> We are not 3/4 of the way down the slope. If we were the US wouldn't have such high rates of gun ownership, because lots of people wouldn't have the right to own guns. Very few people in the states aren't able to own a gun. Very very few.

"Not able to own a gun" is the bottom of the slope. It's the final 1%. What we have now is an ineffective mess that does nothing but interfere with honest gun owners, particularly at the state level.

Different state prohibit different things. If you live on the East Coast and legally own a particular pistol, and you want to travel to Maine where it is also legal, you have to drive hundreds of miles around Massachusetts where they will arrest you for it.

Acquiring a permit can cost more than a hundred dollars for each renewal and require you to come in person to a government building during work hours on a weekday, raising the barrier to low income people or anyone without flexible working hours. Blue states do this knowing it will have that effect.

States require permits not only for purchasing but also possession, so low income black men are commonly charged with a felony because they live in a bad neighborhood and acquired a gun for self-defense, and either didn't know a permit was required there or couldn't afford one or let it expire or moved from one state to another or owned it before the law changed. Even though they were entirely eligible to own it -- and now they're not. And have just lost their job and are going to prison. If poverty is a root cause of violence, what are we doing here?

> Congress is undoing Obama's restriction on people who have someone taking care of their finances due to mental disability buying guns. The restriction wasn't that they couldn't own guns it was that they needed a bg check because idk maybe they are unfit to own one?

If you have a diagnosis by a mental health professional that someone is a danger to themselves or others then they get institutionalized and they are obviously not going to have access to a gun in a psychiatric hospital. If that isn't the diagnosis then on what basis are you justifying a background check for someone with e.g. dyscalculia?

Laws like that are also inherently dangerous because they discourage people with mental health issues from seeking treatment for fear that they will be penalized for it. Then you have more people with untreated mental health issues and yet they still have access to firearms. Doctor-patient confidentiality is a thing for a reason.

> Your view of gun control advocacy as a drum to get people into office? Seems highly cynical and mostly untrue to me.

Explain the focus on mass shootings, and especially mass shootings of white kids, which constitute a very small minority of all gun violence, juxtaposed with the high death toll from drug and gang-related gun violence, none of whose victims are commonly individually held up as a reason to pass gun control laws.

> Look at the democratic primaries. Bernie Sanders basically changed the subject whenever he was asked about gun control.

Bernie Sanders is from Vermont. It's like a New Hampshire Republican being pro-choice. Not a representative example.

And his needing to change the subject rather than defend his position, and Clinton's revisiting of it to damage him in the Democratic primary, is only proving the point.

> As for addressing the root causes of violence: my view is that gun ownership actually is one of the root causes of violence. Not the only one, not the biggest one (thats poverty), but one.

You believe that people not otherwise prone to violent crimes, given guns, would commit more violent crimes?