I was talking to a kiwi in our building last night, she was saying that the gun "control" in Australia has worked wonders, after reasearching them a bit, I don't see why we can't at least "try" something similar, will it end all mass shootings? Absolutely not, we are past the tipping point on that, but even if it prevents run, or cuts shooting deaths by even 10% it absolutely would be worth it, no? I mean, hell, try something? We waste so much money on military and a host of other stuff we overspend on, for once let's just try something! Nothing seems to ever change. Full disclosure: Gun violence/Gun Culture hits close to home for myself, a good friend from high school was killed senselessy trying to break up a fight at a party. Some random kid thought it would be cool to buy a gun from his church group friend and crash a "black tie" party my friend was hosting. Once he wasn't allowed in he started a heated arguement/fight and decided to shoot his gun in the air twice and then into the crowd of people outside. Two of the bullets hit my friend Jay and he bled out/died in the arms of several more of my friends. As Jay's father put it: "this wasn't done by a terroist, this wasn't done by a gang member, this wasn't done in a bad area of town" this was a "Christian" who was so enamored with gun culture he somehow thought that carrying a pistol to a party and then firing it senslessly was the "cool" thing to do. Needless to say this affected a lot of people in a lot of terrible ways, in addition to losing Jay, I have a couple friends who never fully recovered from the events of seeing him killed in front of their eyes, even close to a decade later some of these guys aren't the same and likely never will be. We can sit here and bicker all day about how to fix this big problem, the money it would cost etc, but when it happens to a friend, relative etc of you, it just gets infuriating more than anything else. This. Should. Not. Happen. In. America. http://victimsupportservices.org/memorial/jay-clements/ http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Student-shot-to-death-at-party-1213513.php