It’s horrific. And yet somehow….Americans don’t care enough to actually DO something to stop these fucking nightmare scenarios that occur regularly within our borders, but nowhere else in the world except 3rd world nations with ongoing wars
I don’t care what your justifications are. I seriously doubt that the Founding Fathers would be perfectly fine with allowing the deaths of 30,000 people every fucking year because people want to own guns for no damn good reason. And even if they would? I AM NOT!
The American evangelical Christian hypocrisy on this issue absolutely makes me sick, too.
Fuck guns. Every one who keeps justifying the legality of guns – IMO you all carry the blood of the Las Vegas victims on your hands.
Originally shared by Dave Hill
“No Way to Prevent This”?
Not mocking the tragedy with that Onion article, but being angry about it, and the thousands of other gun deaths in this nation, every single year, month, day.
And, no, I don’t want to hear “There’s no way to completely stop all crazies with guns, so we shouldn’t do anything to try.” That’s not how safety regulation works.
And, no, I don’t want to hear “Well, automobiles kill more people and we don’t ban automobiles.” Not only has regulation dramatically reduced automobile deaths, but most people use their cars every day for useful activities quite different than killing other people with them.
And, no, I don’t want to hear “Not all gun owners are crazed lunatics / terrorists / gang-bangers, so why penalize the law-abiding citizens for their crimes?” Because enough of them are (and enough others are criminally negligent with their weapons, and enough others make use of them to kill themselves) that, yeah, they’ve spoiled it for the rest of you.
And, no, I don’t want to hear “Well, if only everyone carried a gun then this sort of thing wouldn’t happen.” Because the Las Vegas guy was shooting from a hotel room across the street, and the idea of a bunch of panicky concert-goers opening up with pistols on the hotel has the prospect of a death toll far higher than the original shooting itself.
And, no, I don’t want to hear “Criminals don’t obey the law, so laws restricting gun ownership will be broken by criminals, so such laws are useless.” Because that means we shouldn’t have laws against selling heroin, robbing banks, or assault, either.
And, no, I don’t want to hear “Well, people can be killed with clubs and knives, too,” because individuals who go crazy with clubs and knives don’t usually leave a toll of 50 dead and over 200 wounded, nor do they do so from across the street.
And, no, I don’t want to hear “If I don’t have a gun then I will be easy picking for muggers and rapists and grizzly bears.” Because, remarkably enough, a lot of people without guns aren’t instantly killed, even here in the United States.
And, no, I don’t want to hear “I have a Constitutional Right to own a zillion guns,” because even the Supreme Court ruling that overturned decades of jurisprudence to rule that the Second Amendment is, for some non-obvious reason, an individual right, not a state right about militias, also indicated that gun ownership could be regulated within the bounds of that right, which is why you can’t walk down the street with an Uzi, even in Texas.
And, no, I don’t want to hear “If we do background checks on everyone for every gun sale, then the government will enslave us.” That’s pretty close to a prima facie case that you shouldn’t own a gun.
There are things we can do [1], not to completely solve the problem (or, rather, array of problems), but mitigate them. We just don’t have the political will. They don’t necessarily involve banning all firearms, but they do require standing up to the gun manufacturing lobby (i.e., the NRA), they do involve not seeing guns as the ultimate expression of manhood and patriotism, and they do need us to realize that there are ways to prevent this sort of tragedy, if we so choose.
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[1] As a start, for consideration, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/opinion/mass-shooting-vegas.html
http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way-prevent-says-only-nation-where-regularly-ha-57086