politics

Well, hey, I'm glad you asked!

Let's start with something that should be obvious, but isn't: mass murders are a tiny percentage of all the murders in the US annually. Seriously. If you remove ordinary crime (e.g., gang violence, robberies, fight at a party, etc.) and domestic violence from the mass shootings, you end up with a total of about 100 people killed in 2022, out of a total of 19,200 murders (assuming I'm reading the most recent numbers correctly), or about .5% of all murders.

Murder rates are, in turn, dwarfed by suicides; there are typically 2-3x as many completed suicides as there are murders of all types.

When you look at murder rates broken down by weapon type, rifles account for approximately 5% of gun homicides. (Although 32% of the firearm homicides don't specify what kind of firearm is used, it seems likely that it roughly approximates the other numbers.) So it's clear that rifles--including AR-15 rifles--are not the primary driver of gun homicide numbers, or even a particularly large one.

So, given that gun deaths are suicides, and most gun homicides are some subset of ordinary crime (rather than mass-murder/active shooter events), the greatest effects are going to be seen in measures that reduce crimes in general.

So, if you really want to reduce the overall death rate, the first and biggest thing to do would be to have some form of national healthcare that is able to quickly and efficiently get help to people that are suicidal.

If you want to reduce the murder rate, then you need to look at things that drive crime. I suspect that you'd get large reductions by focusing on significant reductions in income inequalities, elimination of poverty, national healthcare (including access to mental healthcare), education reform (esp. elimination of private/home/selective schooling, and properly funding public schools), criminal justice and policing reform, and housing that costs less than 25% of a single adult's take-home pay. Most ordinary crime is from desperation or hopelessness, and violence is a result of that ordinary crime. Beyond that, you'd need to look at ways of reducing or eliminating systemic racism and misogyny, as both are underlying motivators for racially- and gender-motivated crime. (Which partially goes back to public education.)

In order to prevent violence before it happens, without trampling on civil rights, we need to make society more equitable and just for everyone, and we need a strongly progressive tax system to pay for it, with the highest marginal tax rates going back to pre-Nixon levels.

I believe that "gun free zones" should only exist with the presence of robust security systems. Having an easily-entered school with little, if any physical security designated as a "gun free zone" makes it a target for the fringe minority of people who have a desire to commit mass murder.

I also think that more meaningful social improvements need to be made, including addressing housing affordability, wealth equality, access to affordable health care, and addressing the decades-long mental health crisis.

I won't ever be supportive of a ban on guns for the same reason the United States refuses to sign on to certain arms treaties (such as the ones against cluster munitions and land mines): I refuse to go along with anything that would limit my ability to defend myself. The government won't guarantee my safety, so why should I give up the most effective tool for preventing myself from being a victim of violence?