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Originally Posted by Kevin
Exploiting tragedy to score political points.
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Sometimes. Sometimes, it's responding to events by doing the right thing, doing what's in society's best interests. Sometimes it's saying "Enough already! We can't stop them all, but we'll stop the ones we can."
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It's not disputable that 2012 has been an exceptionally bad year, but it is nowhere close to what we used to see 20 years ago. We passed gun legislation back then. How many deaths were prevented by the Clinton "assault weapons" ban?
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Actually, the figures I have seen put the number of incidents just a little lower than where it was 20 years ago, with the spike being about 10 years ago, and with the number of victims being about the same if not a little higher than 20 years ago.
As for the assualt weapons ban, it's true things were no better when it was in place. Was that because a ban by nature is ineffective, or was it because that ban was riddled with holes and exceptions and perhaps targeted the wrong things (the weapons themselves rather than the ammunition)? Experts can and do disagree on that.
In any event, I think most of us in this thread have been pretty clear that we don't think "banning guns" is the answer, and that the discussion and action we think needs to happen involves a whole lot more than guns.
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