Recently, a imgur poster, noting my reaction to gun control threads, decided to send me a personal message, drawing a comparison between guns and cars, an argument that I’m sure holds… some weight, I suppose, to… some people, whatever. Anyway, the point is, I had this reaction and I figured it was worth penning down as a more reliable, usable reaction to the issue at large.
I conventionally make a point of not arguing with Americans about their gun laws, happy to sit on the sidelines and just throw rocks. We had mass shootings, we passed legislation to control guns and in the wake of that, we had exactly 0 fascist dictatorships ascend in power, a reduction in gun-related suicide, a reduction in gun-related homicide, a reduction in gun-related accidents, and 0 mass killings with guns. I grew up in a country where when two people get into a shouting match over loud music, what results is a punch up and an embarassing story for the loser, not a potential shooting.
I have, however, seen the same gun arguments play out regularly. Comparing guns to cars is one of the more common canards, which seems to forget that the purpose of cars is moving things around and their misuse kills people, while the purpose of guns is to kill things and their proper use can also kill people. It’s not an argument that holds any weight with me, because what it really seems to be about is finding a way for the gun owner to justify a self-image, an ideal. Right now, America has I think 98 guns for every 100 citizens. America has also decided, as a culture, that it does not want to control those guns, nor is it acceptable to discuss reducing that number. Therefore, I have to assume that America either does not care about mass shootings enough to want to prevent them, or that America simply cannot ever be trusted to manage or control its firearm problem. The rhetoric that flows from America plays into this: “These laws cannot prevent everything, therefore, there is no reason to ever have them.”
Essentially, the gun control debate from America is a country of 298,000,000 guns saying ‘We cannot control ourselves, we cannot fix our problems, and the occasional mass murder of children, schoolteachers, government employees or teenagers walking home is the price we are willing to pay for this level of freedom.’
So, I will answer your question with a question: Why in the world should I ever bother discussing the topic of firearms with a person who looks at this state of affairs and tries to find excuses to maintain this status quo?
4 Comments
Hell, I’d be damn happy if the US treated guns the way we treat cars (don’t know about US car laws). It would be a magnificent step up on their current system.
Well, American car laws are full of loony things too, you know.
the weird thing to me is everyone thinking gun control means that they lose all their guns forever ILLEGAL GUNS OH MY GOD, and while that would be lovely as far as I’m concerned, it was never the intended first step.
There also needs to be more funding and attention put into the mental health care options that people have available to them at all levels of ‘pay’ because honestly, if someone’s going out and shooting people in the face for these things, there’s obviously something seriously wrong with them that also needs to be addressed, and taking a gun away will just put another weapon in it place. Less ability to hurt on a mass scale, but still possible, and until it’s ‘fixed’ we’re going to have crazy people doing crazy things.
Aus is pretty bad on the mental health issue too. Some time ago all our ‘institutions’ were shut down, meaning that most of the mentally ill were moved into psych wards in larger hospitals, or into the personal care of relatives. alot of people slipped through the cracks, and still do.