That is regrettably the short form, the one everyone uses for either for support or to point at. Lacking the specifics your question makes total sense. But the answer is easy... you don't make a shovel when you can buy one, and people in other countries do go on shooting sprees, like that Breivik fellow. One shooting spree versus maybe two a year here, but we outnumber Norway 60:1, hence one incident in thirty years equates to two a year here.... except we haven't had two or three a year, we've had less than one a year, 20 in 30 years, a frequency of 1 per 1.5 years or 1 per 50 year per 10 million people. Sweden, population about 10 million, had one 18 years ago, thus has a higher rate of spree killing than the US, France, population a quarter of ours, has had 3 in the last 20 years, the equivalent of the US having 18 spree killing in 30 years, 90% of ours. The UK had 5 in about 25 years. The Netherlands had one last year. Many countries we have no data on, or unreliable data, but what we can see of US-parallel culture and wealth with gun controls laws is no significant increase or decrease in spree killings. Since the Uiryeong massacre of 1982, 57 dead in S. Korea by a disgruntled cop (kinda hard to keep weapons from them) you've had 20 shooting sprees in the US, and 18 in Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom... same time, nearly the same population, not sure who has more total there. People play games with the data, both sides, you can cherry pick total deaths or by weapon or etc and have gun laws helping or show the opposite, but the data seems to come up as roughly even. Craziness occurs everywhere and black markets or legal stores make it easier to acquire than home manufacture. Same as LSD or meth, you can make them, easier to buy them, but if you really want one, you will get one.



Training and licensing are other stories, and a different debate in many ways. I would be open for instance to mandatory training... for everyone, in more or less the same way we do gym class, exemptions for those with moral objections rather than 'opt in' perhaps. If virtually everyone is licensed then mandatory licensing isn't as risky of being singled out. Same, psych evaluations might be acceptable to me but only if provided cheap or free and by third party groups monitored by groups like the ACLU. Remember, to those of us who don't favor gun laws, hunting is irrelevant, it's defense from robbers and government that matters. Simply put, we're willing to accept these spree killings, which don't seem to get stopped by laws anyway, on the same grounds we're willing to accept all the deaths from traffic, alcohol abuse, STDs and other things where mental instability or recklessness causes much of the death but the 'cost' of preventing them is seen as too high, in human and moral terms. But that, again, is a different debate, my post is really about explaining how high-capacity magazines or automatic weapons can not be regulated effectively, not if gun laws are moral or if total gun bans would decrease murder rates. Guns will not be banned in the US, but automatic weapons or high capacity magazines can be, so I'm discussing how banning those would be wasted effort.



But I never said that, and not to be picky, but you didn't read my post, which again had to do with auto/semi weapons and ammunition capacity. Guns don't kill people, people kill people and guns are very good ways of aiding in that task. People repeat these phrases till they lose all meaning, I agree, but it's a true statement. It is the insane or criminal mind that commits murder, and their effectiveness will be based on luck, planning, resources, and determination. Remove or limit any leg of that table and you hinder the ability to kill. But we can't do anything about luck, or planning, or determination. But we want to stop killings, so we look at resources, because it's the only one we can touch. Unfortunately some of the means for doing that which seem logical - like banning high capacity mags - really aren't. I oppose virtually gun restrictions but if people want them, they should pick ones that achieve maximum effect with minimum restriction of freedom.