Of course, these are only my opinions, but I believe they do have merit...

For one thing, violence in America is much deeper than the general populace cares to examine or is wiling and capable of discussing. Frankly, one reason for this is that the general populace resorts to rationales, beliefs or solutions that are not related, have no possibility of having an overwhelming success or have no relationship to the problem at hand.

And BOTH sides of the equation do this - for example, right now we are having religious zealots making the claim that the reason there is so much violence is because God has been taken out of schools and on the other hand, is the extreme gun control crowd that seems to ignore the 2nd Amendment.

Really, God out of schools is the problem? Right. And no court in the land would ever allow the government to confiscate ALL firearms.

As for your suggesting about video/mass media violence, to my knowledge, there has not been any verifiable study showing a CAUSAL relationship between violent media and criminal behavior.

And to illustrate the fallacy of such a claim, have you seen Asian media culture when it comes to the portrayal of violence? If these video games and popular media CAUSED violence, then where are the violent acts in Japan or China?

Now, here's a baffling thing to me - most places that allow waterfowl hunting with shotguns (other than double barrel ones) require the shotguns have a "plug" so only so many shells can be placed in the magazine. Now, have hunters screamed up and down about their gun rights being violated? Or, how about how lead pellets have been outlawed because of toxicity to waterfowl, to be replaced with steel? Again, what have these "restrictions" led to other than what intended? (I find it quite odd that here in America people don't complain too much about gun control measures to safeguard wildlife, but by God, it's seize the guns when it comes to protecting human life).

And let's look at the battles the NRA has fought against - areas where it has been shown firearms from these battles do end up in the hands of criminals:

Lax gun show selling laws and straw purchases (where a person goes into a store and legally buys firearms, but then is doing it for someone else).

One study showed where one seller/business had multiple stores where many, many of the legally sold firearms were used in crimes due to straw purchased. But the NRA fights this, as does it the increased tracking of firearms.

Why is this? And WHY is America so gun crazy to begin with? And why are Americans so afraid? On top of this, WHY are white males so afraid?

These are questions we have to examine and ask and seek truthful answers to.

But as a nation we will not. So really, why bother even trying to have a sense based discussion on firearms and violence?

Next, someone will bring up the gun violence in N. York and Chicago and their draconian gun laws while always forgetting to point out that guns flow into these places because states with the least amount of restrictive gun laws border places like this.

I guess my main point is that guns and violence end up getting drowned by the droning ignorance of the battling sides instead of really figuring out how to deal with these issues......