A few days ago, I saw a meme suggesting that Sandy Hook was the end of gun control debate in the US. That's just not true.
It was Columbine.
When we decided to blame video games and goths and the internet for school shooting, the debate was over. Dead. Finito.
Now, we're blaming a racist cowardly symbol. These things may be proximate causes (probably not), but none of these would be possible without guns.
And we're not even talking about the shooter being able to get a handgun. Instead, we're talking about a symbol of awfulness.
And don't get me wrong: Pull down that flag. Put it away. Let Wisconsin keep theirs in a museum. Let it be known that to display it as "heritage" is to align yourself with cowardly traitorous scumbags.
But let's worry about the guns.
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it's not guns. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201506/anti-intellectualism-is-killing-america
ReplyDeleteFirearms were designed for only one purpose. To wound and kill other people.
ReplyDeleteMaking them illegal won't get rid of them though. We tried that with drugs. Hasn't panned out so well.
The issue is terribly complex, and everyone who has said "the solution is simple", while I appreciate the altruism of their ideas, tend miss relevant and important nuances.
Such as, some people are just plain shit.
David Hawkins I'm not suggesting it is simple.
ReplyDeleteAustralia got rid of their guns after one shooting. One. All of them. Australia. They carved out exceptions for farmers, hunters, cops, and the military.
Let that sink in. Its Australia: they basically have dinosaurs!
And they got rid of the guns, because the cost of dead children was too high a price too pay. They have had no such incidents afterwards.
These are facts.
Australia and the United States are very different monsters. The U.S. Has a lot more civilian opposition to such an action.
ReplyDeleteAlso, take into account, criminals who currently have weapons, did not obtain them legally. They will also continue to obtain them through black market channels, regardless of the laws put into place.
Children were being murdered in there homes and in there neighborhoods before Columbine. We used to call them "Drive By Shootings".
This is a much more complex issue for the U.S. than it is for a Australia. I am not against gun control, at all, even as a gun owner I live in MA where the regulations here are as strict as they get.
This country needs to STOP producing weapons and needs to stop being a leading weapons manufacturer.
I would love to see a major change in gun control in this country, but if Americans as whole really cared, and if all it took one shooting, these changes would have been made several decades ago. I always vote for tighter, stricter and gun control, even if it means legally losing my own firearm.
I don't want children and innocent people getting murdered anymore than you, and I am disputing the facts in Australia's case.
We aren't in Australia though, and many of our fellow citizens aren't likely to want to follow their example.
Not everyone is as kind or as selfless as you, William. I wish they were.
David Hawkins What facts in Australia did i get wrong?
ReplyDeleteOther than that, we're basically in agreement -- the US has proven it doesn't care about dead children and innocent people. At least, not enough to remove the proximate cause in every single shooting.
You got nothing wrong, man. Those facts sadly, can't be applied to the U.S., because of our industry, our government, and many of our fellow citizens.
ReplyDeleteI see the bumper sticker every day "You'll get my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hand."
That's the fucked up mind set we have to deal with. We also have millions of citizens, yes... millions, who believe Columbine and Sandy Hook were conspiracies against gun owner ship, as opposed to terrible murders committed by people who should have had access to such weapons.
David Hawkins ok, not so much a factual disagreement as saying the US is different. Check.
ReplyDeleteWith the analogy to Australia, my point isn't that we're the same: we're clearly different. Granted, we're both english-speaking areas settled by the Britis, where the aboriginal populations were wiped out. But where they started with prisoners, many of the US colonies existed to make money and pray in weird ways.
Maybe that's the difference. Money and religion.
Those are big differences. How many civil wars has Australia had? Internal conflict is so entrenched in U.S. history it's hard for me to imagine this nation with out.
ReplyDeleteYeah, and our internal conflicts seem to always have something to do with money and religion.
ReplyDeleteOr ethnicity.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what I can do about it besides voting for what is right, and being out spoken proponent of non-violent recourse and sound logic and reasoning, recognizing my privilege and when it could even potentially hurt others, and not being afraid to have and show compassion to a fellow human being.
"Let Wisconsin keep theirs in a museum."
ReplyDeleteI think I missed something? I live in Wisconsin and other than a few individual weirdos we don't use the confed. flag for anything (why would we?).
Eva Schiffer You captured several during the war: http://www.wisconsinbattleflags.com/units-flags/captured-confederate-flags.php
ReplyDeleteThat is, you've got original flags, preserved, in museums. As symbols of the unions victory over the traitors.
William Nichols Fair enough. I wouldn't have expected that to even come into the discussion, since it's actual history related, not something we use in the modern day.
ReplyDeleteHmm.
ReplyDeleteGuns are certainly the tool of choice in mass shootings, by definition.
Looking at what controls are in place on bombs might be informative.
I don't hear about intentional mass poisonings, or other forms of mass murder. Jonestown is the only one I can think of offhand.
I do occasionally look into auto accident fatalities, nosocomial infection rates, and drug contamination problems -- but all of these are clearly side effects of some intended greater good, economic or humanitarian.
For guns...I am less clear what the expected goods are, and how they can b measured.