Oh, and also, I take issue with the idea that it's rampant mental illness that's causing the majority of gun homicides in this country. Joe Hill isn't and wasn't mentally ill. Neither was George Zimmerman, Michael Dunn, Theodore Paul Wafer or Raul Rodriguez. The majority of gun homicides in this country aren't the mass shootings that capture the headlines, it's the steady flow of one-on-one violence. Out of nearly 11,500 gun homicides each year, only a small percentage of them are mass shootings (mass shooting defined by the FBI as more than four people killed at the same time.)

The statistical rate of gun casualties is actually dropping. However, the rate of gun suicides is increasing.

Yes, I think the availability of effective mental health care would help. But what it would do most is to decrease the number of people who take their own lives with guns. It wouldn't have much of an impact on gun homicides.

Solutions? I don't have 'em. I don't have enough in-depth knowledge of the issues to come up with any. Like I've said, my gut feeling is that we're just too steeped in and accepting of violence, and any change has to address that issue.

Not to circle back to previous threads, but you should see some of the euphemisms in drugstore romance novels, that one is decidedly on the list but oddly enough not one of the most creative, LOL!

IMO, the biggest part of the problem is the American love of violence in general combined with a slavish devotion to a misinterpretation of the 2nd amendment. We Americans can't get enough violence. Our entertainment is saturated with it, from sports to movies and television shows. The glorification of blood and guts is shocking if you can detach enough to sit back and really take a look at it.

For a personal example, when I was 14 and my brother was 12 the movie The Godfather was shown on network television for the first time. There were only minor edits to the film made. My parents agreed to let us watch, and we got to see everything: Luca Brasi being garotted, a decapitated horse's head in a bed, Sonny being gunned down at the toll booth. But during the wedding, when Sonny was banging the bridesmaid up against the door, my mother reached down from up on the couch and covered my eyes. My father did the same for my brother. (Mom and Dad didn't realize that I'd already read the book when they had it in the house when it was first published, but they never did catch on to just how precocious I was.)

My parents were not stupid people. But in their mind it was perfectly ok for a child to see the horrible, intense violence depicted in The Godfather (the greatest movie of all time, IMO, but that's for another thread I guess.) But the sex was verboten. Children must be protected from knowing about an enjoyable act that two consenting adults can do.

Is it any wonder that we're so effed up as a society? And that the first reaction of many people is to shoot first and ask questions later?

Guess my sarcasm funny didn't come across, that WAS a joke. 

I wish she would run, but she's said she won't. She'd be my first choice in 2016.