I agree with you regarding incarceration of those who commit a crime using a gun. With the mass slaughters, the shooters often kill themselves. I’d prefer institutionalization for the mentally ill who can be identified as potentially dangerous.

How about creating and enforcing national law that using a gun in the commission of a crime will result in long and mandatory jail time.

A lot of the mental health problems today are the result of drugs, including alcohol (e.g. fetal alcohol syndrome) both legal and illegal. For example, we have very sparse and not well coordinated help for young autism spectrum victims, but as they age, even that disappears. While the vast majority will never be a threat to anyone, it just takes one who is on the wrong track, as we saw in New Town. It appears his mother had simply run out of places to turn for help.

Even if we could remove guns from the populace, other populations where guns are outlawed show remarkable resourcefulness in using other weapons. It is the weapon user who is the problem, not the weapon itself.

However, there several of things that I think could help. 1) Severe and mandatory long prison time for using a gun in the commission of a crime. 2) Substantial emphasis on both short and long term treatment, training, counseling and support for those identified with a mental issue. 3) Better monitoring and support for those who are taking any kind of psychotropic medication.

Packing people together in tight like sardines ALWAYS leads to higher crime rates. If you want to point to Chicago, I will point to Birmingham (England).. same issues as Chicago… Far higher incidence of crime and therefore murder, yet same exact laws, rules etc as the rest of the UK and still less likely to be murdered there than in the USA; FAR, FAR less likely to be murdered in Birmingham by a gun than anywhere in the USA.

None of your arguments to date have given one single shred of an answer as to why the murder rate in the USA is so high compared to all other civilized places on this planet! It’s guns.

If guns are available and easily to hand, they get used; simple. As I have said; if a bar fight erupts in the UK, punches are thrown, a few glasses get chucked, someone gets kicked… damage is done, but they all go home… In the USA, a fight erupts and someone gets his gun and shoots someone… there’s a death and that’s why the murder by gun rate is so high in the USA.. In the UK, you CANNOT use a gun, because you don’t have a gun to use and there isn’t one nearby for you to pick up in your rage.. Again, this is simple logic.

Recap: No guns to grab when you’re pissed off, angry or mad = no murder by gun, maybe use fists or a knife, but FAR, FAR less lethal. Gun right there? Grab gun, pull trigger, kill someone = lethal and deaths. Ergo USA 9,000+ murders by gun, UK 70 (population equivalent)..

My answer is that a good place to start is by removing loopholes that allow un-named individuals to buy guns at gunshows; huge fines and incarceration for private sale of guns to people with no ID; mandatory, YEARLY training; MANDATORY insurance coverage, no guns allowed to be sold with higher capacity mags (30 or 100 rounds is insane).

Doctors HAVE to ask whether you have a gun (allows them to forward suspect lunatics information to local Police). continue gun registration; MUST register, MUST re-register when you move; if you move to a new State, then training class and certification in THAT STATE.

Limits on how much ammunition you can buy at a single place or time. NO Internet sales of ammunition; must buy from a local store where they can check ID and gun license and whether your training is up to date.

Link a national database of people with mental problems, issues with violence, domestic abuse to gun ownership. No gun for you, if you are a wife-beater, or a severe alcoholic, or schizophrenic.

Most of all, we need people like YOU to help frame the new rules; responsible gun owners have to be part of this solution; I don’t understand why the majority of law abiding, smart gun owners aren’t RUSHING to get there FIRST! Wouldn’t YOU want to write the best set of legislation on your own behalf and not wait until the people who are less inclined to be on your side write them instead?

Yet, overall in the USA, it can be determined that there has been 50% reduction in violent crimes and a 54% reduction in the murder rate over the last 20 years. There is a gentleman who has gone so far to post this all on you tube. And he quotes the aforementioned stats correctly. He goes on further to say that the murder rate is DOUBLE in metropolitan areas [> 250,000] as compared to more rural areas of the US. So, I would venture a guess that gang bangers and drug cartels are upping our numbers in the death rate (which I don’t have accurate stats on this so don’t scalp me here). But I want to know HOW many deaths are because of them. Because they don’t have permits for their guns. They are above the gun laws and they will always find a way to get their guns.

So if the murder rate in the US overall is 4.8%, then 1/2 of that is 2.4% in the more rural areas. Which puts us at double the murder rate of the UK [seen on their 'Home Office' crime stat page'] if you take out the metropolitan areas. It’s interesting to me…….for, many metropolitan areas have strict guns laws. And we have FAR more metropolitan areas in the US than does the UK.

Let’s take Chicago, for example. I have checked different sources on the internet, and many are consistent with what I am quoting to you:

Chicago’s murder rate of 19.4 per 100,000 is more than three times that of New York’s (6 per 100,000) and more than two and a half times of Los Angeles’ (7.5 per 100,000), its closest American competitors.
Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation. That, too, is all over the internet.

So, strict gun laws in a metropolitan area seem to make it easier for you to be killed.
So, I think I will just stay right where I am, out of the cities. Thank you very much.

The only thing I will agree on is that I was ranting and raving, and not being part of the solution. Because until we fix we stupid humans, NOTHING is going to change for the better.

Do YOU have any legitimate ideas? Because unless you have a magic wand to take guns away from people who are willing to use them on other people to steal, rape and murder, I fervently hope that not one single gun law is passed. Ever.