Reply To: Is there any way to prevent mass shootings????

@daasyochid
I advocate for gun rights specifically because I am intellectually honest. Instead of formulating policy based on ” I know about this particular gun being used in some mass shootings” I look at the statistics (less than 1% of all murders annually are with rifles. Of that, an even smaller number uses AR15s), The effectiveness of any proposed legislation (Best case-no one listens, worst case-civil war), and if there are any solutions that would work (banning an AR is meaningless, all semi-auto guns function the same. Banning all semi-auto guns is almost impossible, would almost certainly cause a revolution, and would kill more than it saves because people would be unable to defend themselves.) I believe there are many other things that cause mass shootings, and solving those would be a lot more productive and possible. I also think that trying to attack someone instead of just thinking that maybe other people have different ideas on how to solve a problem prevents honest conversation, and calling me intellectually dishonest or implying I don’t care about dead kids doesn’t help. I do not think that the violence in America is tied to the “gun culture”, because according to studies by John Lott, in places like Texas and Florida, concealed carry permit holders are convicted of crimes at 1/6th the rate of cops. Additionally, pretty much everyone I have ever met in the “gun culture” has been nothing but kind. In another study, Lott found that concealed carry permit holders commit the fewest crimes of any demographic. So I don’t think it would be “intellectually dishonest” for me to say that “gun culture” is not the problem.

@jj2020 I did not say that it’s impossible to know if the AR 15 is needed for self-defense. You asked about a very specific thing, if there is any way to know if people who used an AR would not be able to defend themselves with something else. There is no way to know that, because it is not a statistic that anyone tracks. That doesn’t change the fact that the AR is a valuable defensive tool, it just means I can not definitively say that it is the only possible defensive tool. We should deal with mass killings, but not by banning ARs because the number of murders using them is minuscule compared to the number of reasonable uses, just like a hammer, a saw, or a kitchen knife, which are used for more murders than AR 15s but are not banned because they are mainly used legitimately.