@Isdaril Thing is, these studies generally only look at *firearms,* not other possible weapons. While I haven't been following the news in Britain all that closely, their 'stop violence by banning weapons' policy seems to be having less than stellar results. (Like stopping handymen on the street and confiscating their toolboxes because they contain sharp implements that would be in *any* toolbox.)
You also have a good point with how people grow up. And that's exactly the problem. Even in states where owning a gun is largely unregulated, kids still grow up hearing that guns are bad, guns kill people, everyone should be afraid of guns. This largely from the school system and national-level media. Their home-life, on the other hand, may agree with the schools and media, disagree and promote proper gun safety and experience, disagree but that's it, or be completely ambivalent. There's no consensus and is a *huge* departure from what things were like when my parents and grandparents were growing up.
Interestingly, the first half of the 20th century had kids driving to *school* with loaded rifles in their trucks because they were going hunting later as a matter of course and there wasn't anywhere *near* the problem with school shootings that there is now. Heck, my grandma had a story of a bunch of kids deciding to deal with a skunk in the school's woodpile with *dynamite.* The skunk was definitely gone. As was the woodpile and most of the paint on that side of those school. building. No one called the cops, the kids were just held after school to clean up the mess and repaint.
The story is anecdotal, of course, by I think it speaks to the difference in attitude between then and now. Give me a running start, and I could go on for *days* about personal responsibility, absentee parents, over-crowded classrooms, parents expecting teachers to do their jobs for them, zero-tolerance policies, and America's school system in general. Also, people with no practical experience acting like their pet theories on how the world *should* work are fact and, scarily enough, those people being allowed to make policy decisions.
As for "what could be the hurt?" To start with, I don't think it's a matter of either producing weapons *or* producing food, houses, health care, and education. It's more of an *and.* Beyond that, I could give a pretty long answer. Practically a book. To be brief, I direct your attention to what happened when the Federal Government decided to ban alcohol.
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@Isdaril Thing is, these studies generally only look at *firearms,* not other possible weapons. While I haven't been following the news in Britain all that closely, their 'stop violence by banning weapons' policy seems to be having less than stellar results. (Like stopping handymen on the street and confiscating their toolboxes because they contain sharp implements that would be in *any* toolbox.)
You also have a good point with how people grow up. And that's exactly the problem. Even in states where owning a gun is largely unregulated, kids still grow up hearing that guns are bad, guns kill people, everyone should be afraid of guns. This largely from the school system and national-level media. Their home-life, on the other hand, may agree with the schools and media, disagree and promote proper gun safety and experience, disagree but that's it, or be completely ambivalent. There's no consensus and is a *huge* departure from what things were like when my parents and grandparents were growing up.
Interestingly, the first half of the 20th century had kids driving to *school* with loaded rifles in their trucks because they were going hunting later as a matter of course and there wasn't anywhere *near* the problem with school shootings that there is now. Heck, my grandma had a story of a bunch of kids deciding to deal with a skunk in the school's woodpile with *dynamite.* The skunk was definitely gone. As was the woodpile and most of the paint on that side of those school. building. No one called the cops, the kids were just held after school to clean up the mess and repaint.
The story is anecdotal, of course, by I think it speaks to the difference in attitude between then and now. Give me a running start, and I could go on for *days* about personal responsibility, absentee parents, over-crowded classrooms, parents expecting teachers to do their jobs for them, zero-tolerance policies, and America's school system in general. Also, people with no practical experience acting like their pet theories on how the world *should* work are fact and, scarily enough, those people being allowed to make policy decisions.
As for "what could be the hurt?" To start with, I don't think it's a matter of either producing weapons *or* producing food, houses, health care, and education. It's more of an *and.* Beyond that, I could give a pretty long answer. Practically a book. To be brief, I direct your attention to what happened when the Federal Government decided to ban alcohol.