Red flags
Not really the problem
The second amendment of the USA is designed to prevent tyranny by having a well armed militia. I never thought that was a very coherent idea. Who would be organizing the militia?.
Who would they be defending themselves against?
During the American Revolution the answer was pretty clear - the tyrant was the king in England.
By the time of the civil war the question was pretty murky - the South was saying that the North was being tyrannical by not defending the right of rich people to hold slaves. IIRC an issue was that the South wanted to force the North to return runaway slaves to their slavers - in the name of freedom.
Into that cultural mix we have the idea of the Wild West. I don't know if the Wild West ever actually existed but my childhood was full of the Wild West presented on TV. There were good guys against bad guys and they all had guns on their hips and the good guys were always the quickest on the draw - and smarter too.
Science fiction contributed to the myth - I think it was Heinlein in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" proposed the idea that an armed society is a polite society. The idea being that if you diss anyone they must might shoot you so you don't diss
Imagines a bunch of drunken cowboys with pistols on their hips getting into a brawl :-)
Where is Kitty when we need her to keep the peace? :-)
The upshot of that history is that lots of people think they need to personally own guns as simple prudence in a crazy world.
So - Much more than most civilized countries - America is awash in guns - parents give guns to mentally disturbed kids in the hopes of stopping their whining - the Crumbley's saw the gun as a sort of pacifier. (how ironic is that?)
Reasonable people say that crazy people should not have guns.
I agree
And in a society awash in guns how do we prevent crazy people from having guns.
Of course that means having a clear definition of who is crazy and who is not?
And it requires everyone from physicians to neighbors to report on crazy behavior.
What could possibly go wrong?
Perhaps it would be better to push back on the proliferation of guns in America.
If assault weapons aren't available on the market then crazy people can't use them to kill kids in school
What so you think ?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.