I went through this in my other response to you, but how about the fact that NJ is surrounded by states with strong laws...and California is not.
I know off hand several mass shooters in CA attacks bought in NV.
It's the same reason why the "but Chicago" argument is crazy. Not only is it not close to the most dangerous city...but it literally borders Indiana. It'd be like Hoboken having TX gun laws.
The proximity argument is a valid consideration. And yeah, I never subscribed to the "but Chicago" thing. Although people who do bring it up are correct in saying that, in general, Americans seem utterly disinterested in all the ordinary gun violence taking place in our cities all across the nation and only get interested when there's a mass shooting.
Which is understandable from an emotional standpoint. Shooting up a whole bunch of kids at school is incredibly upsetting to me and everyone else. Whereas ordinary human violence of all kinds occurs in our cities almost as regularly as breathing. So simple sanity preservation precludes us from dwelling too much on it - such violence occurs so often we'd do nothing but be depressed or afraid 24/7.
I'm pretty cold and unemotional about virtually all the political crap people scream about in the CE forum - my view is most of it (e.g. taxes) sorts itself out precisely because the nation is so split that we just swing back and forth and the damage from either side's take is thereby limited over time. It's a great big stupid game where neither side ever has much of an advantage for long so neither side can ever fully implement their stupid ideological ideas. And the very few smart ideas can eventually work their way through the system and then stick because they're products of compromise and cooperation that, while imperfect, are at least somewhat sensible.
But where children are involved and harmed, that's where I lose my sense of detachment. I'm emotionally invested in figuring out a way to protect children.
The problem
in this country is that law enforcement hasn't figured out how to stop the flood of illegal guns that find their way into the hands of criminals. That inescapable fact hovers over every discussion on gun control. I'm unwilling to take away law-abiding individual's right to arm themselves in defense against those criminals. It's a mindset gap. Some people are willing to let the government (aka the police) protect them 24/7. Some people just don't think that way (including me) and wish to be more self-reliant given the obvious, oft-proven, impossibility of the police protecting us all 24/7.
I can live with NJ's restrictions which are mostly reasonable for NJ. And if other states, w/less stringent gun laws than NJ, decide to adopt laws closer to what NJ has, fine. But in the meantime, there are numerous things that can be done. And numerous things that are being done but must be improved upon. And there's no excuse for not doing those things as the achievable ones don't materially interfere with anybody's individual rights.
The nation should focus on the low-hanging fruit with big bang for the buck (awful pun, I know). Gun bans are far from low-hanging fruit, legislatively and judicially. Fixing it so it's very hard for someone to get at the kids in schools is low hanging fruit. These are our children; it's worth more than a few bucks to add many more cameras and sensors, to harden access points to schools. etc.
Not saying people shouldn't work to implement better gun control in states where there isn't enough. Just saying it's not realistically low hanging fruit at all. So while people work on it, let's get going with improvements that are lower hanging fruit.
), the data is not at all conclusive and we need to dig a lot deeper into it before making any decisions on what to do or not do to tackle the problem?
