25 Ideas on Gun Control. What are Yours?

There are a million ways we could manage the issue of gun control in America and if we did even a single thing, we might stop living in terror.  The thing is it requires personal responsibility and also a change in behavior.  Which no one wants. Specifically no one wants to give up their hobby to save the lives of our children. 

Here are 25 ideas I just a single person can formulate off the top of my head.  

1. Dont sell semi-automatic weapons any more
2. Only sell non lethal rounds to be used only at shooting ranges. Sort of like you cant take alcohol from a bar. Then people could still use their hobby guns, but we could be safe. 
3. Everyone stop paying their dues to the NRA, perhaps start a new gun lobby that supports personal gun ownership and practices that deter mass shootings. 
4. Dont vote for someone who receives funding from the NRA
5. Require that every semi-automatic weapon purchased be placed in a database with a title much like a vehicle. This way there is evidence when someone is massing a large amount of guns or ammo, perhaps we could use these computer doo-dads to flag when someone owns a specific amount. Lets say 5. 
6. Make it illegal to sell guns without a sellers license. Boom an industry is created with jobs, people have to take their legal guns to brokers who then have to be licensed to sell them. No one else is bothered that we get ID'd for Sudafed but I can sell my whacky neighbor a gun? 
7. How would we get guns off the streets you ask?  Offer a tax deduction, or create a crime stoppers like program as incentive for people to turn in guns that are no longer legal.  Provide like a 6 month amnesty before they turn them in.
8. What about the government you say? Unarmed black people are gunned down every day by the police.  Perhaps if the public is less likely to be armed the police would be amenable to also being less armed and we would all be safer. As well as the police being less scared of citizen. 
9. Protest gun stores like anyone else protests abortion clinics.  Stand outside with photos of children who died and hand out pamphlets explaining what guns were used and what companies and discouraging membership to the NRA
10. Put chips in all new guns
11. Make all guns fingerprint sensitive. 
12. Make all gun owners purchase gun insurance at the point of purchase. This insurance could be expressly used to treat people in mass shootings. 
13. put warning labels on guns from the surgeon general.  (is this a thing?  I have never actually purchased a gun)
14. Make it so litigious and expensive to purchase a gun its discouraged then make owning a gun illegally even more costly. You know like the war on drugs.....
15. Call write and harass your representatives.  State, Local, and federal. Make it clear that this is what we want. 
16. We have marched for science, women, there is, the march for life, why isnt there a march for gun laws???
17. Usurp the message of the NRA.  This really is all or nothing.  We act mass shootings or the left will actually come for all guns.  For once make they other side play to the middle. 
18. Universal healthcare would treat the victims of gun violence, and provide mental health treatment for those shooters who could have been helped by that access.
19. Study the most effective gun laws around the world and around the country and replicate their commonalities. 
20. Ingrate interpersonal relationships into the education system. 
21. Have more ice cream socials.  I am serious build communities and relationships. 
22. Intervene in bullying. 
23. Look at the post Columbine move toward anti bullying there were some real consequences to the kids those policies impacted. 
24. Pay attention to the men being radicalized right in front of you.  The MRAs the MGTOWs, Alt right, Trumpsters.  There is a commonality that much of these groups are made up of white males. 
25. Do Something, dont just beg your representative to pass a law or literally hope and pray, do something even if its just the microscopic action. 

We have to stop being reflexive.  My kids shouldn't be learning to hide under their desks, they should be learning that they are safe and that they are going to more often than not be safe.  I know we love our guns in America.  We not including me but i get it.  But how many children should and will die because there is a past time we dont want limited. Thats not how this works. We need to do something. 

Everything Must Go; Why Socialism Wont Cure All Ills.

When I was in the 7th grade my father had an emergency surgery.  He was uninsured and when he woke up from surgery with a colostomy, in immense pain, he was flailing and screaming.  As my sister turned the nurse hurried out of the room.  My sister raced out to find out what was happening.  The answer the nurse gave was, "he is uninsured, we cant give him any pain medicine".  My over all perception is I dont care about any other answer, we need to provide people healthcare.  How many people do you know that are no longer working but could be due to an untreated health condition?   

While I whole heartedly believe in universal healthcare.  I also dont believe it is the cure to all ills.  Many people think it will solve racism, or wars, make everything equal.  This is only moderately the case. So all these so called progressives on the socialism bandwagon are more than willing to air their racism out thats been hiding in the cellars under the guise of anti colonialism, or throw in nods to how it will help the white working class. The insidiousness of racism that says all people and amends itself to not them, or them, or those people, only this one type of person. Socialism is only the distribution of wealth its not the distribution of equality, or justice, its only economic. This is a nod to the Bernie bros who seem to understand this, and be ok with it.  Lets just have an economic revolution that never accounts for our history of racism and certainly doesnt attempt to correct it. 

Lets address where this assumption might come from as well the right and the wrong of it.  We cant advocate outright socialism while we also have to accept that capitalism in its current form was not designed to work for communities of color.  Nothing is simple and nothing is one policy. 

There are some things that important to keep in mind when trying to grapple with the American relationship with socialism.   A core following of the socialist movement in the U.S. were civil rights activists.  They were of the opinion that gains were made in racial equality in the Soviet Union, which is true but the fact is that the Soviet Union collapsed and actual equality was still not met. The Black Panthers, MLK Jr., Angela Davis, Malcolm X. All if not explicitly in supported of socialism, were of the belief that capitalism as a system with racism would never allow communities of color to conquer oppression.  As far as I can gather the idea is that if there was not barrier to economic stability people of color could do the rest overcome and have otherwise self sustaining communities.  

The evidence that the U.S. has weaponized capitalism against communities of color is ample. You cant really talk about the issues impacting communities of color without considering that resources are held hostage within the system.  Slavery itself is the root of American capitalism.  There is an article from Forbes below that details this.  Couple this with the prison system, the massacre of anything that provides opportunity for these communities including in-equal funding on education or the actual massacre of black Wallstreet.  There is a valid argument that capitalism will never benefit people of color in the United States in total.  We have to rebuild every system.  Which may be possible after the Trump administration because there will be nothing left by the end of all of this. 

So what about socialism?  Socialism comes with an entirely different set of issues.  The complicated history is that not only Hitler but virtually every socialist thinker of the early 20th century was a proponent of genocide.  If the rising tide lifts all ships and you only want the white ships rise you have to only have white ships.  Hitler was of the opinion that socialism and Judaism were somehow at odds. So as the acceptance of socialism rolls into the American consciousness there also is a rise in nationalism, anti-Semitism, anti feminism, xenophobia, racism.  The question is are all these things connected?  I turn to other countries, Denmark that is well known for its socialist programs and its low income inequality still has a fairly prevalent culture built on racism, the same goes for Canada.  So there goes that. 

Engles and Marx posit that these inequalities are created by the state there for socialism and eventually communism will break down the inequalities as the state ceases to exist.  This divorces the idea that systems of oppression are self fulfilling and not dependent on other systems.  Thats why racism is insidious and not easily solved by say ending slavery or the Civil Rights Act, or Affirmative Action, or the Americans with Disabilities act.  At some point we need to address the reality that the U.S. has been constructed on a foundation of white supremacy and not single policy or economic system is going to fix that. 

Stop conflating economics as the solutions to social ills.  We have reached a point in history where we need to fight for everyone or no one.  Why cant we all have healthcare? Wouldnt true freedom afford us the option between socialism and capitalism?  One person is not capable of paying for private insurance while another simply doesnt think that the state provides care that they want and both people have options that are plausible, no one goes without.  Oh wait we already had the ACA all we need now is a Medicare for all and allow the insurance companies to continue existing, in which case they will compete with free.  No one deserves to die or preventable diseases and no one deserves to be denied treatment because they cant afford it. FULL STOP. 

Here is a Wikihow on breaking down racism. 

https://www.wikihow.com/Help-Reduce-Racism

Sources

www.dsausa.org/socialism_in_black_america_dl

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-socialism-in-europe/

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/hitler-and-the-socialist-dream-1186455.html

https://www.bustle.com/p/the-women-of-democratic-socialism-prove-the-movement-isnt-just-a-bunch-of-sexist-white-guys-78554

https://www.vox.com/2016/2/4/10918710/berniebro-bernie-bro

http://sfbayview.com/2011/02/what-happened-to-black-wall-street-on-june-1-1921/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/02/socialism-young-americans-bernie-sanders

http://www.ebony.com/black-history/the-destruction-of-black-wall-street-405

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/rachel-decoste/racism-in-canada_b_6401578.html

http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/society/income-inequality.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

http://cphpost.dk/opinion/does-denmark-have-a-racism-problem.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2017/05/03/the-clear-connection-between-slavery-and-american-capitalism/#b788f1e7bd3b

Here is a Wikihow on breaking down racism. 

https://www.wikihow.com/Help-Reduce-Racism

MGTOW. Because How Dare Women Be People

MGTOW; Men Going Their Own Way is something that recently crossed my path and on the surface it just seems a little silly.  I mean they could just be single, and accept that choice however they aren't actually happy.  They are the vegetarians that always want a steak and judge you and complain that other people eat meat.  No one actually cares that these men are dropping out of the race. Women get it, it sucks sometimes and is easier to just not do it. Honestly though they are doing us a favor.  But maybe the term sit down and shut up applies here. 

So there are men who want to not have relationships with women as a result of their bad experiences.  Fine.  They dont want kids. Fine.  They dont even like women.  Still actually fine.  The line they cross is in visceral reactions.  There is an uncomfortable emphasis on denying rape.  MGTOWs  think they might as well not have sex because it protects them from rape allegations. As opposed to you know not being rapey.  Dont touch women who dont tell you that you can touch them, dont have sex with women you haven't established consent with.  This isnt that complicated. They are literally swearing off women on the grounds that they cant not rape us. 

The next level is that they think that women only use them because they have to pay child support and alimony. In reading their threads and blog posts and looking over the website. I have to notice that there is definite lack of self reflection. Interesting since they posit that they promote male self owner ship. Which explains a lot they haven't evolved with the rest of in terms of owning people, their concessions to feminism are in their minds just flipping the script.  So they are mad at feminism for something they are doing to themselves.  They set the expectations in their own relationships and when women then dont agree or dont act according to their expectation they cant handle it. Not one of them say "I was not good to my wife"  They assert that women cheat and literally complain that women want their time.  There are women who are not great people for sure. However it takes 2 to tango. their marriage not being successful was most likely a mutual destruction, and their sexism a key catalyst.

The harsh reality of these men is that they are shirking the expectation that they be full fledged adults and have equal and fulfilling relationships with women.  There are literally other fish in the sea. There are plenty of men who will be there and have genuine relationships and dropping out makes it easier to find them.  Sadly there is a void of maturity you can see in their responses.  They want to leave women behind but they dont women to leave them.  They think that feminism is to blame for all the problems between men and women, but fault women for reliance on men while expecting it.  Truth be told these men dont really know what they stand for.

When you go to the MGTOW website, the section on the history describes a phenomenon that has been there always since Jesus.  SINCE JESUS! The irony is how angry they get when a person calls it a movement.  Despite the website having posters that promote the ideas and they use the specific word phenomenon. So there is a display that the movement lacks the grasp of words, but it gets better, they compare the movement to fire, explaining that fire is always there.  So now you get to see they dont get science either.  Fire is a chemical reaction, there has to be a chemical change for fire to happen, as well as the law of conservation of energy. The energy is always stored and then is transferred and converted into being fire but that doesnt mean fire is always there. The entire metaphore to describe their MOVEMENT is wrong.

Mostly I am cool with this. these men can continue to active ignore women.  Again they aren't so good at words.  Ignoring by definition is active you cant ignore something unless you know its happening. The definition of ignore is a refusal to take notice or acknowledge. So they can run away from #metoo and the gynocentric laws that expect them not to rape women and take care of their kids. The world will be fine without them.  I know this is harsh, but really they are punishing women by not having sex with them, how self important can you be?