Rhetoric like "gun grabbers" doesn't help either. The entire problem here is how far apart the two sides see each other. You have people like Butler who adopt a "ban guns mentality" but they are not representative (and I don't think Butler's entirely sincere anyway, given how he started out in this thread but that's another story). Then you have the people on the gun lobby side who resist any change or any thought of change because of a mass paranoia about something which will NEVER HAPPEN IN OUR LIFETIMES. Seriously - NO political party will go to the wall to repeal the 2nd amendment. THAT is reality. So all this talk about bans and gun grabbers is a waste of energy that would be better utilized looking for real solutions (which both sides want). Neither side wants mass shootings, so what steps can be taken to reduce the probabilities of recurrence? Why even talk about banning certain guns when there aren't even National standards for licensing, background checks are ineffective because of insufficient data (and the private sale exemption), and guns can be sold in too many places. Why is it SO easy to buy guns from Buffy at Walmart and Biff at BassPro, as well as some old fat guy at a gunshow, instead of exclusively from grizzled professionals (packing heat) at specialized gunshops? These are simple questions to ask with answers that might actually help the problem vs bans that will likely never be successful.
They are called that way because it's an obsession. They'll never say that they want to abolish the 2nd amendment in the US, because that would be political suicide. They just want to ban the most dangerous guns. If you consider that all guns are potentially lethal, there is no settlement to this issue because there will always be a 'most dangerous' gun to ban.... until they are all gone.
If you get an action, you get a reaction. The call for 'gun control', despite there being gun control all ready, is code word for taking guns out of the hands of private citizens. There is no doubt about it. Organisations such as the NRA will naturally resist this. However, this is conflated into accusing the NRA into advocating liberalizing gun law, and even eliminating them all together, thus polarizing the issue. This is nonsense. The NRA does not budge because there will never be any respite or any trade-off against those who continuously make demands to ban guns.
I can assure you that, other than on minor issues, nothing is going to change because too many people in the US own guns; that means the power of the vote. The NRA may 'only' have 4 million members, but they do speak for the majority of the 100 million people who own guns. These people know that the activists who only want to ban the most dangerous guns will eventually want to come after their own guns, as they become the most dangerous, like high powered sniper rifles. Those happen to be typical large game hunting rifles. Butler1000's rethoric is a classic example; when confronted with facts, they pass to the next round of slogans and strawman arguments and other unfounded nonsense.
About licensing, it provides a database for the government and is the first step to the mass confiscation of firearms. You find that outlandish? Ask the Australians and the British. They both had fits of mass confiscations. In Australia, they had a compulsory mass gun buyback a couple of decades ago of all semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, and then another round for handguns, and the government spent half a billion dollars on that. Did not reduce gun crime though. But having had compulsory licensing, they knew exactly where to go to arrest people who did not turn in their guns. This is what the Americans are afraid of. Maybe reassurances from the present government, but a future government is not bound by previous promises.
There are already enough laws out there. Making more will not do anything because the problem is implementation. The FBI got 2 complaints against the Florida shooter, and there was evidence, but they did nothing about it. The US has been steadily reducing its social programs in order to reduce cost, and mental health care is a big problem now. They closed most state mental institutions in the '70's, figuring that mentally ill people could be released into the general population through medication. Lots of these people on skid row and in prison.
Laws are in place for medical practicioners to report mentally ill people who should not have firearms. But there is no money in order to make the system work,. I frankly don't think that any progress is going to be made because if this issue was resolved to every one's satisfacton, some politicians would have to deal with real issues affecting the American society: poverty, urban decay, decaying infrastructure, crime, the economy, health care, foreign wars etc etc. The US is a real mess, and gun crime is only a symptom of it.
