Next item to control -- knives!

[regular.joe]

I think we can all agree that guns and knives and hammers and cars and anything else you could possibly kill another human being with are not really a problem. The issues that cause a disproportionate number of people to kill other people with any instrument really need to be addressed. Which would mean some kind of research and efforts into our social programs.

My conservative friends seem to have some pretty simple mantras....GUNS DON"T KILL PEOPLE....and....NO MORE SOCIAL PROGRAMS.....awesome combination in my book for sticking our collective heads in the sand and just taking what we get, which are a rash of killings that really might be able to be addressed in the long term with some serious thought and effort. Like that will happen.

Oh, and another mantra my conservative friends have is: GOVERNMENT IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT! I have news for you, I do armed social work over seas in an effort to legitimize governments that we would like to help out. If we don't do social work in our own country we will eventually have someone do armed social work in our country in an effor to legitimize our government. It doesn't matter if you are a straight democracy, a republic, socialist democracy, dictatorship, or a kingdom...you must take care of the have nots in some very basic ways or you will loose your country. or spend a lot of time fighting within your own borders.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by regular.joe

The issues that cause a disproportionate number of people to kill other people with any instrument really need to be addressed.

Worth repeating.

In the US at least (I'm thinking about Chicago when writing this...), gun bans are just a band-aid solution to the violence in our country. The real problem is the poverty and culture that causes young people to kill each other for really fucking stupid reasons. Bring real opportunity to the ghetto and change the gangster culture and gun violence will drop dramatically.