Following up on the last post about the legalization of weapons. A topical issue: what about mentally unstable people who own weapons? Won’t legalization trigger mass shootings and such? What about road rage, when firearms instead of fists will be used?

anonymous question

As the practice of mass shootings in the States shows, they are often committed by mentally unstable people for whom this fact was recorded long ago, but it did not prevent them from acquiring a gun, despite the fact that a background check is supposedly required.

So, after the deregulation of weapon acquisition, the situation with mentally unstable people will not get worse. However, law-abiding citizens focused strictly on self-defense will have noticeably more guns in percentage terms. And the more criminogenic the situation was before deregulation, the greater the incentives will be to acquire self-defense weapons. Accordingly, the curve of armed crime will decline more sharply.

As for road rage, practice shows that the best prevention is liability insurance. There is no point in being rude to someone who doesn’t owe you money when you know that the money won’t come out of your own pocket.