Here’s the thing. A gun ban won’t fly in the US. There are a lot of Americans that are literally willing to die on that hill. Maybe an “assault weapon” ban, but how do you define an “assault weapon” so that the law isn’t just meaningless, or on the other side of that coin so broad that it bans guns that they didn’t intend to ban?

Then there is the problem of banning sales doesn’t remove them from the people who already have them. When AKs and uzis and what not were banned in the 80’s people were allowed to keep the ones they bought pre-ban. Not to mention that pistols are just as deadly in a small space. Has everyone forgotten the Virginia Tech shooting?

Last but not least. None of these solutions do anything about the real root of the problem. Mental health, and quality of life are both abysmal in the US. When people are having a mental health crisis in the US there aren’t many, if any choices for treatment. That mixed with the fact that we are more divided than we’ve ever been as a country, and MANY other factors. Way too many to list here are all part of our quality of life score. Which last time I checked our QOL score put us just above South Korea and China. I bet South Korea beats us soon.

There was a time not that long ago when mass shooings didn’t happen all the time. People were generally happy, and as someone who has been alive long enough to see the change. Today is a totally different world compared to 30 years ago.

One last change that a friend and I were talking about the other day. When he and I were young. Guns were an adult thing. My dad had some guns. I didn’t know where he kept them. These days though guns seem like a status symbol. You see people’s Christmas cards with their whole family, and all of them are holding guns. It’s kind of weird and macabre.