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[Trekkin]

Back at ya brother--  "Everyone that says that must be an egocentrist asshole" basically sums up your response.

Nah, it sums up a quick way to trivialize and dismiss my response so you can get back to explaining why you know better than everyone else, which is exactly what debate has become now: telling everyone else what their positions are more loudly than they can tell you what yours are.

My point was that everyone's an egocentric asshole on some level, if you want to call it that, more evidently now than before. You, me, Wayne LaPierre, David Hogg, everybody on every side of this debate comes in by default convinced they're not only right but uniquely right and ready to explain how everyone else went wrong. All the questions are rhetorical now, and all the answers come with emoji and hashtags.
See, you didn't ask me what I contributed. You asked you, answered you, and were very satisfied with your answer to your own question. That is, more or less, the fundamental unit of discourse now: explaining why the straw men in our heads are wrong.
If we're ever going to solve the gun control question in a way everyone can agree is better than the alternatives, step one is not figuring out how to debate with rabidly entrenched lunatics who can't see reason. They're really rare, and not as influential as we or they like to think; they just get signal boosted a lot because they're fun to mock. The people who think they're the only sane person possessed of the most comprehensive and accurate dataset, on the other hand, are approximately everyone, and as long as we pretend that they're entrenched lunatics we keep convincing them (and us) that we're all right in our assumptions.

Step one is, I think, to find a way to get a bunch of egocentric assholes to agree on a single set of facts as accurate and complete.

[wierd]

It is, however, necessary for a sensible solution.

It is necessary for farmers to be secure in their property against predation/destruction from wild animals.
It is too costly for the nearby city centers to enforce strong animal control measures outside of their respective city limits.
Farming is unsightly and causes bad odors, so not permissible inside city limits.

As such, it is not sensible to hardline for zero gun ownership.

With that bit of candy off the table, the question then shifts: Why are people shooting each other, robbing each other, etc?

Research has indicated that a prominent cause is income inequality.  EG-- Poverty.

Poverty is prickly, but tractable.  Insistence on zero gun ownership is not.

[Trekkin]

If we're restricting ourselves to gun homicides, sure, but about two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides, so anything predicated on making people less likely to shoot each other is only solving part of the problem.

[wierd]

I would suspect that there is a large overlap in depression/low-self-esteem/feelings of inescapable hopelessness implicated in thoughts of suicide, and being impoverished.

Certainly not 100% overlap, (the causes are too diverse), but significant.

[Maximum Spin]

If we're restricting ourselves to gun homicides, sure, but about two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides, so anything predicated on making people less likely to shoot each other is only solving part of the problem.

If gun suicides are a "problem" — and I don't think they are, I think that if people want to not be alive then I have no right to force them — then I'm thinking the problem would be with suicides, not with guns. The solution would be to address why people are depressed.

[Trekkin]

I would suspect that there is a large overlap in depression/low-self-esteem/feelings of inescapable hopelessness implicated in thoughts of suicide, and being impoverished.

Certainly not 100% overlap, (the causes are too diverse), but significant.

It's possible, although differences in reporting rate make it hard to say with any certainty. However, suicidal ideation does not always lead to a suicide attempt, let alone a suicide -- and, if we are to take survivors of suicide attempts at their word, one of the factors in separating the three is convenience, because people get transiently suicidal more frequently than they get consistently so. It's an emotional process, and people do calm down over time. A gun owner, though, can take their own life with great certainty and very little planning, and, not coincidentally, half of all deaths by suicide have historically used guns.

Whether you want to frame it as a mental health phenomenon or an aspect of gun violence, the fact remains that guns don't just kill other people. They also kill their owners, many of whom would statistically probably not have killed themselves if it were more difficult to do so. Let's not forget that there are 25 suicide attempts for every suicide -- people do just stop trying. Thus, in looking at all gun deaths, we should bear in mind that the ease with which guns kill, itself an attractive property for those interested in self-defense, also makes them attractive for self-offense, so to speak.

[wierd]

I would cede that a mental health screening should be requisite for gun ownership/stewardship(in the case of cops) to determine if ideation of suicide or violence against other people are present (and have the person restricted from ownership when found), as that seems a reasonable precaution. (It would help combat degenerate police officers as well! Bonus!)

It however, would require vastly improving the mental health and screening facilities of the country, which has been an issue that has been sidelined for decades as well.

Remember, 100% eradication is not a sensible end game. Reduction to minimal level of incidence is the goal. 

[Maximum Spin]

I would cede that a mental health screening should be requisite for gun ownership/stewardship(in the case of cops) to determine if ideation of suicide or violence against other people are present (and have the person restricted from ownership when found), as that seems a reasonable precaution. (It would help combat degenerate police officers as well! Bonus!)

I am definitely not comfortable with a law stating that people lose their right to self-defence if they experience suicidal ideation. Remember, most people with suicidal ideation won't attempt suicide. People with suicidal ideation might exercise their right to freedom of speech in ways that make them more likely to commit suicide, too, but you wouldn't suggest curtailing that.

[wierd]

The issue is that suicide is often murder-suicide when guns are involved, because they are seen as "quick".

People dont normally just decide, (without some level of premeditation, eg-- ideation) that they will kill their wife and kids first, then themselves later that afternoon.

[sluissa]

As has been said, the main problem is that you have no vocal middle ground between "No guns." and "All the guns."

While I wouldn't hold it against individual cities to have harsher restrictions on gun ownership, as you said, there's less reason to own in a city. My main purpose for owning a gun (beyond the off chance I might have to use it in a home defense situation) is recreation. Not even hunting. I just like poking holes in paper from a few dozen yards away. And then when I get home I get to clean the gun. The whole process is a solid emotional experience.

I wouldn't die if I couldn't poke holes in paper. But it's one of the few non-electronic recreations I do truly enjoy and I'd like to continue it even if I lived in a city. As it is I'm suburban and still have to travel to reach a range, either the outdoor one far out in the woods, or one of the couple (although much more expensive) indoor ones farther in the city. Thus while I'm not against pushing for further, well thought out regulations. I'm also not going to be happy if you try to ban them completely.

I don't want to be on the "All the guns" side. I specifically distance myself from them because frankly I don't like a lot of them and some are downright crazy. But a good
number of people do choose to support them because they see them as the only other option from the "No guns" people, a group much the same in that they include a lot of distasteful people and a few that are downright crazy, but also a good number of people who see them as the only option versus a group that wants tactical nukes for home defense, or some silliness like that. (Note that's not an official stance by anyone I know, but it comes up as a joke often enough that I could see the anti-gun groups feeling that it's true. There are a few that legitimately think a light machine gun would be appropriate for home defense. I don't typically agree.)

Once again, caught in the middle and it's frustrating because (and I'm not speaking of this forum specifically, just in general) everyone seems to feel like you're the enemy. Pro-gun for even considering more regulation might not be the worst thing and anti-gun for even suggesting that guns might not be universally evil.

[MorleyDev]

For an outside america perspective, in the UK weapon ownership intent is considered. That's why you can't leave the house with a baseball bat in-case you get mugged, because you are carrying a weapon with the intent to use it against someone. Which you aren't allowed to do.

Improvised self-defence weaponry in the moment is fine, but owning a gun for self-defence is still owning a firearm with the explicit intention to use it to kill or injure. You have every right to use self-defence with reasonable force, but you aren't allowed to own and carry a weapon you intend to use to kill or injure, even if it's "only in self-defence".

In nothing else, that's a loop-hole a mile fucking wide in the whole "don't use guns to kill people" thing. But there's a case to be made that when people start assuming that the potential for violence and death is there by default, say by allowing people to carry a firearm everywhere, the social contract that keeps a modern society ticking is at the very least weakened.

[Folly]

I think that if people want to not be alive then I have no right to force them — then I'm thinking the problem would be with suicides, not with guns. The solution would be to address why people are depressed.

How exactly do you expect to address teenagers' hormones making them highly impulsive while their environment and lack of experience creates a limited perspective that appears to offer no hope of escape?

[Trekkin]

In nothing else, that's a loop-hole a mile fucking wide in the whole "don't use guns to kill people" thing. But there's a case to be made that when people start assuming that the potential for violence and death is there by default, say by allowing people to carry a firearm everywhere, the social contract that keeps a modern society ticking is at the very least weakened.

That's part of what makes me wonder if a tiered licensing system would help, since right now the U.S. system, at least on the federal level, doesn't make many distinctions concerning what sort of gun an individual wants and what they intend to do with it.

Perhaps there could be a vocational license to allow people to carry specific sorts of firearms outside city limits, as well as a recreational license to let people own, store and fire whatever they wanted at ranges, in addition to a more general license for carrying loaded weaponry. That general license could then be subject to more labor-intensive background checks and other scrutiny without overly burdening the system and complicating the lives of farmers and sportsmen -- which would, in turn, make "shall issue" laws and automatic passing of background checks less attractive.

[smjjames]

In nothing else, that's a loop-hole a mile fucking wide in the whole "don't use guns to kill people" thing. But there's a case to be made that when people start assuming that the potential for violence and death is there by default, say by allowing people to carry a firearm everywhere, the social contract that keeps a modern society ticking is at the very least weakened.

That's part of what makes me wonder if a tiered licensing system would help, since right now the U.S. system, at least on the federal level, doesn't make many distinctions concerning what sort of gun an individual wants and what they intend to do with it.

Perhaps there could be a vocational license to allow people to carry specific sorts of firearms outside city limits, as well as a recreational license to let people own, store and fire whatever they wanted at ranges, in addition to a more general license for carrying loaded weaponry. That general license could then be subject to more labor-intensive background checks and other scrutiny without overly burdening the system and complicating the lives of farmers and sportsmen -- which would, in turn, make "shall issue" laws and automatic passing of background checks less attractive.

Would that not require a gun registry in order to keep track of all the guns though? You can't enforce it without knowing who has what.

I'm not against a gun registry, just pointing out the fact that a lot of people don't want one, but one is needed to make that idea work.

[Trekkin]

I don't think it necessarily would; we currently enforce different age requirements for handguns and long guns without a registry.