> believing that guns are the main reason for mass murders
Not to start a political flame war but that's the only thing I disagree with you on - mostly. I think guns allow for easy mass murder at a distance but you have to have a mental illness along with some other potential extreme views, to be able to jump the mental hurdles where mass murder is an acceptable option.
The people committing these horrendous crimes are not the same people as most gun owners. That being said I think some federally mandated gun control laws are needed - leaving it totally up to the states allows things like what happened in Florida to occur.
> Which, for the rest of the world, are pretty centralist positions...
If you can frame those issues outside of politics, I think they are in the US too. Once people think their political affiliations come into play it becomes personal like the scum that use Emacs.
>you have to have a mental illness along with some other potential extreme views, to be able to jump the mental hurdles where mass murder is an acceptable option.
This is a hard truth for people to swallow, but no, you don't have to be mentally ill to think this. It's really easy to think murder is an acceptable option when you live in a country which is constantly murdering innocent civilians daily.
Look, I'm not a mass murderer sympathizer or anything like that. But the US army killed somewhere near 1 million civilians in Iraq alone (possibly more, this poll is from over a decade ago): https://www.commondreams.org/news/2007/09/14/poll-civilian-d...
When you live in a world which routinely brushes away and rationalizes that kind of mass murder because it promotes American interests and American values, it's not hard to see why some random dude might see killing people he disagrees with as a way to promote his values.
Not to start a political flame war but that's the only thing I disagree with you on - mostly. I think guns allow for easy mass murder at a distance but you have to have a mental illness along with some other potential extreme views, to be able to jump the mental hurdles where mass murder is an acceptable option.
The people committing these horrendous crimes are not the same people as most gun owners. That being said I think some federally mandated gun control laws are needed - leaving it totally up to the states allows things like what happened in Florida to occur.
> Which, for the rest of the world, are pretty centralist positions...
If you can frame those issues outside of politics, I think they are in the US too. Once people think their political affiliations come into play it becomes personal like the scum that use Emacs.