We appear have an increasing prevalence in the number of people with mental health illness here in the UK and elsewhere in the world…it seems to be a universal modern societal problem. It’s only in the USA though that those people who suffer from mental illness can have easy access to weapons, especially military grade automatic assault weapons! It seems the right to carry any and all types of arms and weaponry trumps the rights of children to attend school and ordinary citizens to go about their lawful peaceful business without the risk of being mown down by crazy people. This thinking is incomprehensible to most people across the world, the only exception to this are the gun lobbyists on the political right in America.

The mental illness at play, for this issue, is made-up from historic societal lore concerning the tool. Guns are deeply planted in our minds, now, and will need a few decades (at least) to lose the connotation of a needed tool. Further, that can only happen if fear becomes a minor issue because society is mostly tolerant and peaceful. Ban the ability for many rounds (I'd sell becoming better shots so a few should stop any criminal threat) and work at creating a society with little need of fear. Those decades will pay off and we will emerge from this terror with less kids dead than we killed in Iraq, or Vietnam, or even from COVID-19 callousness.

If we lose the concept of souls inhabiting a body that will be brought back to life when reunited with that soul, and instead take on the view of an eternal soul that inhabits many bodies, then death doesn't exist. It's a view which should make such losses easier to cope with. Murder is still an anti-social crime but it is not the end of the soul. If that's really what we love in another, their soul (or what they're made of), then that doesn't die. In a happier society we might be more inclined toward that POV. Beating grief (not death) will also solve a lot of mental illness which fears it.

@rainmanjr If you believe in a soul then what are you doing on this site? Regardless, the belief in continued existence after death may be comforting, but so is the belief that I will win the lottery next week. The only difference is that one of these beliefs is falsifiable and the other isn’t. Additionally, empirical evidence has strongly indicated that the “happier” a society is, the less inclined people are to be superstitious: to believe in the existence of souls and a hereafter, etc. But ultimately, the big problem here is that belief in an indestructible soul inhabiting an eternal “Forever” devalues the life you are currently living. After all, what is a lifespan of 60-90 years when compared to an imagined infinity?

@Marionville One additional thought. The 2nd Amendment to the American Constitution has been culturally mythologized to the point where it is treated to the reverence normally reserved for religious scripture. But if Roe vs. Wade can be struck down in order to save “lives” then why not apply the same logic here? Did bullets even exist when it was formulated? Would those who penned it have done so in light of the killing power of modern weaponry that came into existence long after the “wisdom” of this document was accepted?

@NostraDumbass Excellent points!

@NostraDumbass I have this theory, which tags along with my Zen Taoist practice, and I hadn't yet developed it when I joined this site. The word agnostic is not the same as Atheist, however, so that criticism is of no value. We even have a group devoted to Tao. For some time, now, I have argued that our soul is merely the original electrons in our neural network (before any synaptic activity began). Electrons, not diamonds, are forever.

@NostraDumbass So true. The 2nd Amendment was written when all guns were single shot weapons. How the hell should that still apply to all weapons, even ones that are automatic and hold clips of as much as 30 rounds?

@NostraDumbass All we have to do, for the immediate, is ban militias. We now have an Army, Marines, and Police so no longer need militias. That solves the 2nd Amendment problem.

@OldMetalHead Yup.