This is not a political site and I don’t intend to prolong the talk on US gun laws here, though I do intend to follow what happens closely in my own personal time. I thought it fitting, however, to present a few final thoughts on the issue borne out of the discussion that started yesterday in this post.
Firstly, I want to acknowledge everyone’s input and thank all but one of you for participating in a civil way. I also want to acknowledge that my post was written in the heat of the moment with a fair amount of passion and featured a proposition that is not workable in the real world.
People in the US have guns – a lot of them. The estimate I’ve read this week is that there are around 280 million firearms in the US, with only around 3 million of those in the hands of the military and less than 1 million in the hands of the police (to be fair, the military also have other, more effective hardware at their disposal).
As a few commenters have noted, any legislation made today is going to see a lot of guns being hidden, buried underground for years only to be dug up later on. If change is going to happen then it will need to be founded on cultural change, which is a lot harder to do. It implies a desire on the part of the people themselves to change and as we saw in comments, that doesn’t exist in everyone.
There are a few positions being taken that I honestly can’t understand. I’ve seen these both on this site and elsewhere:
Continue reading A final word from me on the US gun law discussion