I'd love to get to a utopia, because that's a state where everything is perfect, but I digress. honestly, the way to stop gun violence isn't to punish after the violence, that's just treating a symptom well after the damage is done. You have to get to the root cause. Gun ownership is not the root cause; we've always had gun ownership. The root of the problem lies in some malignant cultural issues. Those need to be addressed if you want to slow this thing down and everyone is going to have to suck it up and make some concessions for those issues to be dealt with.
As to California, maybe they are making republicans and the religious right pay for what they're doing on abortion. "You pull some crap on us, we pull some crap on you" type of thing. Maybe California thinks it will actually help. Who knows. What I do know is, you'd better hope the Texas courts or the Supreme Court steps in and shuts Texas' abortion B.S. down hard, because a lot of people who enjoy their 2A rights are going to get it in the tailpipe if the courts let that Texas law stand. I don't know what Texas is thinking with it's recent legislation but they need to pull their heads from their rear ends posthaste. California is the biggest market in the country; if they put the squeeze on manufacturers then it will effect people in the other 49 states, too.
benstt, I can agree with most of what you've written here, even the part about getting to the root cause (see my emphasis above) and that "gun ownership" is not that. What has to be recognized as a major part of the root cause is the fact that many/most criminal acts with the use of a gun is simply because there is no fear or concern about the possible consequences for that crime.
That has been plainly and extremely demonstrated over the past few months with the ending of most monetary bail options and just turning them right back out on the street. Over this short amount of time the only thing that has changed is consequences for crime. None of the so-called cultural/social issues have had time to change. Any cultural/social ills named have been in existence for many years, sometimes even generations.
In fact, all the recent BS regarding lessening any jail time, or other consequence by reducing LEO involvement are recent developments that correlates time wise to the recent major increase in overall crime nearly to the day! We've all seen the drastic increase in crimes of all types in recent months. No one who has eyes and a brain can deny how drastically crime overall has increased in the past year.
We can talk about fatherless homes, etc, which are certainly important in the whole scheme of things, as are many other social/cultural issues, but playing nice in any manner is not the answer. Neither is my "sucking it up and making concessions" ..... I, as a responsible, law abiding gun owner am not the problem.
Consequences/punishment must be
swift, sure, and severe to get the attention of some of these 'defects' we see smashing and grabbing, the beating senseless of old men/women, B&E's of all sizes and shapes, etc, etc, etc. To some this will serve as a deterrent that does not exist right now. To others, assuming the consequence is sure and severe enough, it will prevent 2nd offenders. And how many 2nd offenders have we seen reported this past year?
I say again the major 'root cause' of crime of any sort is a lack of fear, or even concern for the potential consequences, which btw goes hand in hand with a total lack of any respect for law enforcement. When there is little to no serious consequences, crime of all types increases proportionately.
And as an aside, I think one of the best arguments against the California anti-gun proposal to mimic the Texas abortion law was offered by Prof Jonathon Turley (sp?). I can't seem to find it right at the moment, but I did hear most of his presentation and it seemed pretty logical to me.
www.texastribune.org
