[Taltarzac725]

Law-abiding people buying guns is not the problem. The problem is usually young men getting them so that they can go on shooting sprees. Everything under the sun should be attempted to stop these tragedies from happening. And I had neighbors across the street from me here in the Villages who lost their 14 year old granddaughter in one of these mass murders. (They moved out of the Villages to be near surviving family members). These should be covered by the press so that people will start taking actions to prevent them from continuing. Some gun controls are needed along with red flag laws and especially community awareness of potentials for problems. Empathy and planning for the future are critical.

I think the Founding Fathers would be doing similar things as they were very practical men very well versed in history especially Roman and Greek history.

Originally Posted by ThirdOfFive

There is a huge irony here.

Every time a mass shooting occurs, four things happen. 1). Media histrionics blow the entire thing up so out of proportion that it dominates the air and print media for weeks. Not just the shooting but of course vilifying the weapon, psychoanalyzing the shooter, and of course endless interviews of the bereaved, etc. etc. ad endless nauseam. Which then leads to 2). Copycat shooters. Studies have shown that anywhere from 50% to 80% of these shootings are copycat crimes. 1 and 2 together of course produces 3. Anti - Second Amendment political types which commandeer every camera, microphone and reporter within grabbing distance to thunder forth their HATRED OF ALL THINGS GUN and call for, in varying degrees, anything from limitation to outright banning of specific, or all, firearms.

But then comes 4. And 4 follows 1 through 3 as inevitably as water running downhill. Law-abiding folks buy up guns and ammunition like it was going out of style. Gun and ammo factories running 24/7/365 cannot keep up with the demand. This seemed to get into gear in all seriousness on about November 2008, which was the first real gun/ammo shortage I remember. And with each succeeding sequence of events 1 through 3, #4 seems to get worse. And not just guns and ammo; but reloading supplies as well. I did some reloading before coming here. New brass in the popular calibers was hard to find (fortunately I had a lot of old stuff) and magnum pistol primers were scarce as hen's teeth. And buying ammo off the shelves? Depending on where we were in the latest cycle--forget it. Oh, you could find the odd box of Romanian or Russian ammo (if you could put up with the corrosion and spotty performance it caused) but top-shelf American stuff was, again depending on where we were in the cycle, nonexistent.

The numbers are staggering. A CNN article , dated June 4, 2021 , stated the following: "There is no government or national database of gun sales, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation keeps track of pre-sale background checks, an indicator that’s been soaring to record highs.

In March, the FBI reported almost 4.7 million background checks – the most of any month since the agency started keeping track more than 20 years ago, and a whopping 77% increase over March 2019."

The interesting thing is that this report is just the tip of the iceberg; that 77% increase over March 2019 was just the LATEST increase. Background checks and resulting gun ownership has been skyrocketing in just about the same way for the past 14 years. Ther is no accurate count but I've seen estimates that, in the last 14 years, as many as one hundred MILLION guns have been sold to law-abiding Americans. That, folks, is one hell of a lot of guns.

Amazing! The histrionics of the anti-gun folks has done more to put guns into the hands of average Americans than any other one thing. Ever.

Ironic, isn't it?