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I'd actually argue that guns don't enable these egregious acts, they're just a popular tool. If someone wants to kill a bunch of people there are lots of ways of doing it. Guns are fixed in the imagination because we've evolved to be specifically good at modeling intentional, face-to-face interpersonal violence. See action movies.



Why doesn't the data back that up then? Do you really think that toddlers blow their own heads off because America has an iherently murderous identity and it has nothing to do with reckless access to guns?


It doesn't seem like you've done the work of actually engaging with the data. Toddlers don't blow their own heads off at any appreciable rate. There are a few hundred "accidental" firearms deaths in the U.S., a nation of 330,000,000 people, in a given year (almost all of which are adults). Many of those are not really accidents (people who plan to commit suicide want insurance money, religious burial, etc.).


Your comment is 100% spot on. It's not the unhinged criminals with handguns and a couple rifles I am worried about. It's the single pissed off vet who drives a moving truck to a federal building packed to the brim with fertilizer.




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