Recent polling suggests that Americans are very worried about gun violence. A Quinnipiac University poll taken from Oct. 26 to 30, right after the Maine shooting, found that 46 percent of registered voters worried about becoming a victim of a mass shooting themselves. That matches a high set in July 2022 in the wake of the Uvalde, Texas, shooting at Robb Elementary School, and is 9 points higher than a low of 37 percent in December 2017, the year the survey began asking the question.
Americans also feel pessimistic that anything will change. Indeed, 68 percent don’t believe the federal government will do anything to reduce gun violence within the next year, per the Quinnipiac poll.
The second amendment doesn’t exist to fight the government. It exists to have militias to protect the US in the event of an invasion (which is about as likely in the modern era as North Korea becoming a democracy).
Local militias would not have been able to stop any of the things you listed, and it still does absolutely nothing to solve children dying from guns, now the leading cause of child death.
Restudy the history of the Second Amendment. You’ll find that it was insisted upon because the signatories were uncomfortable with the potential for tyranny by the federal government.
Irrelevant to my point. The people who signed on to the Second Amendment did not have to deal with mass shootings at the rate we experience today or guns becoming the leading cause of death in children. Meanwhile, when has “protecting yourself from a tyrannical government” ever come to pass? (Don’t say the Civil War, which was about owning slaves, not tyrrany).
I’m for gun ownership, with common-sense regulations. What mechanism do you propose that is better than regulation and restriction that would better prevent this senseless loss of life?
That’s precisely why tyrannical governments disarm their citizens first. If people willingly give up their arms, they are more easily subjugated.
Gun control advocates have proven that they are unable to write common-sense regulations. If they hadn’t broken trust with all the talk of “assault weapons” and inaccurate or false descriptions of firearms to exaggerate how dangerous they are, there would be more “common-sense” regulations in place today.
Use modern physical security practices at schools. If the government is going to make it illegal to carry weapons there, then it has a greater responsibility to protect the defenseless children who are forced to be there. And don’t give me that “oh, that shouldn’t be necessary” crap. If you’re going to force kids to attend school, you have a responsibility to protect them. Period.
Improve access to healthcare of all sorts and fix the affordability crisis.
Get rid of Fifth-Amendment-violating red flag laws. If it doesn’t have due process, it’s illegal and tyrannical and shouldn’t be a law. If you want to disarm someone, you should have to prove that their rights need to be taken away first. Additionally, damage to one’s confiscated property should be reimbursed. Confiscating someone’s arms after proper due process does not infringe upon the Second Amendment.