[Dismas]

The masses having guns is no longer a tool of the social contract. If you are going to rebel against a non-third world government, you need your military's say-so.

Self defence is the most compelling argument I've heard for keeping firearms laws as they are, or even lessening them.

The US has around 47% gun ownership, meaning around 47% legallyhave a firearm in their home, car, or other property. Ireland has a legal rate of 5.9 guns to 100 people, and, with a speculated 150k illegal firearms, a total of 9.1 guns to people.The emerald isle also boasts a statistic of having only 21% of 2007 murders being committed with a firearm, as opposed to the 2009 UN estimate of 60% of US murders being committed with a firearm.

With those statistics, can you say that the US wouldn't be better off with Ireland's gun laws?

While utilizing something like the Firearms Act will help, I don't think it's a good approach. People should be able to obtain a firearm swiftly if they need to and not have to fill out a large amount of paperwork. There are also collectors of automatics and submachine guns who've invested thousands of dollars into their collections. Taking away their guns would be like a slap to their face, especially since they aren't committing the murders. If the school staff had firearms, it's likely the boy would have been dealt with. I'll leave a simple picture to describe why any measure of disarming is a bad idea.



There are very few people who go around and commit these mass killings, all of which have some sort of mental illness. Regular people shouldn't be prevented from buying guns, whether it's through paperwork, or anything else. If anything, I think citizens should arm up. If more people had firearms, a boy like the one at school wouldn't have managed to kill so many. In addition to preventing issues like these, they are useful in the case that the government becomes corrupt. I know you think people would need the "military's say-so," but we can agree to disagree. One of the first things Hitler did to the Jews was take away their guns.

Keep in mind, the boy didn't own those guns. He stole his mother's.