trains and arms its populace, meaning that everyone in that country should have a gun pretty much for free. All they'd have to pay for is ammo (not military grade, but civilian comparable is legal) and then go get a licence. Part of the licencing process is turning fully automatic rifles into semi-automatic ones, by the way, that should be mentioned.
So, while Switzerland is definitely a country chalk full o' fuckin' guns, they don't just hand everyone assault rifles and then tell them to go hunt some wild animals with military ammunition and fully automatic rifles. Americans who wank themselves to Swiss flags, dreaming of a country with more ammunition than single celled organisms, can probably stop now.
#2: Countries which institute gun control do see a sharp decrease in gun-related violence... Sort of. Australia is the prime example of this, even cited by John Oliver in a comedy piece he did with Jon Stewart's show. For a bit of history, Australia used to suffer mass shootings like the US.
This was the one that convinced them to institute sweeping gun control legislation. As a result, gun-related homicides dropped 50% and gun-related suicides dropped 80%. (
CNN.) However, homicide and manslaughter rates have remained a relative constant regardless, and haven't dropped until around 2007 (
Australian Government Statistics). Homicide dropped from around 1.9 to 1.3 per 100,000, manslaughter remained at the same rate. The laws controlling firearms didn't come into play until around 1988-1989, and gun buybacks weren't completed until 1996. It took a ten year period for homicide to drop, and it wasn't a dramatic and sudden plummet, implying that the strict gun control laws had
little to no impact on the homicide and manslaughter rates.
#3: The US Constitution is not a bulletproof document by any stretch of the imagination. People who cite it as the sole reason that there should be no gun control are apparently incapable of reading the fine print, because the very constitution that protects their gun rights
had to have that amended in, along with
twenty seven other amendments. The US Constitution--that sacred bloody cow--has been edited post-launch
twenty seven fucking times. If it was a video game, most people would be screeching about how horrendously designed it must have been to fail to account for all of this other stuff. So if your argument is
"but muh constitution", you can stuff it. Constitutions can be edited and amended. Even the US Constitution has been amended multiple times, even by the people who originally wrote the damn thing. It's not a sacred, immortal thing: It's a piece of paper that instructs you as to what core values the US has. If you think core values don't change, then I'd like to play Jeopardy with you and bring up Slavery for 500.
#4: Mass murders.
This shitty thing to do is really old.
Like, really. With or without guns, people do mass murders, serial killings, and other such activities as this. Contrary to popular belief, the deadliest mass murder to occur on US soil at any school involved
explosives, not firearms. You can make pipe bombs (and by extension, sticky bombs) and molotov cocktails with any home materials. Most of the explosives used by the IRA were home made.
People can get very creative and destructive when you deprive them of ease.
#5: Summary.
Switzerland is not a fantasy land devoid of gun control. You will not stop mass murders from happening by instituting gun laws, but you can significantly reduce gun-related fatalities by doing so. Australia is not a fantasy land devoid of homicides. The Constitution is not a sacred cow. Unless sacred cows can be edited twenty seven times and still be considered sacred cows. I'm fairly sure the same forward-thinking forefathers who created the documented (and then amended it) would have likely approved of people questioning it and looking for ways to improve it--not think of it as something to never be questioned. I mean, the entire fucking country popped up because people hated the status quo and wanted to do something better. When people want to murder, they will find a way to do it. Heck, I know how to create molotov cocktails. All you need is some gasoline, a flammable piece of cloth, an empty bottle, and a lighter, and you're good to go to start your own IRA.
#6: In Conclusion.
I'm for gun control, but not the wholesale banning of guns. You don't want firearms to end up in the hands of deranged lunatics, I think we can all agree on that. Screening people's medical histories for psychological disorders and addictions, and criminal records, is a sensible precaution. (Most US states do this, by the way. I'm not sure if they all do, though, someone can feel free to let me know if all of them do.) Multiple tiers of licencing also makes sense to me. We do it with motor vehicles, I don't understand why we can't do the same thing with guns. (Ex: A hunting licence could be acquired by taking a firearms safety course, which lets you use semi-automatic or bolt action scopeless rifles. Sport hunting would be the next "tier", and allow you access to scoped rifles. Then another tier for enthusiasts, collectors, and so on. That way, you can screen out the fucking loons, without punishing the responsible gun owner who just wants to have access to an automatic firearm.) Encourage (though perhaps don't force by legislation) people to get electronic tags in their firearms, akin to SIN Cards in cell phones. That way, if you lose your gun, or it's stolen, you can report it and the government can remotely activate the tag to look for it. (Though I fully admit this is not a bulletproof solution, people would find a way to remove the tags if they were determined. This is more to slap at stupid wannabe gangbanger kids.)
Certain kinds of weapons should only be stored at a lock and key weapon range. I don't think anyone wants to live in a world where rednecks install gatling guns into the back of their fucking pickup trucks and then dakka down a line of trees, dropping dead everything in the forest, from Bambi to your kids. Even if that does sound really fucking awesome.
Beyond that, crime rate is influenced far more by necessity or culture than by the presence of weapons. As much as I do enjoy deflating the joy NRA-drooling nitwits have over their fantastical version of Switzerland, I get the same kind of glee doing it to people who have an equally fantastical version of Australia. While you have the occasional deranged fuckwit who goes on a mass shooting because the voices in his head commanded it of him, I guarantee that the majority of homicides and other tragic crimes are the result of other factors. A lot of the mass shootings in the US lately have been done by people who are obviously mentally unstable and who are not receiving help because the state of the mental health industry in the US is
fucking shameful. A lot of homicides in the US are related to race and gang related conflicts, as easily seen by the fact that black males have over
ten times the homicide rate of their white male counterparts, and men are far more predisposed to committing murder than women are.
(Government Statistics.)
There is a plague in the US, choking the life out of it. While better gun control could certainly be employed and would impact gun-related fatalities, it wouldn't make much of a dent in the overall homicide rate if previous cases are anything to judge by. The bigger issues that need to be tackled are mental health, the war on drugs (and its habit of fucking up one side of the race column more than any other), and systemic poverty. Race is still an issue in the US, no matter which side of the table you look at it from. Even gender could be construed as an issue here, though I won't get into that in this thread in particular. Another thread can be made for it, if desired.
tl;dr: Guns are the scapegoat. Focus on other issues that are in a far more dire strait, and put gun-related issues on the back row. People won't commit murder if they don't have a reason to do so in general. Something is driving this fatality rate up, with or without the guns. I mean, think about it, really hard. Do you think this gun related massacre problem has existed since the inception of the US? No. It's had its good years, its had its bad years. Granted, better gun control would be useful, but banning guns won't work. It didn't stop the IRA, and Australia has a "gray market" with over 250,000 illegal firearms. Do you really fucking think it'll suddenly and magically work in a country with
more firearms than living, breathing people? Think more practically. Kill the causes, not the symptom.