Don't let the gun nuts frame the debate

[Alva Goldbook]

96. Wow, this post is pretty far out there.

The "debate" on how to end gun violence is over, and has been over for decades. The statistics from the UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, and a multitude of other nations comparable to the U.S. are irrefutable, and it's high time we stop allowing the gun nuts to pretend that these other nations are somehow inherently less violent.

Then explain why Washington, D.C. was the murder capital of the world when it was illegal for anyone to own a gun there. What produced an 80.591% decrease in gun homicides in D.C.? It wasn't gun control. It had been illegal to own a gun in D.C. since 1976. What produced a 80% decrease in gun homicides was urban renewal. It was replacing ghettos with thriving business districts. Gun violence isn't produced by guns. Canada has guns, Sweden has guns. They don't have gun violence. Gun violence is produced by poverty, income inequality and societal decay. Australia isn't a good example. Yeh, there's no guns Down Under. Women are also 3 times more likely to be raped there compared to the US, and people are 4 times more likely to be assaulted.

Gun nuts will also say repealing the second amendment is never going to happen, the majority support it, and blah blah blah. Again, it's completely irrelevant. Japan doesn't have one. Canada doesn't have one. The UK doesn't have one. America doesn't need one either. Fuck the second amendment.

It's about passing sane laws to reduce or even eliminate (yes, it's possible. See: Japan) gun violence. To pass those laws, you must repeal the second amendment. Stop letting them change the subject with this "it's my right" bullshit.

Madison actually bragged about the US having a 2nd amendment in Federalist #46, saying that other governments were "afraid to trust their people with guns". Federalist #46 is an interesting read. You should read it sometime. Of course, if you want to take away my right of self-defense, you're going to have to repeal the 2nd amendment. That will require 38 states to agree to that. Just for a reference, in 2008 Obama won 26 states. Good luck with that.

Americans are not any more violent or any less violent than anyone else. What Americans do have, though, is the easiest access to deadly weapons than any other nation on Earth that has solved this problem.

Americans are not any more violent than other nations. What we do have is an income inequality problem on par with freaking Zimbabwe. And when you have that, you have societal decay. And with societal decay, you have a whole host of problems, including gun violence, and violence in general. But you're wrong. It's easier to get a gun in Mexico than in the USA, despite that guns are pretty much illegal in Mexico.

Stop letting gun nuts talk about anything else and everything else except the very goddamn things that are killing people, up to and including video games, movies, mental health, violent history, "multiculturalism" (THAT one is a particularly vile dog whistle), drugs, gangs (another racist dog whistle), etc.

The video games and movies thing is absurd, and if people had a modicum of understanding of psychology, they would realize that. Our history plays little into this as well. It's not multiculturalism either, or that we're a melting pot. But the Drug War is a big problem when it comes to guns. It, in part, contributes to the wealth inequality in our society. If we simply ended the Drug War, we could go a long way towards solving the problem of gun violence.

This is patently false. Criminals have a HELL of a time obtaining a gun in Japan. It's damn near impossible for them to find one, because anybody in Japan who does have a gun had to go through hoops upon hoops to ensure that they actually are "responsible gun owners".

Does that mean that criminals are powerless if they don't have a gun? The primary purpose of gun ownership in this day and age is self-protection. Will eliminating 300 million guns from this country make us all safe from crazy violent people? I don't think so. You may not realize this, but people use guns all the time to protect themselves from crazy violent criminals. I could cite endless examples of this, but this one illustrates this point quite perfectly.

Ultimately, gun nuts are just people who have been indoctrinated though childhood to have an obscene affection for deadly weapons. They just love their guns, and will stoop to any level to protect their misguided notion that they have some kind of "right" to have them

Wrong. I didn't grow up around guns. I never fired a gun until I was in my 30's. But after multiple break-ins in my neighborhood, including my next door neighbor, it was with a heavy heart that I decided I had no other choice but to protect myself and my family. And yes, the right of self-defense is an actual right. The right to own a gun is an actual right. Yes, the 2nd amendment really does exist.

You can walk around at night in any city in Japan and feel totally safe. Totally, completely safe. Nobody is going to shoot you there. How can a gun nut explain that without talking about Japan's strict gun laws? The answer is they can't, so they change the subject.

Is it the fact that Japan doesn't have guns that makes them safe, or is it that in Japan, their cities don't look like this:



Yes, income inequality really does matter.