The goal isn't to create a perfect, utopian, society. It's to target certain statistics for reduction. It's hard to get elected on a platform that has a 10 year wait for results.
For instance, nobody would run a "Legalize Vancomycin" campaign. Being one of our last resort antibiotics that remains effective against many cases of MRSA, preventing its overuse is critical. If not for our prescription drug system, it'd take less than a week for someone to start selling ANTIBACTERIAL SOAP! KILLS 99% OF MRSA! and the drug would become useless in short order.
While I won't say that's analogous to gun laws, it's a good example of there being cases where prohibition is an effective solution, and there are absolutely situations where things should only be available to people with a strong need to use them.
Saying that prohibition is never a solution reeks of the same aversion to complex opinions that the linked article was written about.
Nothing can truly be prohibited. Especially things culture demands. What you're talking about is regulation anyway. There is a deference between prohibition and regulation. Take prescription drugs for example.
People absolutely would campaign to legalize Vancomycin if there was a cultural perception in favor of it's benefits.
This is clearly a massive claim which seems to be implausible by some common sense tests. But either way, it is definitely a belief rather than something provable.
Tax is a form of prohibition (on keeping all of your earnings). Any kind of law prohibits freedom in some way (at least in a kind of direct manner). Modern civil society seems predicated on the practice of prohibiting certain actions (and the requirement of others) for the common good.
> Complete and utter freedom doesn't work in America
Uhh, you wouldn't know. You've never had it.
Even the most hard-line Libertarians will admit that "complete freedom" is overrated.
Be careful with statements like these: Every time you use them, you're betting that you have, in fact, actually seen the hard line.
In this case, I am pretty sure there are others here who have experience with Libertarians (self-proclaimed, perhaps, but loud enough) who do, in fact, believe that complete freedom would lead to market solutions to everything. Utopian Libertarianism, like Utopian Socialism, is quite dogmatic on some issues.
I wish the same could be said for my Facebook feed (and why I wish I could keyword-filter my Facebook feed), which were full of snarky one-liners, catchphrases, and image memes from both sides of the aisle (well, mostly the pro gun control side, given my demographics) - none of which is productive.
These simplistic sound bites (image bites?) add no understanding to the discourse, oversimplify a massively complicated issue, and are nothing more than self-congratulatory feel-good rhetoric that serve to further polarize and separate the two sides.
It's not unique to this shooting though - the dumbing-down and meme-ification of my Facebook feed has been increasing for some time, across all age groups I'm friends with. People don't express themselves anymore and opt to share an oversimplistic, insipid image macro instead - even distinctively non-Redditor middle aged people on my friends list do this.
In short: Tighter gun control might help on net, or it might be harmful on net. But whichever is right, we shouldn't pretend that the option that's better on net has no downsides, that it is a strict improvement, which is what people tend to do.
However I think the issue is far more complicated than this. As I understand it, a large number of countries allow guns to a larger extent than my own, Canada being a good example, but they don't suffer from the increased gun crime. Deaths relating to guns here and in Canada are roughly the same, as they are in most countries. But the US is consistently several orders of magnitude worse in gun related deaths than anywhere else.
Perhaps this is not a question of gun control, after all, if people really want a gun there is probably little that will stop them. Perhaps this is an issue of cultural attitudes to guns?
BUT as a non-American citizen I can't understand why you would allow citizens to own semi-automatic weapons. The only purpose of these weapons is to kill other people (or hold the threat of such). Why not allow weapons for hunting (rifles, etc.) but criminalise anything allows you to simply hold down the trigger and count.
1) Outlaw buying a gun by yourself, and require 10 co-signers, who assume personal liability for any misuse of the gun. Everyone must be free of a criminal record, and take an oath to follow the law.
2) Require liability insurance to own a gun like car insurance. The insurance company would ensure you aren't a threat, or they probably wouldn't provide you with liability insurance.
The solution? Now that is complicated. Has anybody ever seen a Nash Equilibrium broken by anything other than a third party? What happens when neither side trusts the third party?
