>What you call "progress," I call a city-slicker's fantasy paradise.

Not so long ago, you could have said the same thing about seatbelts or drink-driving or Jim Crow.

There's a clear case to be made that guns should be at least as well regulated as cars. There isn't a national movement arguing that you should be able to drive with no license, no insurance and no tags. In most states, you need a license to cut hair. This is not an unwinnable battle, it's just a battle that nobody is putting enough resources into winning. Liberals may be outraged and dismayed at the rate of gun violence, but they're not taking action.

> There's a clear case to be made that guns should be at least as well regulated as cars.

So I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt because based on what you've posted, that you're not familiar with gun regulation in the U.S because you're from the U.K.

Guns are heavily regulated. You can't walk into a corner store and pick up a handgun. No were never going to allow registration or licensing as a barrier to acquire firearms. That doesn't mean there are no laws in place to prevent unlawful gun possession.

Criminals don't care about laws, it's a fundamental issue that gun control proponents continue to ignore. More gun control only makes life unnecessarily more difficult for law abiding citizens to exercise their rights.

>So I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt because based on what you've posted, that you're not familiar with gun regulation in the U.S because you're from the U.K.

I am well acquainted with US gun laws.

Do you need to apply for a license in advance of buying a gun in a majority of states? No. Do you have to take a test and prove that you are competent before you can own a gun in a majority of states? No. Is there a national registry of all guns with mandatory reporting of all transfers? No. Is there a requirement for third-party liability insurance? No. Is there a federal agency responsible for researching and reducing firearms fatalities? No.

In a majority of states, you can walk into a gun store, show your driving license, wait for the NICS background check and walk out with a gun within a matter of minutes. In a majority of states, you can buy a gun from a private seller with no background check.

Guns are far, far less well-regulated than cars.

> Criminals don't care about laws, it's a fundamental issue that gun control proponents continue to ignore.

The police care about laws, because they can enforce them. Criminals care about laws, because they can be arrested and prosecuted for breaking them.

Firing pin microstamping and pre-sale collection of striation data makes it far harder to commit a crime with a gun and get away with it. Mandatory safe storage makes it far harder for criminals to steal guns and far less likely for children to access them. Improved background checks reduce the availability of guns to known criminals and people with serious mental health problems. Mandatory registration reduces the supply of guns to the black market by creating a paper trail from factory to crime scene.

If you treat gun crime like a public health issue, you can use evidence-based interventions to mitigate risk. Seatbelt laws save lives. Drink-driving laws save lives. Mandatory driver training saves lives. Speed limits save lives. Exactly the same principles apply to gun control. Practically every other developed nation on earth has taken this approach, with great success.

> ”Let's agree to disagree. Clearly you enjoy living in a nanny state and think that's the only way to feel safe.”

Regardless of how wrong you might think someone is, please don’t follow up “agree to disagree” with an insult. Even if you don’t think your parent deserves better, the HN community as a whole does.

> This is not an unwinnable battle, it's just a battle that nobody is putting enough resources into winning.

Consider the fact that a majority of Americans believe in the right to gun ownership.

So, incidents like the Vegas massacre; is there any response to this kind of thing at all you'd accept, or is it just not a problem that 58 people got killed and hundreds wounded?

> So, incidents like the Vegas massacre; is there any response to this kind of thing at all you'd accept, or is it just not a problem that 58 people got killed and hundreds wounded?

A good response would be to react to overall death statistics and not emotional one-time events. I'm quite confident that across the US, cars have killed more people over the Vegas news cycle.

I understand and empathize with the desire to do something to prevent incidents like this. The issue with the anti-gun movement is that it focuses on the tool and not the human. We have a serious mental health problem in this country. Far too many young men are angry (depressed?) and in need of help but seeking mental help is seen as not a manly thing to do.

Yes we should do something, but gun control laws (at least those in this country that we are ALL willing to tolerate) will not yield the outcome you desire.

I realize most of you won’t do this, but go take a firearms class and learn to shoot. It’s a skill worth learning. As a reader of this forum you are likely to enjoy tinkering and building useful, mechanical things. By far the funnest thing I’ve done is build an AR-15 (gasp! Those things are evil!) from parts. Despite the media’s demonization of this non-military non-assault weapon, the AR-15 is a standardized component platform very much like the PC or LEGOs. That isn’t to imply that it’s easy to build one (lots of swearing involved in getting trigger springs and pins lined up in the small spaces, etc.)

We all want to reduce gun violence, but as history in the US has proven, stricter gun control is not the most effective answer IMO.

I'm a Brit who was taught to shoot at school (http://whitgift-ccf.co.uk/about.html), so I have a rather different perspective on this. I wouldn't describe it as fear or unfamiliarity, just a belief about risks and benefits. (One of those life experiences that seems weirder and weirder in retrospect; imagine Hogwarts with SA80s. The ammunition was tightly supervised, but unloaded weapons less so)

I'm not sure you could untangle the "mental health" aspect of mass shootings from the politics of it. Some of it is "extroverted suicide" but a lot looks to me like people have been radicalised.