There is no "both sides" to children getting their whole fucking face shot off though. You want an "uncomfortable conversation"? Talk to a mother covered in her child's blood and explain to her why she needs to convince you that guns shouldn't be so easy to get in this country even though you like to play with them.
Serious question: How old are you???
Did you live through the crack street wars of the 80's? And by that, I mean were you at least a teenager during that era?
All the shock and trauma of seeing kids "
getting their whole fucking face shot off" came and went for a lot of us back then. Shit was on the evening news a lot. Some drug shit erupts into gunfire, mad innocent bystanders are shot and/or killed, children were killed as a result and mothers holding their babies in a pool of blood with a hole in their head or face shot off.
That was nearly 40 years ago; none of this shit is new. Those of us that lived through that era, that ducked when shots rang out and still instinctively do so anytime we hear anything remotely sounds like gunfire are probably numb to it at this point. If you weren't there, you wouldn't understand seeing this shit on the evening news damned near every night but it really was wild like that, more so for those of us living in NYC, Detroit, LA, and Miami at the time.
You're missing the bigger picture here: This level of violence ain't new in this country. And, yes, Congress passed strict gun control laws banning actual, factual fully automatic assault/combat weapons in response to not only the street-level drug wars, but also in response to mass shootings that happened back then. California passed a weapons ban in '89 as a direct result of one mass shooting, the ATF recommended banning the importation of any rifle that had no "sporting purpose" and G.H.W Bush sign off on in '89 making all AK47's and their variants and other guns near impossible to get.
Kids were still getting killed... A lot. The 90's wasn't really any better despite what the bans did. Kids were still getting shot, catching strays, etc and mass shootings still happened. And we still saw it on the evening news, except it went from being shocking to "damn, that's fucked up... Another day in the hood".
Now we're here. Despite what you think, guns are not that easy to get. There's entire classes of people that can no longer buy, possess, or own a gun legally: Felons of
ALL types, and people with
any form of domestic violence on their record, even misdemeanors. People who have been involuntarily committed to a mental facility also are unable to buy, possess, or own a gun (at least according to the letter of the law, Germs was still able to cop his and so was the VA Tech shooter). That alone eliminates a fuckton of people in this country from
LEGALLY getting a gun. Realistically, the only step from this point would be a total ban on weapons and making ammunition something only law enforcement can purchase... Which would never fly and wouldn't work even if enacted because that only accounts for
legal gun owners, it would do nothing for illegal guns in circulation. While such a measure would decrease these shootings, it won't eliminate them because, naturally, ammo will still manage to make it's way to the streets like everything else seems to.
Aside from a total ban, what's YOUR solution?
