No, I don't think we've agreed this at all. Certainly not the "doing whatever we can to prevent it" part. In fact, that's the core of our disagreement here. Because there is not a single device that I own, that I wouldn't happily have be more inconvenient to own, if it meant saving people's lives. Especially children's lives.
Rights aren't given by God. "Thou shalt own a gun" isn't one of the Ten Commandments. God isn't sitting on a cloud seething because there aren't enough gun owners in America. Rights are about balancing individual freedoms with the wellbeing of society. Not God.
A very simple piece of legislation that would have prevented the Uvalde shooting? Raise the minimum age for a semi-automatic weapon to 21. Now, I know you'll object because the next shooter might be 22 or whatever. But this is the point. And it's the reason why gun advocates so consistently prevent common sense, reasonable attempts to reduce tragedies like these. There is no law that will prevent all mass shootings. Not even banning all guns. But simple changes would have prevented this one.
The problem isn't that America has mass shootings, it's that it has so many of them that if I asked you to tell me about the mass shooting that happened last week, you'd have to ask me which one.
Gun laws, seat-belt laws, helmet laws, they are necessary because a) people are surprisingly stupid surprisingly often, and b) because no, it's not just the individual who is affected. What if the driver doesn't make their children wear a seatbelt and their kids die in an accident? What if only the driver dies and leaves the kids orphaned? That's taxpayer money for foster care, that's a higher likelihood of crime and mental illness in those children's futures, and most simply of all, that's easily preventible human tragedy.
The assault weapons ban was effective enough to prevent a significant number of mass shootings. Unless you think the rise that followed it was just a coincidence. Tell me, do you think there would be more or less casualties if machine guns weren't as heavily regulated as they are? More destructive weapons cause more destruction. Don’t you agree?
That said, I agree that the current state of gun classification is a mess. Short barrels and fore-grips and classifying every scary looking gun as an "assault rifle" just muddies the waters. The key issue, in my opinion should be rate of fire. If you want to own a gun that can fire 60 rounds per minute, you should need to jump through some major hoops to get it. You should need to justify why you want it. And you should be required to prove that you can (and do) use and maintain and store it safely. And you should be legally liable for any harm it does so you're invested in keeping it secure. No problem for a responsible gun owner, right?
The question of whether schools should be "hardened" or society should be "softened" is a tough one. Not because the answer isn't crystal clear to me, and again, to every other developed nation in the world, but because if I try to put myself in the mindset of somebody who values maintaining gun access above all else, I see that it's not a totally insane position.
But I find it really hard to believe you don't see that having armed guards patrolling schools doesn't create an ideal environment for children. I also think the solution of "MOAR GUNZ!" runs into obvious trouble when you think about all the places where mass shootings can occur. Should there be armed guards at shopping malls? At cinemas? In churches? You reach a point where you need to "harden" every space in public life because shootings can take place anywhere. And that's before you've even mentioned the expense as far as training and equipment.
Thanks for the link to the study. But to be clear, estimates range from 108k to 3 million. An error range that large tells me that the data is close to meaningless. It also acknowledges that it's not clear whether defensive use of guns actually prevents injury to the gun-wielding victim when considering the different types of crime involved. So while I still very strongly suspect that you're wrong about women defending themselves with guns "ALL. THE. TIME." I'm prepared to be proven wrong. But capital letters aren't going to do it. If you don't have any data, you're just guessing. And given what we saw at Uvalde recently, with highly trained, well-equipped police officers afraid to tackle a single mass shooter, I don't believe an untrained woman or man is likely to turn into Dirty Harry in a crisis situation.
As I said, I have many years of experience in martial arts. I've seen how most untrained people go to pieces when the threat is just a few kicks and punches. Even in the safe, controlled environment of a class.
