Arguments for US gun control on the social media

Just a few points I made on social media about gun control I'd like to share. I will share more later. Many thanks to Maryland-based Frank Maguire, author of Lashback and various other publications, for inspiring the discussion, and to those who contributed.

On the issue of kids being raised as killing spree punks, and the availability of guns...

Family break-up is a Western problem as much as an American one. Children aren't being raised the way they used to be. I'd suggest that they're given the freedom to express their views, which can lead to critical thinking or turn them into punks. I believe the previous generations' education far better than mine. Standards are slipping with each generation in many respects, and kids can speak out in class in ways that would've got me into detention as a kid, and the previous generations caned, or whatever else. But the old ways included more kids with learning difficulties being overlooked or left behind. The old ways included abuse.

It goes without saying that a criminal accesses handguns more easily in Ireland than I could. There are gangland shootings here and in the UK every week. 

We read in the news about people getting shot in Ireland all the time. Broadly speaking, the general public does not have guns here. I am sure we have our fair share of teenaged lone wolves who struggle to meet girls, and disgruntled postal workers who've been made redundant. There was a poor young man here who killed two of his younger brothers recently, and an inquiry of some kind into it. The kid had schizophrenia and he was adopted; his brothers weren't adopted. I don't know what was going through his mind. But he didn't have the option of going into a shop and stocking up on armaments, or even reaching into a parent's bedroom safe. 

Why not take away the guns from EVERYONE, and start now, through harsh punishments for those found with guns, or those who use guns? A firearms offense carries less leniency in the Irish courts than an assault with a stick or a knife. You punch a guy and break his arm, you're likely to walk. You SHOOT a guy in the arm, and he gets a flesh wound, that's jail time.

You have the same or similar family and education issues in all of the Anglophone territories today. Canada, the British Isles, Australia, New Zealand. There are punks everywhere! But there aren't guns everywhere. And it's the country with the most guns that has the most gun crime.

Good education rather than gun control?

Like alcohol and weed and chocolate, you can't abuse something if it's not in the house. Speaking of chocolate, the Swiss are among the most armed nations in the world. Yet they're not the society of wackjobs that the rest of us seem to be. We need to figure out why, but a far quicker solution is to take away guns. There are problems with our culture(s) that we're all figuring out, and a lack of gun control does not help. How long will it take to adopt the Swiss model, or the Swedish model or whatever model, when it comes to education and respect and parenting, if that starts tomorrow? And how many more decades will we continue to have people with this sense of entitlement who think they can turn up at school and shoot up the classrooms? One decade? Half a decade?

If good education and parenting started tomorrow across the board, you'd still have as many guns, and the kids might be more responsible three or five years from now. But that's long term. The underpaid, under-resourced, fully-armed teachers would do their best to employ new education techniques, and parents might start raising great kids through community initiatives. But what about the punks who've already left school, already forgotten by the system? The disgruntled employee? The spurned lover? The diaper-wearing astronaut? The radical fundamentalist? The child who thinks it's a toy? They can still get the guns. If you start taking the GUNS away tomorrow, there'll be far fewer accidents and incidents.