More shootings.

[TaraJo]

Gun talks put me in a strange position. I'm not full fledged on either 'side.'

That being said, I do see some alarming trends coming from the right. I see a lot of scary talk from the NRA and their supporters. Gun nuts first reaction isn't grief over the children who were killed, but a knee-jerk reaction to grab onto their guns tighter in fear that the government is going to take them away. The NRA is even worse in that their response to every one of these tragedies seems to be "More guns!" However, since the NRA is a lobbying group funded by gun manufacturers, I can fully understand why they have a vested financial interest in having as many weapons out there as possible. That doesn't mean I agree with them, but I understand why they say the stupid things they do. I can take comfort in the fact that many Republicans are backing away from their statements, but that shouldn't be surprising; when the GOP is trying to promote themselves as the party for reduction in government spending, the last thing they're going to want to do is pay for an armed security guard outside every school across the nation.

I also don't like just looking at single aspects of incidents like this, either, and I don't like looking at it with a preconsecption on what the answers are. If we knew the answers, we would have implimented them a long time ago. I think overall availability of guns across the nation would probably help, but I don't see it happening (not to mention, it would take a long time for it to show any positive results). Like it or not, America has an extremely strong gun culture and they'd rather give up a host of other rights if they had to choose between those rights and their guns. However, if you specifically read the second amendment, it does specifically reference "a well regulated militia." That's important because, while I'm not really in support of taking away everyone's guns, I do think we need to do a better job at regulating them.

The statement that people can still build bombs and kill people without guns is true, but there's a bit more to the story. Without a gun, you need the technical knowledge to build a bomb and you have to have a plan on how, when and where to set it off. I'd be more than willing to bet that the great majority of the mentally ill people lack some of what would be needed to pull it off.

I also think we need to look at the mental health angle to this, but what can we do about it? There are already laws preventing people with certain mental illnesses from owning a gun.

However, as much as there is to this, as much as there is we need to do, as much as we can change, it isn't going to get done any time soon. The typical strategy of the NRA is going to save their asses again. They simply get their pundits to stall any meaningful change and wait until everyone forgets about this. The only way I see real change happening is when the shootings are so back-to-back that we don't have a period where one of them isn't fresh on our minds. Sadly, I see us getting close to that; there was only a 5 month gap between the Batman theater shooting and this one. If they get much closer together, even the NRA won't be able to stall long enough to prevent change.