In the context of the States, I don’t see how any new legislative intervention can deal with the 400 million existing guns in the nation. No country in the history of humanity has had to deal with that. My question is, can it even be dealt with?

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s misplaced cynicism. But, seems to me, the vast existing supply of firearms leads to a permanent condition where, a person who wants to do something bad with a gun, will find access one way or another. I genuinely have no idea how that situation gets fixed. “Do what Japan does” - which I’ve heard sincerely spoken aloud - is naive and would not be effective there.

I don’t live in the States, so it’s not my place to navigate the moral issues or make judgements. I just don’t understand how new gun control measures patterned on other countries in very different situations of supply could be effective, and properly target shitbags like the murderer in the OP article, in advance of a killing.

You are reading too much into their comment. It’s OK to ask how you would implement it.

I’ve never owned a gun and still agree with them. There are certainly people who shouldn’t have guns but the vast majority haven’t yet had an incident to get them taken away by any hypothetical law.

You can’t prevent every gun death. It’s certainly worth preventing the ones we can, but this particular story has no indications that these ladies had previously given cause for taking them away. They were at least seen by the state as responsible enough to foster children.

So to come to this particular story to advocate taking guns away from folks under circumstances that wouldn’t have changed the outcome feels more like grandstanding than conversation.

I think I do understand - just elaborating in how to implement it.

I fully agree with history of abuse and escalated considerably. It doesn’t mean its a firearm issue as the escalation would have happened with whatever is on hand.

I discussed the second part (access and less certain method) with another commenter - this is a full on America culture obsession and issue. The only way to make any change is for those who are responsible to push for restrictions, licenses, and honesty some common sense around America laws - and then force the law makers to enact it. Firearm ownership should never be a right - its a responsibility and a privilege. Damn, you have two hands, why do you need dozens of firearms?

Sorry, bad tone. I’m agreeing with you, just adding we should attack the right event.

It’s an intent issue far more than it is a firearms issue. It wouldn’t have been any harder to use a knife in this scenario. Any advantage offered by a firearm is completely offset by the circumstances surrounding it, and offers disadvantages and complications that the knife does not.

Getting a gun, pressing it against the chest of a 4 year old and pulling the trigger

Versus

Getting a knife, pressing it against the chest of a 4 year old and pushing it deeper

What’s the added difficulty here? Yes, in general you are correct but in this scenario it really wouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference. A 4 year old’s capacity for self defence against an adult is basically zero, this one’s chances of getting to safety was basically zero. Even if you removed both guns and knives from the equation, they would have just used something else.

…the fact that this was blatantly fucking murder? Use your common sense.

In what world is pressing the barrel of a gun against the chest of a 4 year old, never mind pulling the fucking trigger, supposed to be about teaching gun safety? How is that anything other than premeditated murder?

Given the history of abuse in that household, I don’t buy the idiocy angle. The other child watching knew what was happening and turned away so as to not watch it, for god’s sake.

There was clearly an intent to maim or kill, perhaps to intimidate the other child. If it wasn’t a gun in use, it would either be another weapon or a bare-fisted beat down.

You have no way of knowing that. Removing the gun from the equation would certainly have removed the gun death from it though.

Yes I do. Starting with the fact that the story about teaching gun safety is obviously bullshit and there was a history of abuse in the household. You don’t have to know shit about guns to know that pressing the gun barrel against a child and pulling the trigger is an attempt at premeditated murder.

So, now we’ve established that it’s premeditated murder, if a gun wasn’t in the equation, another weapon would be. The next most obvious choice would be a knife.

It is actually quite sad and a little bit scary how eager you are to concoct fictitious scenarios in order to remove the gun issue from this story.

It’s more scary how eager you are to not use your brain before opening your mouth. There are indeed plenty of scenarios where removing guns would indeed limit or prevent damage. This wasn’t one of them because of the circumstances surrounding it.

Didn’t miss first one - literally my first sentence.

Firearms have multiple purposes - pretty sure the main one right now is to display your own insecurities. Admittedly most of their uses are killing things or the threat of killing things, but sport, target shooting, providing and home defense are all uses. I could argue vehicles are used to show off and as a status symbol more than anything else otherwise we would all be in small efficient cars, people movers and public transport.

Yeah, except the US isn’t really doing any of those things. You can still own guns here in the Netherlands, you just have to be a member of a sporting organisation and be licensed and stuff. We don’t have school shootings here.