Some people will say that there are 500 pages of material to discuss American gun control or to argue against it. Germans tend to get hyped-up on the topic because of the type of discussion led by German public-TV and the journalists associated with it. So my explanation is geared toward that German, and to make them understand how this topic is built. There are basically four pieces to the discussion.
1. For whatever reason you might ponder upon, the original construction team of the American Constitution wrote in a piece of plain script that says Americans will have the right to keep and bear firearms. It also states that a well regulated militia is necessary for the security of a free state. That's it. It's not very wordy, and it really has a thousand interpretations over what it might mean in 2017.
In 1791, it was supposed to mean that no government entity could come upon a community and confiscate the weapons of local citizens....something that the British Army did in the Revolutionary War period.
For the next hundred-and-fifty years....there was no real challenge to the two-line piece in the Constitution. I know....it's amazing that no one saw a reason to challenge it.
Then you get into the period of 1910 to present, and technology development brought this two-line piece of the Constitution into the challenge period.
Out of World War I....the machine gun and automatic weapons were developed. Some federal laws were developed to keep machine guns out of the general public. Criminals in the 1930s? They procured the machine guns anyway.
After WW II....more technology developments occurred, and various weapons....like the M-1 Carbine came to the general public.
After Vietnam....there was interest in a civilian version of the M-16 (AR-15)....which came in the form of a semi-automatic.
Over the past twenty-five years, technology has continued to make this a difficult subject politicians. Even the subject of silencers comes up now.
In another twenty years? That's the curious thing. Laser weapons are not that far off, and lightning-bolt type weapons aren't that crazy anymore. You could ban guns and find that the mad scientist folks quietly inventing sonic-type weapons which are just as big of a threat.
2. There are five basic groups in this gun-control discussion: (a) the no-guns-period group, which wants a total and absolute ban. (b) The hunter-farmer crowd which wants shotguns and hunting rifles readily accepted and won't go along with a total ban. (c) The urban dweller in Memphis, Atlanta, Dallas, etc....who has a pistol in the car and the house, and wants to protect himself because the cops can't do the job. (d) The Constitutional crowd who thinks the weapons are the only way to ensure the government does not go beyond it's boundary and impose an iron-fist upon society. (e) The fix-it-someway crowd who believes that you can write a script to this problem, with three or four things changed or banned, and the mass murders/shootings go away.
Typically with the last group, the reality that you have federal and state laws on the books to forbid murder or shooting people....doesn't really figure into the mix of laws that are on the books and have no real affect. They assume more laws would fix things. This is also the group that probably thought in the 1910 to 1920 era that prohibiting alcohol sales in America would fix everything. A dozen years after 1920....they agreed their Constitutional rule didn't fix much of anything, and undid it.
The five groups are at the heart and soul of this entire argument.
3. The cities which have made local legislation and developed tougher regulation? Well...the general facts state that the tougher regulation had almost no real effect. There were people applauded for their legislation and effort but generally...these localized efforts were simply 'eye-candy'. You can go to Washington DC, Baltimore, and Chicago to find legislation didn't help much.
4. So then you address the German, and ask about the German method. There really isn't any serious gun-control in Germany. Any citizen can have a weapon....if they go and apply for a 'license'. There are five or six stumbling blocks, and I would personally make the estimation that around 10-to-15 percent of German society would be unable to get a weapon license. If you applied the same stumbling blocks in American society? I'd take a guess that roughly 10-to-15 percent of Americans would not be able to procure or own a gun. But to reach that point, you'd have to rewrite the Constitution with a six-to-eight line piece, delete any mention of a well-armed militia, and put people with heavy medication or drug usage into a tight spot that they'd be denied the right/license.
You could poll a combined group of working-class Republicans and Democrats, and find that the bulk simply wouldn't agree to that type of legislation or Constitutional rewrite.
So there you go. If a German went off to Memphis and spent a month walking around there....by the end of the period, if you suggested he'd be there for the rest of his life....he'd likely go and buy a gun for his house and car. It's the simple reality of the landscape that you live around.
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