Originally Posted by verminaard
I think the point is we may be over-inflating the problem by not taking into account factors such as:
a) how big the population of the US is
b). School shooting deaths vs total homicides
c). School shooting deaths vs other reasons for mortality among teenagers
If you compared the US to the total EU the US would have more school shooting deaths per capita, but it wouldn't be a complete landslide. Also, given the number of guns in the US the deaths/gun might actually be lower.
I am not saying you aren't right. But I am just saying the problem might be over-inflated and if you were going to look at it from a cost-utility perspective there is probably a lot of other problems we should be tackling first if our goal is to effectively and efficiently decrease the amount of misery/death in our country, for example opiod addiction.
The government tackling opioid addiction has been a disaster, and actually a lot like the gun issue, where the genie was long out of the bottle before they got involved, and their involvement has been counter-productive.
The spike in opioid deaths correlated perfectly with the government crack down on the pain clinics. Clearly, and logically, the answer would have been to come in and discourage them from writing new prescriptions unless other options had been exhausted. But they already had a huge populace with a dependence, much like we already have 300 million guns, and those people aren’t quitting, so cutting off people who had scripts for a decade lead to the natural progression to heroin and death. Now we’re at the point you can’t find a pill, but you know 20 people who deal heroin. It’s insanity. I could get heroin delivered to me quicker than a pizza right this moment, but if I have a friend with an issue who has fought off that progression, I have to spend 8 hours making calls to find someone who has a handful. And the natural market forces of supply and demand have made it so cost-prohibitive that someone with a legitimate pain issue and dependence who has been cut off by government regulation eventually can’t afford the medication, they make the slide, and die.
The problem is much like the mad mothers and alcohol. People who have lost someone to addiction are incredibly vocal and motivated to call for action out of pain at their loss. Politicians hear them, know it’s a great issue for them, but tackle it in an entirely retarded manner which causes more problems and pain than they’ll ever solve, and we end up with Vietnam era death tolls annually.
Guns are similar in that I don’t see any easy answers short of offering $5k for every available gun to be turned in. It would bankrupt us, but that’s the only way the lower rung of criminals and people who cause the vast majority of deaths would ever turn a gun in.
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