UNBLOCKED VERSION: Obama Says America Needs Soul Searching on Gun Violence: Will Obama Support Gun Control Before the Election?

As my answer I'd like to reprint my thoughts from January 11, 2011, if I may, which were typed just three days after the Tuscon shooting on a question posed on this very site, in response to a poll entitled 'Should We Ban All Guns?', because I feel it best bridges the gap between what is on the one hand my intrepid pro-2nd Amendment stance, and on the other my heartfelt desire to have everyone beat these Satanic, handheld death machines into plowshares, and to not learn violence anymore:

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Ultimately, someday - as soon as possible, although it will likely be a long while - I think we'd all like to live in a society that was free of guns and violence. That's the goal then that we should all work toward. It seems pretty simple to me: If that would be ideal, then that needs to be our mutual goal as a nation.

The answer, in my mind, the means to this end, is not banning guns incrementally, but rather incrementally creating the societal conditions in which guns become unnecessary. Eliminating root causes (of anything negative) is infinitely superior to trying to fix problems after the fact. If we, as I said somewhere on here last night, began repealing our drug laws for instance, we'd remove the artificially-high profit motive and thus eliminate practically all the gang and cartel violence, and much of the gun trafficking along with it (we'd also remove drug dealers from around our kids' schools and playgrounds, and empty approximately 1/3 of the prisons - inmates who were not-violent drug offenders, who only become hardened by incarceration and commit more crimes, including violent/gun-related crimes). The money spent on the war on drugs and housing these inmates (which is astronomical) could then be spent on drug prevention, and rehabilitation programs, and we'd create a commensurate number of working, tax-paying citizens in the process who will not commit gun or other violence in the long-term.

I'm off-topic, but not really. This is just one example of how we can incrementally remove the *need* and *desire* for guns, in a way that leaves the 2nd Amendment completely untouched. I'd also look very hard at some of the progressive solutions that have been decried for so long, by so many. Does anybody realize that - another quick example - under the Conyers/Kucinich health plan that was sidelined last year in favor of this monstrosity we have now, which few people like - their H.R. 676, universal Medicare for all - Jared Loughner would have had not just the full health, eye care and dental, but also complete *mental* health coverage? Would it have averted the Tuscon tragedy specifically? Would he have taken advantage of it and gotten help, in his own particular instance? I don't know the answer. But I do know that a large, large number of people all across the country who have similar mental issues *would*, before we have to read about their mental health issues in local newspaper front pages, detailing their arrest and the number of people murdered or wounded by them. Such guaranteed, basic care, as a right, would give people who have these types of problems the understanding that society values them, that they have basic dignity and are worthwhile citizens. I have to believe that things like this are the reason the crime rate is so low in other industrialized countries, whether or not - or to whatever extent - they've outlawed guns.

Now Mr. King from New York wants to ban guns within 1,000 feet of federal buildings. Will this really help? Could this *possibly* prevent an already disturbed assailant (who was left, by society, to become disturbed) from committing a gun crime - a shooting - once he is mentally set on it? No. To prevent any possibility of future shootings we'd have to turn the entire 1,000-ft. radius around every federal building into a military zone, and that would cost more than the preventive solutions I'm endeavoring here to describe.

In summary, it's a long-term goal, but eliminating poverty and lack, and with it the perceived need, the perceived desperation, out of which individuals act in violent ways, *that* is the type of gun control we should be working toward, and such doesn't seem at first sight to have anything to do with guns. It does. It's idealistic, it's not going to come together tomorrow or next week, but with every root cause we're able to weaken or eliminate, we prevent violence, in measure, and save lives.