Iznogud said:
And people with guns can kill people a lot faster and more efficiently than people armed with blunt objects or stabbing tools.
Around a third of the population will experience a mental disorder at some point in their life. Sometimes the consequence are fatal to the individual, and sometimes they are fatal to others. The danger posed to others by someone with mental problems is magnified if they have easy access to lethal weapons.
Spree killings have happened in the UK, but they are rare. A more common scenario is someone with schizophrenia stabbing someone to death. When this happens, the assailant is usually quickly overpowered and usually there is only one victim. Had they had a firearm, its more likely there would have been multiple victims and they would have been more difficult to overpower.
Incidents like these are horrific. But to be honest there's not much we can do about them. If you restrict the sale of firearms, they are less likely to be used in cases like these. But in the case of the US, the cats out of the bag. Getting hold of guns is never going to be that difficult. It might have put him off, or he might have just bought guns another way. Maybe he would have run into the cinema with a knife and killed less. Maybe he would have blown up the cinema and killed more. Nobody knows, but the evidence from other countries with strict gun control laws suggests that the absence of guns leads to fewer incidents like this, and lower death tolls when they do happen.
The way I see it - if you champion gun ownership, you have to accept that killings like these can and will happen. They are a consequence of people having access to firearms, and there's little to nothing you can do about it. You can't guarantee that a good, responsible gun owner won't turn bad or mad in the future.
If you are against gun ownership, you can draw a little comfort knowing that you're much less likely to be shot, but are perhaps more likely to be beaten or stabbed instead.
