David,
I don't disagree with much of what you said, but I sure disagree with some of it. I disagree about the NRA not having anything to do with what's going on. It has a lot to do with it IMO. The NRA leads the charge against closing the gun show loophole, which is the exception that swallows the rule. You go to the right gun dealer at a gun show and you can be a felon, convicted of murder or any other heinous crime, and walk away with a gun THAT DAY. You can be crazy as a run over dog and get a gun that day too. And, of course, anytime that someone who is viewed as a "liberal" gets elected, gun sales go up because the NRA and the gun dealers do their best to exploit what I view as the irrational fear that the government is going to come take all the guns away. None of that makes any sense at all to me.
If you allow your underage kid and his friends to drink at your house and one of those drunk kids leaves your house and kills a family on the way home, its your ass. And it should be. However, if you leave your guns accessible to your kids or their friends, even if you know that they may have mental heath issues, its OK. You are good to go. The NRA is instrumental in letting negligent gun owners get off without repercussions. Legislation can't get passed because the NRA gets it killed. Nothing happens. That doesn't make sense to me either.
I agree that mental illness is a huge problem. Its a problem that we as a society have never addressed very well. In nearly every state, the mental health agencies are among the most underfunded. They don't have the resources or the capacity to address the problem. Here, the "solution" is to dump them out on the street in some city other than the one they came from and let someone else deal with them. That isn't much of a solution.
I disagree that those with a mental illness are always easy to spot. The shooter yesterday had no past history that would put him on the radar screen of either mental health professionals or law enforcement He was part of a church dance group for goodness sake. Sometimes you can spot someone with a problem, but not always. Even the friends of yesterday's shooter didn't see the signs. And if the government overtly starts monitoring everyone's social media posts (which I suspect it already does covertly) and then tries to take action against those who it deems problematic, you have very big First Amendment and Second Amendment issue. Do you or should you lose your right to own a gun because you make disturbing social media posts?
I don't have the answers. But something has to be done. We have to do better by our kids. They shouldn't have to worry about dying when they go to school. The very fact that our kids now have to go through active shooter drills at school is nearly beyond my ability to comprehend.
We can't outlaw cars because they are necessary in nearly every facet of life. But we regulate them. If you speed and get caught you get a ticket. If you don't belt up and get caught, you get a ticket. If you drive drunk and get caught you go to jail. In fact, unlike years past, there is now a great emphasis on publicizing and preventing drunk driving precisely because we, as a society, finally got to the point where we said enough is enough. Do those regulations infringe on my rights? Maybe. But they also make a lot of sense. They hopefully remind not to be a dumbass when I drive and help protect both me and the other drivers on the road. I'm OK with that.
I'm not advocating outlawing guns. Never have, never would. But for God's sake, there is no reason I can think of why we shouldn't at least try to do a better job of regulating both them and the people who own them. Just like voting, I have always thought that gun ownership was both a right AND a responsibility. Particularly now, I feel like the argument about the right to own guns far outweighs the responsibility part. In my estimation, it should be the other way around.
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