As an avid firearms enthusiast and one who carries a handgun much of the time, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this over the years. We have a unique set of circumstances here in the States that makes it virtually impossible to look at solutions other countries have taken to combat violence combined with firearms, and it's worth noting some of those differences and what they mean.
The biggest issue we face in the US regarding the use of firearms in violent acts is the way firearms are woven into our social structure. The US is a country that really wouldn't have existed without firearms, and in fact the very first battle of the Revolutionary War was over gun control - the Brits wanted our firearms, we resisted and the rest is history. This was recognized by the founding fathers to be of such importance that it is specifically enumerated in our Constitution. This could be changed, of course, but Pandora's Box is already open, and has been open for several hundred years here. No one (not even the government) has any idea how many firearms are in the US (legal or otherwise), though it's estimated that there are more guns than people, which leads to the next point - if you took extreme measures and literally outlawed ownership of ALL firearms, would the criminals and the hardcore gun owners obey? The answer, of course, is no - they would not. At that point we have who knows how many firearms in the hands of criminals who now know that the entire country is a 'gun free zone'. That's not an answer.
So if you start considering gun control options, what works? Little, honestly. CT is ranked by the Brady Center as having the 4th strongest gun control laws in the US, but we now know this murderer killed his mom and stole her legally owned firearms - she was legal, he broke the law (murder, theft) and armed himself then committed this atrocious act.
The reality is outside of even more aggressive background checks, there's little that can be done. If no more guns were sold in the US starting *now*, there are still hundreds of millions of firearms in this country already, and I suspect more are smuggled in every day.
People get emotional in the aftermath of these terrible shootings, that's completely understandable. The frustrating part is when they then go after an inanimate object as if that's the blame, because introspection and dealing with the actual societal issues is far more troubling and difficult.
), fingerprints and fill out a quick background form to get a concealed carry permit. gun regulations are only one small part of the problem here. our country needs to learn how to deal with mental illness much better than we do now. an additional peace, our desire to know everything, all of the time, instantaneously feeds into an almost worship of events like this
