Elinda wrote:
There's never been a mass-shooting when Siberian tigers were present.
What about all those Siberian Tiger hunts throughout history?
Background checks on gun ownership are a completely meaningless waste of time, given how easy it is for your average crazy obsessed person to aquire a block of aluminum and a hobby mill / lathe these days. Almost anyone could quickly make a crappy gun that would work well enough to shoot someone with minimal amount of book reading on how to drill holes in metal and a vague idea of what a gun looks like. If we specify the easy availability of replacement gun barrels into the mix, almost anyone could make a somewhat accurate gun that could shoot someone. All adding more background checks does is annoy the people who would follow the law anyways. Someone who is contemplating murder isn't going to be overly concerned with breaking gun aquisition laws. A crazy obsessive person is going to find a way to accomplish their goals one way or another. Should we ban propane tanks and gasolene? Maybe we should ban aluminum so no one can file it into aluminum powder? Of ban fuel oil because someone could make a bomb out of it. Maybe ban containers with lids, or clocks that could be used as detonators?
There will always be people who are willing to make extra money selling weapons off the books. The first question everyone asks me when they hear I have a 3d printer is "can you print a gun?" of course I could, but it would be stupid to do so when I could just go get one that isn't likely to explode and blow my fingers off. I could go order a hunting rifle kit off the internet using a cash prepaid debit card and a PO box under a fake name, and have a mostly assembled rifle in minutes (or revolver kits, etc). Ban those kits in the U.S, I'll just order one from some other country, etc. A firearm is too simple a device to ban. Anyone with a bullet could make a functional zip gun. Everyone gets all hung up over AR-15's and "assult weapons" but almost every single shooting out there involves a handgun or some sort of single shot per trigger pull hunting rifle with a clip. Ban all those and the Criminals will be the only ones who have them. Australia tried it, and the criminal elements in Australia are having a field day over it (not to mention the various poisenous critters that now have no fear of being shot). Instead of gun crime you get mroe stabbings, or bludgeonings, or mass poisenings.
We should ban money, since people use money to buy things that kill other people. Or maybe ban food, because 100% of people who kill other people eat things.