Sigh. Well, I'll just pipe up and say that guns are very, very, VERY easy to get in the US and if anyone is actually staging a "gun grab" they've got one hell of a challenge cut out for them. I would not personally mind some more restrictive laws around gun ownership, but the only problem I see with that is I doubt those laws would work anyway, because I know people who own guns illegally. Also, I know plenty of people who probably shouldn't have ever been able to purchase a gun but did so quite easily. I'll tell you about two of them.
First was a young woman I knew who was being treated for bipolar disorder, and there was some possibility she was also schizophrenic. She certainly was suicidal; she had been suicidal and had attempted suicide on two previous occasions. She walked into a Bass Pro Shop and obtained a gun easily, and the day she got it, she killed herself with it. There is a fine line between someone who will kill herself and someone who will kill others, and I see no way to know the difference, but I know with absolute certainty that people with debilitating mental illness can and do obtain guns easily. I do not understand why someone who is being actively being treated for severe mental illness, as both the Sandy Hook and Aurora shooters had been, and who had two previous suicide attempts on record, was able to get a gun so easily. I see no reason why it should be that easy. But it was, and now she's dead.
Secondly, I had an elderly relative who owned a gun that was illegal. It was some kind of sawed-off shotgun thing (I don't know exactly) that had been banned ages ago. She had macular degeneration, drank heavily, and had a deep-seated paranoia that people were trying to break in her house and steal her china, and she lived alone and felt she needed protection. Believe me, you did NOT want to approach her house unannounced. We had no idea the thing was illegal, but when she died, we discovered it had been made illegal in about 1960, but no way was she going to give it up. You would have gotten a $250,000 fine if you had been caught with that weapon, but a little old 5' 1" mostly blind lady still had hers. So I don't see how anyone is going to succeed in taking away people's weapons.
That's not even counting the various hunters I know, who for the most part, are quite responsible and sane -- and have lots of guns.
Moral of the story is there are plenty of heavily armed people who really really REALLY shouldn't have guns and I don't think they're going to go away anytime soon.
(Come to think of it, I bet a few of them are on this forum.)
