That's the thing though. 99.999999999999999999999% of gun owners would never, ever even dream of thinking of using their weapon to hurt someone else, unless attacked or something. It's these statistical anomalies that screw everything up for everyone else.
My thing is this: guns are tools. Tools that only exist to make alive things dead. That's it. They have no other use. Sure, you can use them for target practice (one of my favorite things), but you can use an ax for that too. Guns are not toys and should never be treated as such. All the people that put on their G.I. Joe costumes and loaded up their guns with their extended magazines just show that a child (whether fully grown or not) should not be allowed to carry a gun.
All of my guns (with one exception) have been given to me. As far as our government is concerned I have one. I have many more than one, but that's my business.
It would be very simple to set up rules that force a national database of gun owners (it already exists, but states can opt out...for some reason) and purchasing a weapon outside your state shouldn't be allowed.
Those two rules could help prevent a LOT of things, and wouldn't impact legal, responsible gun owners in any way.
On the Next Door forum (neighborhood connections), someone commented that New Year's Eve sounded like a battle zone and after a few other comments from people, someone posted about firing guns randomly during some kind of celebration (or, venting) and called it 'recreational shooting'. I called her on it and posted that it wasn't 'recreational', it was irresponsible & stupid, then posted the four rules of firearm handling/safety. Guess whose account was suspended for 5 days.....
I haven't done it, but I hear firing automatic weapons is a lot of fun. OTOH, that kind of fun can get out of hand quickly, if the shooter doesn't understand what the gun does when in that mode (drifting upward and to one side, usually).
The number of guns you own used to be your business- now that you made it public, it's everyone's info, to use as they see fit.
If a firearm database was used, ONLY the legal gun owners would be impacted- people with access to illegal guns wouldn't be affected, at all. The government would only have some idea who has guns, but only as of the date of receipt if they were transferred via FFL and some kind of shipper. If they barge into a place like Bud's Guns to see the sales/shipping records, it would be easy to see that the government would have a helluva battle- firearm sales jumped something like 85% in the last year and it was more than during Obama's first year in office.
This country has so many violent people and nothing is being done about that- trying to control who gets guns isn't going to solve it because it doesn't address the actual problem.
