Answering "to pro guns centrists and liberals, what amount is enough?"

 So, a liberal forum I sometimes view and post comment from had this specific question, and I decided to answer it, as I haven't really elaborated much on my stance on gun rights. But first, to present the question in full:

There seems to be a high amount of pro gun independents centrists and liberals on here.

https://www.nytimes.com/article/mass-shootings-2022.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

600 mass shootings this year alone and we are not in December. Some who die are kids of the future of not only America, but the world. Some target minorities such as the recent one in Colorado at the LGBT club. The Asian parlor, the Buffalo black owned supermarket. Is this your idea of a healthy country? Of freedom? At what point is enough enough?

 First of all, and this is one of the reasons I no longer post on the location this specific question came from, this person can shove their self righteousness you know where. This is a guilt trip. They're presenting a body count, and then shoving it in our faces and asking WHEN IS IT ENOUGH?!

Well, in order to present my specific moral framework on gun rights, we need to contextualize these statistics. First of all, let's focus on assault weapons, the big and scary weapons that most liberals seem to be focused on banning. Depending on definition, 38-513 people have died to mass shooters in 2020, out of 45,222 gun deaths. This is only 1% or so of all gun deaths in the US. To put things another way, from the same source, only 3% of firearm related murders are from assault weapons, with the overwhelming majority of stated deaths being from pistols. 

In other words, for all the notoriety mass shootings get, they are really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of gun deaths. Ya know how everyone screams about Chernobyl as a rallying cry against nuclear power despite it being the safest form of energy out there by the numbers? Yeah. That's what I feel like all of the focus on mass shootings are. They are high profile incidents that make national news and given there are enough incidents where there happens to be one every few days, the country feels like it's under the constant assault of mass shootings, but in reality, these are just a minor aspect of gun violence. 

Yet, liberals want to go nuts banning the things. They push for "assault rifle bans" although right wingers will quickly point out that the definition of what qualifies as an assault rifle is subjective and often there are rifles of similar capabilities not considered assault weapons. Then they want to limit the mag sizes to 10, despite most PISTOLS having 15 rounds these days. I can understand wanting to get rid of crap like drum mags and bump stocks, but honestly, I'm largely fine with anything up to a standard 30 round STANAG mag for assault rifles. People make emotional arguments about "but if they had 10 round mags that would save the 11th person shot"....ok, but what about 9 to save the 10th? What about 8 to save the 9th? What if we just forced people to load every round individually like an old musket or early bolt action rifle? I mean, when does it end? Don't get me wrong I get what they're saying, but it's like...really?  Idk, I just think given 15 is your standard 9mm pistol mag anything less than that is silly. Maybe I could compromise at like 20 rounds (since some pistols can carry that much with a standard mag), but that's about it.

Now, let's talk about gun violence. It IS a major problem. My city is a cesspit of gun violence and I know several people who have been shot and killed including someone from my high school, and someone from my old church when I was a christian. I live in the kind of neighborhood where you have to wonder, "gee, is it gun fire or fireworks?", when you hear loud pops. I've had my parents call the cops reporting gunshots only for the cops to find a neighbor across the street dead the next morning. Hell, my parents even had their car shot up earlier this year when two people decided to have a shoot out in front of the house. I live in kind of neighborhood where you've had those kinds of shoot outs only for kids to be shot by stray bullets flying through the living room window. National news doesn't cover these kinds of stories, only local ones do, but forgive me if I'm a little NUMB to the gun crisis we have.

Again, most gun violence is caused by handguns. And most guns are acquired ILLEGALLY. I know this is true in my area too as most gun violence is linked to gangs and drugs. And if they can acquire drugs illegally, often from overseas, what does that say about guns? If they can get drugs past the border patrol or coast guard, what does that say of guns? The fact is, you could go full on anti second amendment, ban it, torch it, and I'm not fully convinced we could ban gun violence. We're not Europe where that stuff is more tightly controlled. The US has a 2000 mile border with mexico and thousands of miles of coastline. Again if the drugs can get here, so can the guns. I'm fully of the opinion prohibition won't work.

It might take a chunk out of the crime stats, mind you, but it won't eliminate them or come even close to doing so. Also, I fear that it might cause other problems. For example, due to the insane violence in my area, some family members of mine did get guns...legally of course. For protection. Because the risk of being robbed or getting caught in the crossfire of some shootout is real. And you want a gun to protect yourself, from all of the people who have all of these illegal weapons and using them on each other. Taking away gun ownership would only harm many law abiders while not harming those intent to commit criminal acts anyway. 

And honestly? I kind of do believe in that whole "we need guns to protect ourselves from a tyrannical government" bit. I mean, admittedly, the most gun happy people are currently the people who are also the most sympathetic with authoritarianism push comes to shove, but regardless, I do support guns in case the legal system descends into tyranny. Likewise, I support guns to deter the government from doing that crap anyway. And while yes yes, i know the US military has tons of stuff all of the larpers with their AR15s and doomsday bunkers can't stand a chance against, I do believe in the right to bear arms and do believe that given the nature of asymmetrical warfare, yeah, we should give civilians a fighting chance.

This isn't to say I'm against all gun control. I do think there are a lot of loopholes in the law that can be plugged. Gun show loophole. Stricter mental health screening. Restricting guns from domestic abusers. And while I do believe that these ideas, done correctly, may not be enough as there should ideally be some due process to restricting firearms here, yeah, there are laws we could implement to fix gun violence somewhat. I do think that smart implementation of laws could reduce the amount of legally acquired weapons used to commit crimes, by filtering out some people who quite frankly should never have a gun themselves. 

However, that doesn't mean that I ain't regardless, a second amendment liberal, or a social libertarian who is pro second amendment. I do believe anyone who is legally qualified to have a firearm should be able to get one, and I don't support strictly limiting gun ownership relative to the status quo. This does not mean I support the NRA or am an "ammosexual" or whatever (my favorite term for right wingers obsessed with guns, you probably know what I'm talking about), but yeah, I am a second amendment lib, I do believe that the mass shooting crisis is overblown in terms of overall gun deaths, and while I do sympathize somewhat with the gun violence problem, I really am at a loss for how to fully SOLVE the problem without greatly restricting freedom here. While technically, given the harm principle, I could just say "guns should be illegal because they can harm others", my American nature and experiences in this world have made me a moderate in favor of gun ownership. I'm not saying there shouldn't be restrictions, but law abiding, mentally stable individuals should be able to purchase guns for protection, whether from the government, or the nutcases and criminals who acquire guns through less than legal means and are causing a significant portion of the gun violence going around. Again, if you just ban all guns, you're still gonna have a ton of gun violence, and now the people who are obeying the law won't be able to protect themselves from the criminals.