I would rather live next to someone who didn't have a gun to be honest.
Background checks are good and will stop some but not exactly foolproof how did the Christchurch shooter get his weapons again? He had a class A gun licence and didn't he just order them online? Much like us he just needed to be part of a gun club and he had a genuine reason. e. He has obviously passed all of the background checks, was never on police watch lists. 50 people died and if banning semi automatics and the general public gun ownership saves another 50 people so be it but i feel its only a matter of time until something similar happens here
i should point out that it doesn't need to be a systemic trend of gun violence before we should act because if we can identify a trend its already to late to fix.
I can pull up the same link for the US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States
see a correlation there with Semis and massacres there? Especially in the last 10 years when racial tensions are so high?
I was having a read of this article posted earlier https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12215310 and it refers to the US:
Since 1970, more than 1.45 million people have died from guns, which is more than in all the wars in American history (1.4 million). Every day in the US, another 100 people die from gun violence and 300 more are injured, and the country now has more guns than people, the New York Times reports.
That paragraph is horrifying and i hope we never get to that stage