[ethanbond]

If your only goal is to prevent terrorism, sure.

Guns should be reconsidered because they kill so many people every single day in "normal" violence. It's sad that it takes a bunch of affluent white people getting killed for us to have a discussion on gun control.

[druddha]

Give me a break. Gun control being discussed because there was a mass shooting, not because of their race or socioeconomic status.

[Asbostos]

Yes. It's still sad that we have to have several people getting killed by the same person in the same day for it to become a public discussion. People get shot to death every day, but we don't care because they're all separate incidents (boiling a frog). Also they're mostly black but that doesn't make race the reason.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Why does America care about this shooting in particular? It's a mass shooting of white people.

[druddha]

That's a baseless assumption. America discussed gun control following the shootings in Charleston, S.C., as well.

[ethanbond]

Well sure, with a tautology like that.

The problem is, for example, that gang violence is exempt from "mass shooting" classification. So yes, we care because there was a mass shooting. It's called a mass shooting because it wasn't poor people shooting at each other.

And still, you're missing the point. Mass shootings make up a tiny fraction of gun violence in this country. We clearly do not discuss gun control due to gun violence, so clearly the goal of gun control is not to curb gun violence. We discuss gun control due to specific, exceedingly rare types of gun violence. One can only assume that the goal, then, is to prevent those specific, exceedingly rare instances of gun violence.

[druddha]

> Well sure, with a tautology like that.

Not a tautology. I called you out for making a baseless, refutable claim. Consider the shooting in Charleston, S.C. Were the victims in that church affluent and white? Seems to me we had a national conversation following that shooting, as well.

> And still, you're missing the point.

I only took exception with the part of your argument about the national conversation shifting to gun violence in the wake of mass shootings of "affluent white" victims. Anything else you inferred from my statement is strictly a product of your imagination.

[coldpie]

We've been having gun control discussions for decades. The issue has been decided. Gun enthusiasts having access to their hobby has been determined to be worth about ten thousand deaths per year. The cost is understood and accepted.