You know what causes gun violence? Guns.

And you can’t tell me it’s people. People cause lots of different violence. Certain people just happen to be using automatic weapons, right? I mean, guns don’t kill people, bullets do. Duh.

Honestly, this isn’t something we haven’t dealt with before, it’s just become more prominent.

It’s come up in the news more and more often and, for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you why. I’d honestly chalk it up to the fact we’ve always had disturbed individuals riding on the cusp of society.

 Obama and congress would enjoy taking the easy street and blaming violence in the media for all of the problems in the world. Our president is taking steps to research the connection between violent video games.

Hell, Missouri has it in mind to place a tax on violent video games and of course, this goes well beyond violence in video games, but determining the correlation between violent images and actual acts of violence.

You wanna know the difference? Can I tell you a secret?

Killing people doesn’t come from images planted in your mind playing Call of Duty.

Killing comes from a deep-seated problem with your very foundation. And I mean that beyond conception. People for centuries have been murdering for one reason or another.

Taking guns away from the common man isn’t going to do much to those who can easily seek other means of obtaining artillery.

I know I won’t see an end to violence in my lifetime. I don’t know that any of us will.

So, congress is tied up in knots over the ordeal, trading rhetoric enthusiastically back and forth without coming to a conclusion.

That’s good. It’s really what they were set up to do.

The 1994 federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004. If I recall correctly, most of the uproar was over the  TEC9, a fancy little gun that could hold 32 rounds and fire them all out with wicked efficiency. Now we’re combating the AR-15.

To be honest, we don’t need either. I think there are few among us with the balls to pull a Charles Bronson a la Deathwish, so beyond paranoia or desire to mow down large numbers of individuals or animals, I see no reason for owning an automatic weapon.

That or beer bottle genocide. That might be fun to watch.

Concerning the ban, Joe Biden has commented on the fact that it worked “too well,” referring to the fact that it almost completely banned any sort of research into statistics on gun violence.

I’d say starting there makes a bit more sense than starting with video games. But who knows?

Maybe there is, despite the fact that I’ve never felt the urge to gun down a crowd of children after playing Halo. Perhaps we’ll find out, though it’s going to take some money getting there.

I enjoy using firearms for practice. I’ve never killed anything larger than a squirrel in my life, but I wouldn’t look down on people who enjoy hunting.

It can help to keep animal populations in check and so long as you’re out to use whatever you kill, by all means, have at it.

The problem stems from being able to easily buy and modify weapons via the internet, I think.

I know of a couple of magazines you can do the same thing with. If it were up to me, I’d penalize the manufacturers.

Ensure that whenever they produce a gun, they know where it’s going. It’s an impossibility to think that anyone would be able to monitor every transaction, but we need some sort of idea to work with here.

Everyone’s so damn tied up that we’ll never get anything worthwhile accomplished, and the opposition here is as polarized as ever.

I’d be fine giving up 100-round magazines. Never bought one before, never had the reason to.

I’d also be fine with submitting a background check or submitting to a psychological analysis.

That being said, the White House released a list of bulleted points they aim to accomplish including:

• Require background checks for all gun sales

• Strengthen the background check system for gun sales

• Pass a new, stronger ban on assault weapons

• Limit ammunition magazines to 10 rounds

• Finish the job of getting armor-piercing bullets off the street

•  Give law enforcement additional tools to prevent and prosecute gun crime

• End the freeze on gun violence research

• Make our schools safer with new resource officers and counselors, better emergency response plans, and more nurturing school climates

• Ensure quality coverage of mental health treatment, particularly for young people

So, we’ll see where they get with all that.

Truth be told, a few of the ideas are pretty good, but I can certainly foresee problems with limiting magazines to 10 rounds, giving law enforcement additional tools, and ending the freeze on gun violence research (so long as they’re beating that video game dead horse).

Like any political situation, we’re going to have to come to some sort of compromise if we wish to get things done. I hope someone comes to their senses, because it seems like we’ll be running in circles for a while here.