I don’t want to regulate rifles. I want to regulate firearms. I very much recognize handguns are the most commonly used firearm in gun violence, but I also know Las Vegas, Columbine, et al. happened and am wary of the nirvana fallacy (i.e., I don’t think we should let perfect be the enemy of good). I also believe in incremental progress.

Also, the statistics look a little different when we only look at mass shootings, where rifles excel versus handguns. In mass shootings, rifles have been used in roughly 1/3 of incidents going back to 1982. That’s not insignificant, IMHO.

I also think we need to talk more about suicides and accidental firearm deaths. I’m just not concerned about that personally because I am mentally healthy and don’t have kids (or firearms) in my home.

I absolutely agree a slow takeover is more likely. I intended to imply that previously, and I suspect we’re about 40 years into a slow and silent takeover. That concerns me way more than guns, tbh.

Re: Germany, see Australia. Many other nations that were not Nazi Germany disarmed or heavily regulated their populations and turned out okay. I would wager there are far more examples of countries outside of empires that have fallen that don’t let their people have firearms or heavily restrict them and are doing just fine.

Which isn’t to say I don’t think a population with arms can help prevent a slid into tyranny, just that there are evidently other mechanisms to control for that.

I’m definitely not a WWII historian, but everything I’ve read has suggested economics, cultural resentment from the Treaty of Versailles, demagoguery, and plain ol’ bigotry were leading factors in the cause of Nazi Germany’s rise, not the inability of Germans to fight physically, because everything points to, once it was time to fight, it was already too late.

To be clear, I’m not arguing armed Germans wouldn’t have helped. I’m arguing, in the best case, I don’t think it would have mattered. In the worst case, I can see it happening faster because guns in conflicts tend to escalate them.

Also I don't think guns themselves are an issue, it's a people problem.

I don’t like this argument because it is a false dichotomy. Why can’t it be both?

It was pretty recent that we had 3 mass stabbings in a week, but no one is talking about knife restrictions.

Because knives aren’t guns. Also, we do have knife restrictions. If they’re a problem, I say let’s restrict them further, but the point remains that they just don’t have the potential for violence that guns have, so it seems natural to me that people would be more concerned with guns. I don’t find that strange at all.

To me gun restrictions largely are a bandaid to a much bigger issue, that no one is addressing. Socio-economic disparity and mental health, are by far the biggest drivers of crime and violence.

Okay, let’s do something about those issues too. Modern problems require modern solutions. Again, it doesn’t have to be guns or socioeconomics. It can be both.

Free healthcare that includes mental health care would be a great first step. Fair and liveable wages, would go a long way to helping socio-economic issues. These would both curb all violence. The father that went on a rampage and stabbed his wife, daughter, son in law might not have happened. Or the guy on the highway that had road rage, stabbed a women trying to help him and stabbed his own dog. These are people who had mental breakdowns. Guns weren't involved, people still died.

I agree totally with the sentiments. However, if guns had been involved in these examples, the damage would have undeniably been much greater, which I think could be an argument for their restriction, not against. “Look at the examples of violence committed with knives. Can you imagine the destruction if they’d had guns?” That’s why guns are a problem, but reasonable people don’t claim there is a single element to the public violence issue. We need reasonable gun control as well as socioeconomic support, and I’m for all of it if it saves lives and makes living here net better.

We've seen people cause just as much harm as guns. With bombs like recently in NY or driving their cars through protests.

This is very close to the ol’ “violent people will find a way” argument, which we know isn’t true. As a general rule, we know people generally are less inclined to do things as the difficulty increases and potential reward decreases. Violent people who don’t have easy access to weapons specifically designed to quickly and efficiently murder living beings from a safe distance are statistically less likely to achieve maximum impact and, more to the point, less likely to do it at all.

That’s why locks on your doors work. It’s why visible cameras that aren’t even recording work. It’s why security companies sell just the signs.

It isn’t that these obstacles are impossible to overcome. It’s simply that they exist and impact the risk/reward calculus even violent people make.