Bithynian: Bithynian: With that being said, I think background checks can be helpful. But it needs to be a considered and thoughtful policy that resists knee-jerk decisions.

We have the infrastructure for a workable system. As we no longer treat the mentally ill in my state as actually patients, but rather as criminals, the correctional institutions have become the default mental hospitals. As a result, we have a database of all those who have come in contact with the state mental health system, which is pretty much all the seriously mentally ill. Obviously this would only be a start. There would need to be exceptions which could be easily arranged, as the contact doctor is listed, and there would need to be others added, though that too would have holes. This would have prevented the El Paso shooter from obtaining a gun if private sellers were required by law to have this database checked.

There is a problem I see re-occurring here, this lumbering gap of logic that will not be silenced, from the anti-gun control folks. It is one of those statements that is so obviously flawed it has to be repeated over and over to convince themselves. That is*, “This won’t stop gun violence.”* Duh. Can we get over that one. I hope no one is naive enough to buy that argument. Of course nothing will stop gun violence, but it is urgent that we do all we can to limit it gun violence. We will never stop gun violence, abortion, war, or sin. Yet it is important for use to value life enough to slow it down, to curb it, in any way possible.