People like guns.
People hate guns.
People are scared of guns.
Guns are good for sport, like hunting animals.
Guns are good for war.
Guns are good for self-protection, in case “they” come for you.
Guns are good for going out and killing other people because:
· They might otherwise come for you.
· They are bad people because they are:
o The wrong religion.
o The wrong race or ethnicity.
o Believe in abortion.
o Are liberals.
o Support restrictions on guns.
Guns are bad because they can be and are used for all of the reasons above.
Whether guns or good or bad or dangerous or not is
irrelevant because “Second Amendment”.
If you like, substitute “automatic rifles” for guns in all or any of the above.
All the above are true.
There are definitely people who are terrified that “they” will be coming for them. “They” could be the government (except when the government is on their side), or they could be, you know, “them”, the other.
Probably not for deer hunting; 30 or 40 rounds of high-power automatic rifle fire can really tear up the meat.
It could be post-apocalyptic, where they are, like Mad Max, fighting for survival. They believe that they need thousands of rounds of ammunition for all their guns (after all, ammo stores might not be open after the apocalypse) and high-capacity, high-speed automatic weapons are going to be more effective in protecting themselves and their families from, well, whatever.
Zombies. Or “them”.
If you believe this stuff, and your social circle and the sites that you frequent on the Internet completely reinforce these beliefs, there is no reason to doubt that it is true. Even if you used to not believe them. (Remember, perfectly rational people from the Midwest have moved to California and, after some time being among only Californians, have come to think that it is normative to believe in the healing power of crystals.)
If you do not believe this stuff, and your social circle and the sites that you frequent on the Internet completely reinforce your non-belief, you become convinced that the folks that do are both crazy and deluded. Which they may be.
If you think that these people watch too many movies and zombie TV shows, you’re right; the most important FACT is that there will be a much more limited number of people who are alive to duke it out after a nuclear war; let’s see, after nuclear winter, roughly ZERO!
If you think that there is a certain cognitive dissonance in thinking that people on the left are pansy snowflakes and also fearing that they’ll be coming after the heavily armed folks with the fears, you’re right, but so what?
Total logical contradictions have never been a problem for them in the past (see, e.g., “Donald Trump – Christian”).
There are a lot of folks in the “I need more guns and ammo” camp who are strongly opposed to mass murder, although there are pretty many (including in Congress) who are able to make arguments (sure, weird syllogisms, but hey…) defending folks who go to peaceful demonstrations with loaded weapons looking for other people to shoot. Charlottesville? Kenosha?
It is a “prevent defense”, I guess. There are even more who are opposed to slaughtering children in school (hardly anyone comes out specifically in favor of that), but are 100% against any proposal that might make it more unlikely.
Because, you know, if you make psychotic minors unable to purchase an AR-15 without a waiting period, the next thing will be government agents confiscating your deer rifle. Or Uzi.
No one is in favor of school shootings, but we have them almost every day. In every state. We look at the news, open the paper, hear our phones ding, and we see the newest one. And our Congress, and our state legislatures, all of whom are against school shootings, can’t seem to do anything to prevent them. Even though we – and they – know exactly what would do it.
Make guns very hard to get. Especially for young people. The brain does not fully mature until at least the mid-20s and the last part to develop is the frontal cortex where executive function and judgement reside.
Especially for automatic weapons. Especially with those with histories of violence. Yes, crazies but mainly not them. Mostly those who have or have threatened to use violence. You see, shooting people, especially lots of people, that may or may not be crazy, but it is for sure violence. Any abuser of any kind, any barroom brawler, anyone who threatens violence.
But of course they won’t. Maybe because it would lose them votes, or maybe they just believe the same things. Maybe they believe their own stories.
But, you know, you can kill people with a knife. Or a baseball bat. Or a garotte. Of course, it is not easy to kill a whole lot of people from 100 feet away with any of those.
I would be remiss to not mention suicide. They constitute the majority of gun deaths. Yes, suicide is an individual’s choice, but it is not necessarily an unchangeable choice. The “successful” suicide rate among teens and young adult males 16-24 is TEN TIMES higher in the states with the loosest gun laws as in those with the most restrictive. Are young men in, say, Montana more depressed than those in, say, Connecticut? I don’t know, but suicide attempts, especially in young people, are very often impulsive, and the easy availability of a gun makes that impulse easier to follow. And attempts at suicide by gun are much more likely to be “successful” (called lethality) than those by poison, or gas, or hitting yourself on the head with brick.
In the US it is often people in poor and minority communities who suffer the most random death. But it is older white men who commit suicide most. Often with guns that they had right there.
If you think we should make guns, especially automatic weapons, less easily available, especially to those most likely to use them for killing people, great. But lots of others do not agree. Of course, they include those most likely to use them for killing people.
The rest of the wealthy world could provide an example of what to do, but you know what? They are not Americans. A number of countries have higher gun-death rates than the US, mostly those at war (e.g., Ukraine) or in the midst of narco terrorism. We are not.
But we have a lot of guns, and that helps us make up the difference.
2 comments:
Great post, Josh. A clear-headed description of what we face. And all the while, the far right is focused instead on a hypocritical sense of hyper-self-righteousness. To quote Wanda Sykes "Until a drag queen walks into a school and beats eight kids to death with a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, I think you're focusing on the wrong shit."
Unfortunately another post outlining the well-known problem without offering anything that approaches a solution. Make guns hard to get. Especially by 'them'. You discuss them: history of violence, minors, so that's fine but what's your strategy to do so? What's a policy you'd like to implement in a country with more guns than people? Tangential, yes, but saying make automatic weapons hard to get suggests you may not be an expert on the topic. Automatic weapons are very hard to get (outside of a Glock switch perhaps) and why should policymakers listen to a non-expert? You could be though, with more research you can craft a more cogent argument. This post isn't it.
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