Zero_Destroyer posted... Generally speaking: Political violence has spiked in the last 2-3 decades with a particularly large spike in the last decade. This is predominantly either white supremacist violence or anti-government violence. Mental illness can be a factor in many of these mass shootings but a lot of the time it isn't.
The issue the United States faces on this;
-The country is geographically large and has a long standing gun culture that is clearly working against safety in civil life.
-The nature of the states being spread out typically diffuses individual attempts at gun control. A common narrative point is that it doesn't work, but this is by design: Indiana is next to Chicago, so a gun control bill passed in Illinois is going to be useless because other states refuse to engage with the ban. Typically only one part of the whole is even engaging in the concept at all when it requires a collective effort.
-Calls for mental health reform are appropriate and good, but this is often simply used as a tactic to divert the conversation from guns. Republicans, the main political force in the country opposing gun restrictions, have also refused to engage in spending on mental health access.
-One of the primary Republican 2024 candidates, Vivek Ramaswamy - who has tried to engage with youth voters who are conservative - gives the game away on this by saying we need "prayer based initiative" to fix mental health issues, a vague and nonsensical concept when Christian Nationalism is a predominant reason political violence has increased.
I don't think banning all guns is realistic but it's worth noting that politicians have literally stated they don't intend to fix it, and these are predominantly conservatives that also refuse to offer mental health solutions that involve actual legwork and funding.
There's clearly one end of the political spectrum at fault on refusal to limit gun access and they also refuse to do anything else to stop the problem and their extreme wings are the ones committing over half of the terror attacks in the USA.
Very well thought out post. Can't wait for the 60 karma chud alt to handwave it, ignore it, or cherry pick one sentence to respond to.