Because the built in commenting system in tumblr is so atrocious, I’m making this post for the discussion of the NRA vs Video Games debate that seems to be happening and the misconceptions therein.
Ultimately, in my view the problem is that the media and the government is trying very hard to divide us and turn us against each other. They started investigating all these causes related to “violence” in order to get movies, video games, the NRA, and other groups to turn on each other and fracture the supporters of the bill of rights into different camps. The NRA/GOA is blaming video games and violent media, the media and video games are blaming the guns, etc. All this will do in the long run is weaken both the first and second amendments as the government gets their fractious supporters to back laws that restrict freedom in one way or another. You’re all just pawns in their game.
You shouldn’t fall for it. Support all freedom, realize that what happened in Connecticut was a tragedy, but an unavoidable and extremely rare tragedy. We need to evaluate this rationally taking the costs and risks into account, and the risk of this happening to any given student are vanishingly small. They don’t justify the kind of reaction that we’ve been getting from it.
The existing gun laws didn’t stop it, and the proposed gun laws wouldn’t stop it either. It isn’t caused by video games or violent media and restricting them would do nothing to prevent this or future violence of this sort. Mental Health laws won’t do anything for it either, and just provide a back door way of attacking the second amendment.
There could be some common sense laws that would cost the government nothing but could reduce these tragedies, but they’re politically unpopular in most of the country. In particular, eliminating the “gun free zones” that just don’t work from schools and other places. Don’t force anyone to carry a gun, but allow anyone who has crisis training and a concealed carry permit to carry their own fire arms so they can protect the people around them. Other than that, none of the proposals out there have any merit whatsoever, or they would do more harm than good by turning schools into mini police states.