After the gun shootings at the theatre in Aurora or the school in Connecticut, those of us who favor gun control were told that the problem was, in fact, gun control. If there had been people in the theatre or teachers/security guards in the school who had guns, then somebody would have stopped the shooter and it would have been so much better for everyone.
This week's shooting took place on a government military installation, and 12 people died.
It might have been worse. The gunman had to "settle" for buying a handgun when Virginia state law didn't allow him to buy something more powerful.
From what I've read, the shooting spree might have been extended when the gunman was able to take a gun from one of his victims.
I'm not sure how to square this with the whole idea that gun control costs lives, and that having more people with more guns saves them.
I will certainly be told that the problem isn't with gun laws or the lack of gun laws. The problem will be the lack of enforcement, or that this guy was a bad apple and nobody connected the dots, and he never should have had a security clearance and never should have been allowed on base.
All of these things are true.
But if all of those things had been equally true, and it had been harder for him to buy a gun...
Everything else which we consider to be a bad thing, we make it harder to do. If we want less gun violence, we should make guns harder to have.
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