Gun Control

This is something that i have been thining about a lot lately and i belive that a well thought out discussion is the only answer to my unwaivering mind.

There are a lot of different ways to go about handling gun control, but I doubt many people like the idea of no guns at all. We will see how this poll turns out, but the idea of only people who are willing to break the law being able to possess weapons sounds horrifying. The possibility of people defending themselves sounds like a great deterrent to violent crime. The problem is putting guns in the hands of irresponsible people who don't understand the consequences of misusing a gun. The way you phrased you question covers that though as there is no option for no control on guns. I doubt that it would be chosen but the other extreme is there.

I agree. The fact that most of these shootings happen in gun free zones proves that the government is going the wrong direction. If most shootings happen in gun free zones then why would you want to turn american into a gun free zone yourself. Another point is that the only people doing these shootings are criminals since the act in itself is a criminal act and if you make guns illegal then; first, you take guns from the honest people making it harder for them to protect themselves or prevent attack;second, you make underground gun selling even more profitable since even the normally honest people that shoot for sport will have to get the guns they like in sketchy ways; and last, you dont stop the people that already gain guns illegaly from doing what they want to do. I think it is ridiculous that we take guns from the people that need them most. This segways into the whole legislature about letting public school teachers carry firearms after a strict background test and use policy so they dont have to worry about a random kid walking into class with a gun and shooting up the place without worrying about anyone else there having one. Im sure if students knew that the teachers had guns then they would be a lot more hesitant to use bring out their gun in class. This also might go the other way and make the general public demand to have firearms on campus on the ground of "what if the teacher goes crazy, i need protection too!". I will tackle that when it becomes an issue, but for now i stand with my opinions.

The idea that a teacher may go crazy is nearly an impossible to defend position. If anyone goes crazy they can just waltz into the school and shoot it up. The odds of the teacher being the one to do it is much lower, especially since the odds are that they'd be examined thoroughly. While the teachers may have a feeling of being more powerful than students, it hardly matters who has the gun. If a student tries to shoot up a school campus while teachers have guns, they won't make it very far, if they try at all.

I do think that no one under 21 needs a gun for self defense, and I wouldn't even mind raising it to 25 (the point where our frontal lobes are fully developed. Young people simply are not capable of as much foresight and tend not to think before they act, it is in our biology. Giving them a killing tool hardly sounds like a good idea to me. True people mature at all different speeds but if someone isn't capable of waiting until they are 25 to own a gun, then they probably don't need one anyway.

For the drinking age in this country to be higher than the legal gun age is just insane and I definitely think should be changed. At least 21 and 25 to be safe like Crow said would be more reasonable. I really do think that a lot of gun violence stems from psychological problems; just look at the Aurora and Newtown shootings to see that mental disorders play a large part in the actions of the murderers. America as a whole has a terrible mental health system and I think that just improving it will help keep violence down. However, I do believe that access to and bad regulation of guns is a huge problem that must be dealt with.

I don't think that giving teachers or faculty guns or setting up armed guards around schools is the right way to go. Like Rain said, adults such as the teachers or principals could very well be crazed enough to shoot at students in the same way an outsider would. And hearing people talk about hiring guards to patrol school grounds almost makes me sick; it's a school, not a prison. It's creepy to think about how places of education might become so overprotected that it's a very viable disservice to our society. Kids who are probably already afraid of going to school who start seeing mercs walking the halls and teachers holstering .44s are going to see the environment as threatening; probably more so than the current one.

I think that letting teachers have guns with appropriate training would be just as dangerous as someone outside a class room having a gun, but it would provide a major deterrent to those who are killing in those areas because of a lack of resistance. If the teachers did have guns in school I think that it would be okay to regulate the crap out of the guns they can have and who could get them. Since it isn't an issue of regular ownership the stronger regulations wouldn't bother people nearly as much. Hiring guards does sound like a bad idea to me though. It is expensive and the atmosphere would be more like that of a prison like you said.

I do like the idea that an effort to improve our mental health system in order to reduce violence. Maybe when you become a leader in your field you can get crackin' on that.