Assassin7

Yeah... It'll probably end badly. That said, Im going to toss in my 0.02NZD.

One of the repeated themes I see being voiced by gun control opponents is "its in the Constitution", as if such things cannot be further amended or repealed, and the Founding Fathers had a better understanding of gun control then any modern politician could. Many of them dont even seem to realise that amendments can be repealed, or that the Franklin and Co. probably had no idea of what gun ownership in the 21st century would look like. Then theres the lunatic fringe who believe that gun control is an attempt to institute a fascist/communist (depending on which historical comparison they prefer) government.

The other problem is that even if you did change the gun control laws, there are still so many guns out there that the change wouldnt be felt for years, and politics is almost never about the long game.

Karl nailed it.

We need to let the conservatives have whatever they want on gun control and abortion for now and deal with more serious issues like the economy because you can't reason with them. Besides, if you let them have all that pointless stuff that FOX News trained them to froth at the mouth over, how many of them would still vote for the Republican Party that's outsourcing all their jobs (ignoring, of course, that Hillary will probably do the same once Bernie supporters give up, realizing that they can't do anything once she's elected)? Once you get rid of that big political money pit that is the fabricated fight over pointless fabricated issues like gun control and abortion that should have been resolved a while ago, they'll go away.

The thing you foreigners have to understand is that Republicans (the really far-right party whose primary Trump has won) have a brainwashed base - they all listen to and unquestioningly believe FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and whatever other wingnut of the day it is. They live in an echo chamber, a bubble, where everything is solved by free markets, religion trumps science, and the 1950s were a golden utopia where black people knew their place and evil scheming commie liberals guided by Satan were nowhere to be seen. You think I'm exaggerating to satirize them? Oh no, this is genuinely how they think. It's depressing. It's not impervious, however. I don't know what would happen if the bubble disappeared, but I think that they might revert to thinking like functional human beings.

To break the bubble, however, you need to break the back of the big business cash cow funding the entire bubble and using it to elect politicians who want to outsource jobs before you can do anything about small issues like gun control. The entire debate is trumped up (pun not intended) as a cover to make the differences between the Democrats and Republicans look bigger than they really are.

I'd normally rely on Hanlon's Razor (never attribute to malice what can adequately be attributed to stupidity) to dismiss such as delusional conspiracy thinking, but it wouldn't surprise me from the Koch Brothers (who are entirely responsible for bankrolling the creation of the Tea Party and have basically brought all the Republican politicians along with a few other billionaires). They are smart and know that the anti-labor, pro-business positions packaged with the bubble-friendly positions in Republican candidates generate huge returns for their conglomerate.

Is the state of gun control a serious and saddening issue in the US? Yes. Should something be done about it? Of course. Can anything be done about it? Not now, when it has the force of the entire echo chamber and the biggest players in the marketplace behind it.

the thing I cant wrap my head around is that I speak to so many Americans that say "I don't leave my house without my gun"

and I can't even make sense of this. in NZ if you are seen walking down the street with a gun you will have the riot police on you in 10 mins, im not even exaggerating. 

and then the fact that you see a new mass shooting every other week in america, compared to the fact that in most other western countries the last mass shooting was a couple of years ago at least, but when you ask everyone in america is like "NOPE THERES NO PROBLEM HERE"