There are an estimated 270,000,000 guns in the United States of America. For every 100 people in the USA over 88 people have a gun. The USA ranks number one in gun ownership out of 179 different countries. By comparison, there are 248,000,000 passenger cars in the USA. Bottom line is that there are more guns than passenger cars in the hands of citizens.
How many cars are being driven by people who have a mental illness? This seems to be the problem in the USA, cars and guns in the USA are killing people and out of control. According to the record, there are 3 gun homicides per 100,000 people and 10 traffic fatalities per 100,000 people.
Unfortunately, there are no records on how many of these traffic deaths were at the hands of a crazy person. Bottom line is that more people die from automobiles than guns.
Many anti-gun advocates will quickly point out that an automobile was not designed, nor sold, to “kill” anything. Gun advocates will counter with the old verbiage that guns do not kill people, people kill people. Bottom line is that the USA needs “people control” who drive cars and own guns.
The dilemma is how and what needs to be done to stop people from killing people with guns? This past year indicates that too many innocent people have died at the hands of a deranged person with an assault rifle. It is obvious that an assault rifle in the hands of a person with a mental illness is a very bad combination. In one case a person documented mental ill was able to legally buy an assault rifle. In the most recent shooting, the mentally ill person obtained the weapon from his mother.
Let’s get real on how much more the government could have done to prevent the two cited cases from happening. The response is simply no much more. This is also true with any more governmental effort to keep the mental ill from driving a car and killing people.
Even if tomorrow the government confiscated all of the 270,000,000 guns and the 248,000,000 cars, people would still kill people. Agree that the number would be less, since it would take longer to kill with a knife or fists. Bottom line is to get real and accept the fact that guns and cars will continue to be used by people in a dangerous manner.
The government will try to make it harder for legal owners to obtain ownership, but total control is not possible and will be too costly. It is up to the people to keep the guns and cars out of the hands of the mentally ill and not the government. A mother of a mentally ill son should not have had guns in the home, period.
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