Several points:
– penalties for using banned guns and magazines mean nothing to a lunatic who plans to kill himself anyway.
– there are enough guns of all sorts loose in America now for the carnage to continue for centuries if no-one ever built or sold another gun starting today.
– America may be number one in gun ownership, but that’s an effect, not a cause. America is also number one (in the former ‘First World’) in punishment. America is a holdout against the UN’s Rights of the Child’s efforts to outlaw coprporal punishment of children. (Honestly, Canada is moving pretty slow on it too. We’re not so different, you and I.) Apparently, whooping your kids is an important “freedom” too.
– the mental illness issue that we’re talking about as an alternative conversation to gun control, is itself very largely due to the culture of punishment. If shooting your parents and a bunch of teachers isn’t some kind of reaction to over-punishment, I don’t know what would describe it better.
Abuse with an Excuse 
From a distance, the US gun thing seems mad, out of control. Now that the cat is out of the bag (ie more guns than people I reckon), no idea how to get it back in. Your homicide rates are amazingly high….they got rid of most guns here years ago, thank goodness. The worst and saddest aspect of guns is how easy it makes it for young men to kill themselves….but there are many other tragic things besides….
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Not my homicide rates, I’m a Canuck. Thing is, the Americans are big into punishing generally: corporal punishment of their kids, what with their Christian fundamentalism, incarceration of black and brown people for smoking dope. Punishing is their answer for everything. They really think having everyone walking around armed will SOLVE the violence of their society. It seems even the most liberal of them see violence as a solution rather than as a problem.
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