> In this country where anyone can have a gun on them, there is no way in hell that I and my partner are approaching an emotionally disturbed person with no way

> In this country where anyone can have a gun on them, there is no way in hell that I and my partner are approaching an emotionally disturbed person with no way to defend ourselves. It sounds like this is one of the major issues, if not the most important issue. Nobody is going to attempt to repeal the Second Amendment, and trying to do so would cause way too much upset in a country where gun culture has been ingrained in the populace since its founding. I personally believe that so long as guns are so widely available, and mentally ill people who are predisposed not to seek or have no treatment available exist (which given human nature pretty much always will), gun violence will continue to occur, and so the police and other responders will assume that they could be killed from guns in risky encounters. All it takes is one mistake in determining that someone does not have a gun to have someone killed and make headlines and potentially be remembered for years. I wonder how I would feel about the gun laws in the U.S. if I were born and raised in a country that prohibits firearms. I would prefer to live in such a country but very few people directly affected by the violence have the option of leaving. I also wonder how many people would be accepting of guns today if we didn't have the Second Amendment from the beginning, and people didn't end up receiving the impression that the founders of the country affirmed gun ownership. Trying to cut back on the violence with the gun culture continuing sounds very complicated to me.