the wrong people have access to weapons that they should not have. If anyone can come up with a better way to keep us safe from the maniacs & felons please tell me/us how to do so.
The wrong people have had access to weapons they "should not have" since the rock became the first weapon. Though actually it predates that.
Nature equips us all with "weapons". The most important one is the human mind. This is "The Riddle of Steel" in barbarian fantasy stories. The sword (the steel) is nothing without the hand (the will) to use it.
Sheer physical strength is a weapon, if the will to use it is as such is there. There is nothing on Earth that cannot be uses/misused as a weapon if the will is there. This includes gravity.
Next point is, who are the "wrong people"???
The only uniform and fair standard I can see to use is that the "wrong people" are people who have already done the "wrong thing".
In that regard they self identify. And any and all claims about who are the wrong people, when those people have not done the wrong thing is an opinion, a value judgement that mortals are not qualified to make.
What would be your criteria for determining they are the "Wrong people", if they have done no harm? Physical appearance?? Ethnic group? Religion? DNA scan?? No matter what you chose, it's a LIE. And its compounded by the lie that safety can be assured and guaranteed if we "only do. xxxxx"
Less "enlightened" societies had a response to the "maniacs & felons" (and I take issue with "felons" but that's another discussion) their response to people who did harm was to remove them from society. Often permanently.
This does not, and cannot prevent harm, nothing can, and they knew that. But it did prevent those people they caught from ever doing it AGAIN.
If you think prohibiting weapons results in guaranteed safety, go camp out in any prison, and see how safe you are.
To me. one of the underlying flaws in gun control is the focus on what people MIGHT do, using up resources that could otherwise be used to deal with what people DID do.
And then there's the whole assumption of "guilty until proven innocent" thing.
It seems an outmoded concept today, but rather than restrict inanimate objects because of what some individual might do, why don't we accept the fact that there is no way to read minds, no crystal ball revealing the future, and nothing we do to people who have broken no laws and committed no crimes has ANY effect on the people who have, or who will?