The answer is because those promoting “common-sense gun reform” have a limited knowledge of the very thing they want to legislate and use emotions to push their agenda. This causes those opposed to gun control to completely tune them out eliminating all possibility of discussion, compromise and/or progress.
The latest shooting occurred in Boulder, Colorado. Current laws in Colorado include universal background checks, a large capacity magazine ban and a “red flag” law that allows weapons to be temporarily seized from those deemed an extreme risk. Unfortunately, these laws did not stop a convicted criminal with potential mental health issues from killing 10 people including a hero – Police Officer Eric Talley.
I received an article from the New York times in my email today which started off using the statistic of approximately 40,000 deaths a year related to “gun violence”. This number is completely disingenuous because over half the deaths are from suicides. So, this number is artificially inflated by over 100% for dramatic effect. If you had a magic button and could press it and make all guns disappear, would that drop the suicide rate by over 20,000 a year? If someone is so intent on ending their life that they choose a firearm as the tool to effect their death, why wouldn’t they just choose another method if a firearm wasn’t available? (Myth 9)
The subject of “assault rifles” has been brought up again. As a reminder, all gun-related deaths caused by all rifles are less than 3% of the total(FBI 2014), so the number of deaths caused by “assault rifles” would be significantly less. If someone is intent on murdering people and a certain type of gun is unavailable wouldn’t they just use another type of gun? And if all guns were unavailable wouldn’t they use something else? (Oklahoma City Bombing, Boston Bombing, NY Truck attack, Kunming Knife Attack, etc.) (Myth 5)
The subject of “high-capacity magazines” has been raised again. If you think this is an important issue, please go to YouTube and watch: “Sherriff’s demo of how magazine size makes very little difference”. (Myth 4)
And we have “universal background checks”. Did you know that according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report from 2018, in 2017 of the 8.6 million background checks performed, only 12 people were prosecuted for lying on their ATF Form 4473, Firearms Transaction Record? So why would “universal background checks” afford us more safety?
Keep in mind that by definition, criminals ignore laws, so laws are only followed by law-abiding citizens who by definition are unlikely to commit crimes. In fact, depending on the numbers you use, concealed carry permit holders are anywhere from 10 to 200 times less likely to commit a violent crime than a member of the general public. By definition, they are law-abiding citizens who have gone out of their way to conform to laws and pay fees related to those laws. (Myth 9)
What if all the time, press coverage, money, and political capital spent on “common-sense gun reform” with no progress were instead directed to identifying people who may harm themselves or others and getting them the help they need? How many lives would that save?
And what if we prevented the mainstream media, social media, and Big Tech companies from using their sociopathic algorithms? Algorithms that feed off people’s emotions like despair, anger, jealousy, racism, etc. to get more views and boost their advertising income? How many lives would that save?