[mikeyouse]

We are discussing guns because the US has a homicide rate on par with countries like Yemen and Bulgaria. Every other 'first-world' economy is significantly safer than us. It's not a binary choice between gun safety and heart health, we can (and are) working on all of these things in parallel. Traffic fatalities have dropped from 5.3/100mm miles in 1965 to 1.11/100mm thanks largely to those overbearing regulations corporatists love to hate. This is approximately equivalent to 120,000 US citizens not killed on highways every year. In the same time span, the homicide rate went from 5.1/100k to 4.8/100k (with a massive spike in the 70s and 80s)... There is clearly room for progress.

As for the "We're one law away from the next Lenin or Mao", I can't believe people honestly think that is a possible outcome. Especially when the length of the gun regulation is more along the lines of "Everyone should undergo a background test before buying a weapon" and "30-round magazines should be more strictly regulated".

Is there any appreciable difference between a country with 200 million firearms and one with 200 million firearms where people with a history of mental illness don't own the weapons?