Banning Guns vs. The Surveillance State: Pick One?

Guns are big and scary-looking to us in the Bay Area (BYU)

Gun-confiscation and banishment advocates---I meet them every day in the Bay Area---have no answer to the following questions: 1) Why would passing such a law solve the mass shooting problem, when the laws don't work in stopping illegal immigration? 2) ....Or in curing the drug epidemic? 3) Shall police invade the homes of millions of owners who refuse to turn in their guns? 4) Just what is the plan to repeal the Second Amendment, which requires the assent of 38 state legislatures?

Absent changing the law about gun ownership, the most promising solution is unpalatable to many -- increasing drastically the power of the surveillance state:

technology potentially changes the equation in important ways. Big data.....can help us know who might be planning [a mass shooting] next week: Who got kicked out of school, failed to show up for a court-assigned counseling session, made a big purchase at a gun store, posted a deranged or threatening message on social media, prompted an uptick in alarmed social-media chatter by friends and acquaintances.

If we don't set up extensive surveillance, and if we don't repeal the Second Amendment, then we're stuck with the status quo: the occasional mass shooting, images of weeping families, and mourning young lives lost way too soon. We're stuck with 10,000-15,000 gun deaths per year, of which 300-500 are mass shootings, defined as "a single shooting incident which kills or injures four or more people, including the assailant". (The latter number, by way of comparison, is about the same as the number of childhood deaths from brain cancer.)

The acrimony floating around this subject makes it likely that change will happen. Let's hope that we'll gain more than we lose.