Weird fetish for the technical details of weaponry, includes access to stats from obscure publications that make it possible to argue UK has more violent crime than the US. Used sometimes by nuts who aren’t even American
avoi avoiding security and committing mur murder? Criminals ignore laws.
Me: M Why do they have to have weap weapons like an AK- 47?
Proud Pr American: Again, what law wou would have stopped this?
Me: M Not being able to buy an AK- 447?
Proud Pr American: We’re still avoi avoiding the argument that the man did everything illegal possible. Why are we blaming the tool and not the monster? They don’t have guns gun in the UK, so they kill with kniveskniv and acid attacks. More people peop are killed with fists and feet than rifles. Evil will do evil.
Me:M You might want to double-check doub British knife and acid death deat stats against our gun death stats. stats Again, why did he have an AK- 447?
ProudPr American: It wasn’t an AK by ththe way, it was a WASR-10. A semi-auto sem rifle that looks like an AK, but doesn’t perform like one. Also made in Romania, not Russia. Not an AK.
Me: What does that even mean? Is it better that your family are killed by one of those?
Proud American: Again, I am sorry for their loss. But facts matter.
Me: Why does America have more gun deaths than any other developed country?
Proud American: Two-thirds of those are suicides. Also, while legal gun ownership has risen over the years, the murder rate has declined. Seems like a good trend.
Me: Even if that’s true, which I doubt, a third is still a lot. Why only in America?
Proud American: Part of it is probably that we have one of the largest and the most diverse populations in the world. We also have a lot of untreated and undiagnosed mental illness in this nation. There’s a lot of factors.
Me: You just want your guns,
On and on it went for days. You start to notice things. There’s the “gunsplaining” – the weird fetish for the technical details of weaponry, often citing specific types of guns and their features, the implication being that if you don’t understand guns intimately, then you’re not qualified to discuss their control.
Then, there’s the constant access to graphs, charts and statistics from mad and obscure publications that make it possible for him to argue that the UK has more violent crime that the US, a position only a madman could hold but which becomes arguable with enough faux-scientific baloney. (You’re in the middle of all this and part of you is thinking how a husband and wife were shot to death while huddling to defend their tiny baby. What are we even arguing about here?)
And I started to notice other things, too. The fact that Proud American was now arguing with about six other people in my Twitter feed. He was typing dozens of replies. He seemed inexhaustible, always ready to refer you to some new study, graph or chart.
He was also arguing a lot at very odd times of the day for someone living in America, always ready to take up his argument whatever the time of day – three or four o’clock in the morning.
I finally realised Proud American wasn’t American. He wasn’t living in Texas. He was most likely part of a team, clocking on and off for their shifts in a large building in Moscow or St Petersburg. Yes, reader, I’d been suckered into arguing with a Russian disinformation troll.
The only people who seem to agree with the arguments of Proud American (sorry, Proud Russian) are the lawmakers of Texas, who, in the wake of the shootings, are still going ahead with plans not to limit, but to EXPAND access to guns.
Republican governor Greg Abbott – much-loved by the National Rifle Association – has signed new laws that ease restrictions on where firearms can be carried, allowing guns into schools, churches and foster homes, while barring cities from passing their own limits on gun and ammunition sales.
Only in America, as they used to say. Or possibly Russia.