One thing I used to think, long ago, was that suicidal people were constantly suicidal. Or that people who murdered would always be on the knife-edge of murdering someone.
One of the biggest reasons I want it to be really hard to get a gun is that over the years, it’s become really clear that my conception of suicidal/murderous people was wrong.
I think it’s significantly *more correct* to say that these things are highly context-dependent. A suicidal person may be contemplating ending their life for a long time. Let’s call that a low-energy state. But the moment where they *do* it is a point where their thoughts cross a threshold where it’s worth whatever difficulty to do the job. A high-energy state. Same, perhaps, with murder.
The problem with a gun is it makes these things so trivial, it lowers the amount of “energy” required to a point where basically anyone can cross that line at any time.
An argument can cross that line in the heat of the moment, even if at *no other point in their life* they’ve crossed that line, and instantaneously, you’ve got a dead person and a ruined life. And it’s *wildly* harder to cross the line if the tool is a knife, or a bat, or your fists, because the amount of energy required to actually do the deed is *so* much higher. Same goes with murder. Particularly mass-murder.
I want gun control because I want that line to be harder to cross. I acknowledge that it’ll be an extraordinarily unlikely event to be able to make that line uncrossable. And I still think it’d be massively valuable to make it *as hard as possible* to cross.