The stark divide...

BillCollins wrote:
The stark divide is between individualism and collectivism. It is between those who value rights and those who react emotionally to horrible events such as Newtown. The individualists abhor violence but accept that with rights come danger. The collectivists believe that the safety of the collective is more important than the rights of the individual. The difficulty is balancing the preservation of the Consitution and legislating effective solutions. As long as there are means of killing and there are sociopathic people, tragedy will continue.

Limiting “assault weapons” and high capacity magazines (pick your bullet count) will do nothing to limit the overall murder rate as only a few percent of murders are committed with them. It will also do very little to deal with Newtown like events. Any handgun could have been used just as effectively as the AR15 was to kill defenseless children. The gun and the magazine are not key in an elementary school scenario. The killer only needs to take out the adults in the classroom, then stand by the door as he kills the children. Nobody escapes, Certainly there are scenarios where the killer can be stopped during reloading. as with Loughner. But not with little kids.

We need to start locking violent offenders up on the first offense and never let them out. We need to allow for disturbed people to be institutionalized while still having some safeguards for our rights. The tools to commit mayhem will always be with us. The criminals and the crazies can be removed much easier.