I would like to posit another point on guns. Why are illegal guns so available? Why are so many poor teens buying guns? I suggest our wonderful failure - WAR ON DRUGS. A young poor kid (not this one) looking at a life of poverty or flipping burgers and comparing that to a life with fast cars and women and all they have to do is sell drugs on street corners and get rich. The life may be short, but it will be fun!
Selling drugs provides the funds to buy these no so inexpensive guns. How many poor teens could drop out of school and buy a Luger or AR15 and ammunition? It is the street sales of illegal drugs that funds it. And the guns are simply a tool needed in that line of business.
That is the seed (root cause in my humble opinion). That then leads to all the evils we hear about is large cities - you never hear about a gang doing drive by battings.
Legalizing all drugs will eventually eliminate that entire source of funding for purchasing and using guns by teens and all the crime and deaths caused by them. And it would eliminate all the Billions of dollars we spend on the endless useless Drug War. It would eliminate a large source of income for Drug cartels.
The only down side would be addicts, and the crime, medical and other costs related to that. And other countries have shown that those costs are more than offset by taxing the drug sales.
I propose that one step in stopping gun violence would be to legalize and tax all drugs. Not perfect, it won't stop all gun violence, but I think it is pretty obvious that it would eliminate most.
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