Guns in America
Just another day in the United States
More Americans have died in the past year from gun violence than Americans who have died in terror attacks over the past 45 years.
Imagine if the trillions of dollars spent on Afghanistan and Iraq had instead been spent to help treat our deadly obsession with firearms in the United States. But, obviously, we have decided bearded fanatics half a world away are much worthier of our prodigious might and efforts than the enemies in our own midst. We have also concluded that an occasional sacrifice of innocent men, women and children is the price we must pay to have unfettered access to weapons the founding fathers could not have even conceived of when they crafted the Second Amendment.
Any talk about increased gun control is met with screams of outrage and talking points supplied by the National Rifle Association, an organization whose bread and butter is blood and mayhem.
Amanda Marcotte, writing for Rolling Stone Magazine, notes “While victims are being rushed to the hospital, many right-wing pundits and politicians are no doubt readying their talking points to explain why the 264th mass shooting of the year does not mean the United States should tighten up access to deadly firearms.”
As Marcotte writes, “We can recite your arguments in our sleep, and they haven’t grown better through repetition,” such as “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. ... But to really rack up those mind-blowing death counts — to make sure that many lives are destroyed and families ruined in the space of five or 10 minutes — you need a gun.”
And how about the contention that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun?” As Marcotte notes, this pithy saying, repeated ad nauseum, doesn’t negate the facts that “No mass shootings in the past 30 years have been stopped by an armed civilian ...” As a matter of fact, there was actually more than one person on the campus of the community college in Oregon who was carrying a concealed weapon. One of those with a weapon said by the time he became aware of the shooting, a SWAT team had already responded. He stayed in a classroom because he was concerned that police would view him as a “bad guy” and target him.
Yes, we would agree that mental health is not being addressed properly in this country (here’s where some of that money wasted in the Middle East could have been put to good use), but this argument is strictly for deflection purposes, writes Marcotte, “as there is no indication that Republicans will ever work on meaningful reform for our mental health systems ... It’s an issue that only matters to them in the immediate aftermath of a shooting — then it’s forgotten, until there’s another shooting. Rinse, repeat.”
And if you must resort to the “Second Amendment, baby,” argument, she writes, we can find a way to compromise. “Feel free to live in a powdered wig and (defecate) in a chamberpot while trying to survive off what you can kill with an 18th century musket. In exchange, let those of us living in this century pass some laws so we can feel safe going to class, or the movies, or anywhere without worrying that some maladjusted man will try to get his revenge by raining death on random strangers.”