[stephenhuey]

That's simplistic. Actually, to better understand the situation you must follow the money. Many 2nd Amendment supporters are reasonable, but unfortunately, over decades their casual support has been utilized by lobbyists whose goals do not necessarily align with many supporters. The challenge is to communicate that message in a way that reaches everyone.

[WhyOhWhyQ]

We just need to reduce the number of guns. I've not met a 2nd amendment supporter who understands this basic idea. They are always convinced one of the following retorts should be the end of the conversation (they also proudly think you've never heard these cliched arguments):

- They have knife stabbings in China. (Yes. A gun is more lethal.)

- A bad guy can still get a gun. (Yes.)

- Hand guns are more dangerous than rifles. (This means let's reduce both.)

- The gun doesn't kill people. People kill people. (This means let's reduce how many people have guns.)

- Mass shootings aren't the majority of gun deaths. (Let's reduce the total gun deaths and mass shootings then.)

Come up with as many ridiculous retorts as you like. If you had reduced the total number of guns, most of the shootings could not have happened.

[stephenhuey]

This list is spot on, and the biggest fuel on the fire is the problem of huge financial incentives. I can assure you there are some supporters out there who do understand. Some who do not understand have certainly been fed talking points by entities who may or may not care about the intent of the 2nd Amendment exactly, but definitely do care about making money.

[_menelaus]

Don't you think the populace needs to be armed though? I think its a given that eventually the government will be intolerably corrupt and a revolution will be necessary. Nobody denies that less guns -> less shootings. The logic is that some amount of shootings are tolerable to preserve democracy, and that if our goal is to reduce mass shootings, social reforms intended to improve mental health are the correct choice.

Imagine you are in charge of a monkey enclosure. The monkeys sometimes go crazy and kill each other with rocks. You can:

A: Remove all rocks. Monkeys stay suicidally miserable but can't inflict harm as easily. Problem solved?

B: Mitigate conditions that make them suicidally miserable. Some say its impossible, but then again, just a generation ago the monkeys had rocks without frequent violence.