Getting Serious: Four Alternatives to the Failed Gun Control Paradigm - The Truth About Guns

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

61% : Noah Smith (who's certainly no champion of gun rights), writing for The Atlantic, observed:Legal bans on drug sales lead to a vacuum in legal regulation; instead of going to court, drug suppliers settle their disputes by shooting each other.
56% : Despite being gun control advocates, these researchers understand that there are underlying sociological drivers of violence that transcend "guns" and warrant our attention.
54% : Gun control policies will burden only the upstanding citizens who, in good faith, try to abide by them, and are nonetheless ensnared.
51% : Part of the appeal of gun control is the simplicity of its narrative: it seems to be a straightforward, tidy solution to a serious problem.
49% :Take, for example, the often-proposed idea of "universal background checks," a policy which would, for example, prohibit someone from selling a firearm to his friend without a background check.
49% : Even as more resources were directed to law enforcement, the rate of serious crimes soared and prisons overflowed.
46% : The gun control movement's resources and efforts are overwhelmingly guided and driven by the "mass shooter" scenario, hence their fixation on policies like assault weapons bans and magazine capacity restrictions.
46% : Implementing stricter gun laws might seem more feasible by comparison, even if it doesn't get to the root of the problem.
45% : First of all, gun control doesn't work as intended.
45% :Can gun control be part of a suicide prevention strategy?
44% : Unfortunately, the conversation about how to address that problem is dominated by the gun-control paradigm: the idea that the solution to American violence is more gun control.
44% : In any case, we should not be dismissive of DGUs or gun control's potential to diminish individuals' ability to protect themselves.
44% : There's nothing straightforward, tidy, easy, or simple about attempting to address violence through the means of gun control.
41% : But even if gun control was effective, it would still be problematic.
41% : But if gun control isn't the answer to tackling violence in America, what is?
40% : In terms of how tax dollars and law enforcement's efforts are expended, we shouldn't allow the state to pursue general and arbitrary crusades against peaceable gun owners.
39% : Virtually any sort of firearm would suffice to take one's own life, so there's no hypothetical situation in which something like an "assault weapons ban," magazine capacity restriction, or any other feature-based limitation would make a difference with respect to suicide.
39% : Under scrutiny, gun control is not a policy idea to be taken seriously.
39% : Especially with the widespread adoption of 3D printing and other means of self-manufacture, gun control, already of highly dubious efficacy, will gradually be rendered wholly impotent.
38% : And gun control is even less viable in the particular context of the United States.
36% : Making the case for gun control by comparing peaceful western Europe to (comparatively) violent America is, under even modest scrutiny, simplistic to the point of being unserious.
35% : Attempting to stop suicide by imposing gun control is like trying to stop drunk driving by banning cars: it's a completely implausible "solution" that elides the actual problem at hand.

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