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Gun control has been on my mind since this happened
FrankC — (archived)

I have no answers, just a lot of questions.

The thing that struck me immediately was the pretty much universal opinion that this kind of thing is not preventable because we are an open society. A single individual took two handguns and calmly wiped out 32 lives.

If I thought for one minute that more gun laws would have prevented this, I would favor more gun laws.

In frontier America, perhaps 25% of the male population carried a firearm. Most carried firearms because of the violent element that could not be controlled. The time finally came when people were told that law enforcement could keep them safe and the firearms were no longer neccessary. Now we are being told that we can't be protected. What is the difference? We are essentially the same humans that lived at that time.

If one out of four of the people killed had been carrying a weapon, would the killer have still acted this out as he did? If he did, would the deatn toll be less?

Regardless, I would never be one of the 25% carrying a weapon and I truly don't have a clue as to the answers.

Ultimately, if the government can't protect us we must be allowed to protect ourself but perhaps to get to that point we have to try some things that I personally believe will not work. If we try gun control and it turns out to be unhelpful, we will have no choice but to arm the people or stop being an open society. Take your pick.

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