Gun-control mistakes

[krispos42]

48. I was referring to defining "assault weapons"

I am fully aware of two facts: #1, we have a per-capita murder rate that is high compared to other first-world countries, and #2, our non-gun murder rate is as high or higher than other countries TOTAL murder rate.

We have fundamental social problems that drive this rate. We have crappy health care (physical and mental), we have crappy access to birth control (including abortion services), we have a crappy social-safety net, we let our water, food, and air be poisoned with brain-altering chemicals, we work too much for not enough money, most of us are never secure in our jobs, and when people turn to chemicals to deal with the stress all this causes, we toss them in for-profit prisons. They don't usually get reformed but they certainly learn how to become better, networked criminals.

Banning "assault weapons", whatever the definition du jour is, won't fix these fundamental truths about our current American lifestyle and society.

30 years ago the crime rate began to plunge. The murder rate was cut in half in less than a decade, and other crimes dropped by a third or more. And it had nothing to do with gun laws or "3-strikes-and-you're out" or the booming Clinton economy. It was because 50 years ago the ability of a woman to control her own pregnancy took a giant leap forwards, with the legalization of abortion and the widespread availability of the Pill and other contraceptives like the IUD. The number of unwanted or unplanned children went way down, and since these were the kids most likely to become violent, career criminals, when the kids born after about 1973 hit adulthood... far fewer of them joined the ranks of the career criminals. And since we cleaned up the air (particularly taking lead out of the air by removing it from gasoline), the kids that were born did not get brain-damaged by toxic airborne lead.

We fixed the problem at the source, not by waging war against hardware. And we can't do that if we're not running things! We can't clean up the environment, or raise the minimum wage, or provide universal healthcare, or control lobbying money, if Republicans are running!