catreadingabook , 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

Without taking a stance myself - I doubt anyone disagrees with the principle, but rather on the implementation. How do we know who's responsible enough; can we write a law that accounts for:

• A 50-year-old woman who committed robbery in a moment of desperation as a 16-year-old and has since shown remorse, attended therapy, and held a stable job,

• A 40-year-old businessman who's never been convicted of anything, seemed okay when he saw a therapist once last year, but privately he gets into vicious screaming matches with his wife and has really inappropriate temper tantrums when he's drunk, and

• A 21-year-old college graduate who seems smart and stable enough, but their social media page is full of harsh criticisms of the government, projections of what would happen if various officials were theoretically assassinated, and more than a few references to "hoping for another civil war"?

While balancing that with the idea that the government isn't supposed to protect something as a "right" while also preemptively taking that right away from people they think might be dangerous, if they can't point to highly credible evidence. (Otherwise, it becomes possible to arrest people for 'thought crimes.')

Idk the solution personally. Seems impossible to balance unless gun access legally becomes a privilege to qualify for, rather than a right to be restricted from. But that would put the power into states' hands, and then states would have the power to decide that no one can have guns except the police.