Have been thinking about this today. Saw that Donald Trump said that mass shooters are geniuses, which was a brazenly tone deaf thing to say, and that he is not for attempting to fix the issue with gun control. I am, however, for gun control. It's beyond time. 

From an article from 2012 that discusses some of the history of guns in the US.

One in three Americans knows someone who has been shot. As long as a candid discussion of guns is impossible, unfettered debate about the causes of violence is unimaginable. Gun-control advocates say the answer to gun violence is fewer guns. Gun-rights advocates say that the answer is more guns: things would have gone better, they suggest, if the faculty at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Chardon High School had been armed. That is the logic of the concealed-carry movement; that is how armed citizens have come to be patrolling the streets. That is not how civilians live. When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood not as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left.

And that essentially is my argument. The idea that everyone ought to carry a gun in order to act as a potential vigilante is not how I want to live my life. I can't even imagine, say, a dark movie theatre in which every *citizen* is locked and loaded-imagine the chaos and how many innocents could be killed or injured. 

And how often does it occur that an armed *citizen* brings down a shooter?

The subject of whether more guns and concealed-carry permits could help fight mass shootings is highly controversial. An investigation by Mother Jones concluded that no more than 1.6 percent of mass shootings were ended by armed civilians. On the other hand, gun advocates argue that it’s hard to know how many more shootings would have become mass murders had civilians not been on the scene to end them early. (Following the FBI’s definition of a mass murder, Mother Jones accounted only for murders of four or more.) Furthermore, gun advocates argue that many mass murderers target “gun-free” zones, like schools, where the victims are defenseless against shooters.

Academic studies on the issue have not reached consensus. A 1999 study by John Lott of the University of Maryland and William M. Landes of the University of Chicago, often cited by conservatives, found that “shall issue” laws allowing concealed handguns “reduce both the number of [multiple victim] shootings as well as their severity.” However, a review of studies on the topic found the evidence to be inconsistent and inconclusive. A recent Washington Post fact-check similarly found the current evidence to be too murky for representatives like Gohmert to cite as fact.

I don't believe it's possible to avoid murderous acts, but if guns are regulated, it could make it harder for those who could, even casually, pull out a gun to shoot people, to do so. 

Gun control is the only way out.

As Appelbaum sees it, despite the endless, whirling conversations about the causes of mass shootings, there’s just no serious approach to the issues that doesn’t involve gun control. He mentioned that, despite widespread beliefs otherwise, there actually aren’t major differences between the overall rates of violence in the U.S. as compared to the rest of the developed world. Where the U.S. differs is in the number of homicides, and to Appelbaum that is largely attributable to the free flow of powerful guns. Every country has its angry young men; every country has various cultural forces that likely exacerbate violent people’s grievances; not every country makes it easy for anyone to get a gun. Some countries, like Australia, reacted forcefully to mass shootings by restricting the availability of powerful weaponry, and Appelbaum thinks the data is clear that these approaches work (Margaret Hartmann dug into the debate behind the Australian and British reactions to mass shootings Thursday).

Appelbaum made it clear he didn’t see gun control as an instant panacea. “I don’t think anyone could say honestly that if we tighten up on the availability of guns and the ease of purchasing them, and reduce the number of weapons that are largely produced to kill large numbers of people, that the problem will go away completely,” he said. “I don’t think it will go away completely … there will be some people who will be able to get their hands on guns and be able to do horrible things with them. On the other hand, the harder we make it, logic and the Australian experience certainly suggest, the fewer such episodes there will be. So perfect safety is, I’m afraid, unobtainable in this world, but that doesn’t mean we can’t start making the situation better by just making it harder and having fewer guns in circulation.”

How have Australia and Britain handled gun violence?

The massacre shocked and horrified Australians, and in just 12 days the government proposed and passed the National Firearms Agreement and Buyback Program. The new gun laws included a ban on many types of semi-automatic, self-loading rifles and shotguns. Each gun required a separate permit with a 28-day waiting period, and Australia created a national firearms registration system. Guns could only be sold by licensed firearms dealers, and limits were placed on the amount of ammunition that could be sold. Firearm owners had to be 18, complete a safety course, and have a "genuine reason" for owning a gun, such as sport shooting, hunting, or occupational requirements ("personal protection" did not count as a legitimate reason). Licenses expired every five years, and could be revoked if police found "reliable evidence of a mental or physical condition which would render the applicant unsuitable for owning, possessing or using a firearm."

The new laws also included a national gun-buyback program for newly prohibited weapons. The program cost $230 million, which was raised through a small health-insurance tax increase, and ultimately more than 700,000 firearms were purchased by the government or voluntarily handed in. Some firearms weren't turned in, and in 2012 an estimated260,000 illegal guns were still in circulation.

America didn't use to have this perception of guns. But now, it's like an addiction that's hard to break. 

Allowing unfettered access to deadly weapons leads to the carnage we’re seeing in our schools, our churches, our movie theaters, our shopping malls, and our streets. The frustration expressed by President Obama in his statement about the Oregon shooting is shared by millions of people, like me, who cannot fathom how we permit these travesties to continue.

Those of us who advocate for stronger gun control measures must understand that we are dealing not just with an obsession, but an addiction. And addictions are notoriously hard to break. Meanwhile, the death toll keeps rising.