I am just sick about this stuff -- and so, apparently, is the USA

Between the freedumb of not getting vaccinated and the freedumb to bear arms they may eliminate themselves

Well, that's kind of a birdshot approach if you'll forgive the metaphor. We don't know that the 3 year old who died actually was the child of the gun owner, just as the person who gets sick and dies from contact with a willfully unvaxxed person may be an immune-compromised vaxxed person. A Darwin Award won't solve everything, alas.

Well, it will certainly help along the way.

I haven’t read one story of an immunocompromised person (unable to get vaccinated) dying from covid. Maybe they are hyper vigilant in their actions and precautions.

Apologies for the upvote beg, but please either visit the Politics stream to post about this utter horse*#%@ . You can boost my meme there imgflip.com/i/5jlp64 or post your own.

Well I, for one, have gone numb and don't value human life anymore.

Are we blaming the handgun, the five year old, or the moron who didn't properly secure the firearm?

If you answered, "The moron who didn't properly secure the firearm." then you are correct!

yeah, i don’t think we should ban guns, just ban idiots getting their hands on guns bc that’s how people get killed

I'm actually not as interested in blame as I am to a public health solution. Finding a person to blame and/or punish does nothing to bring the kid back OR prevent the next meaningless gun death.

From my point of view, gun deaths are a matter of behavioral health, like HIV deaths. We need to work as a society to find ways to reduce the harm and save lives.

No issues there. The issue is keeping them out of the hands of those who would, intentionally or inadvertently, misuse them. Therein lies our problem...

Well, yes, if only there were equivalently rich and powerful democracies who'd found ways to let people own guns without all the death . . .

The issue is principle. You do not punish or limit the many because you fear the few. That line cannot be crossed in a democracy. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to prevent gun violence; it just means we need to be more creative than, "Hur dur let's ban guns".

We dont need to unconstitutionally infringe the 2nd amendment to fix this, we just need to have more responsible firearm owners.

There are plenty of responsible firearm owners out there right now. If that was all it took, we'd be home free. But more than 3000 kids a year! This is a public health crisis, not an issue of personal responsibility.

Also: This is a BAD LOOK. If guns are that much more important to you than innocent human lives . . . maybe keep that to yourself.

Look, just because there are "plenty" responsible gun owners doesn't mean that all of them are. It really would be all it took to keep people safe if EVERYONE was a responsible, law abiding gun owner but of course, sadly, that will probably never happen, but we need to do more than use the idiotic, shallow view of just saying guns kill people, so get rid of guns.