this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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Therefore, we should give up and do nothing.
Therefore, we should acknowledge reality and form policy around that rather than pissing into the wind while pretending we're doing something useful.
For example- if you want to attack the lion's share of gun violence, address the causes of it, rather than the tools used in it. That means address drugs and drug gangs. Decriminalize or legalize drugs, put the gangs and cartels out of business. Treat addicts like patients who need help rather than criminals who need punishment, or at the very least stop locking up non-violent drug users with violent criminals (and thus turning them into violent drug users).
Let's also tackle poverty. Poverty is strongly correlated with drug use, so let's give people some hope and upward mobility so they don't feel desperate enough to use drugs. Doesn't work for everybody, but a good intervention that takes a young kid from the hood and gives him opportunity and resources so he has an obvious path to make something of his life will keep an awful lot of kids out of gangs and drugs.
Of course these solutions require more work and money than passing another law that criminals will ignore and getting your photo taken and saying I Did Something!.
Don't forget to also fight the culture around guns.
"Having a gun means you can defend yourself" is a dangerous thing to let live.
Being forced to defend yourself from a person with a gun is a thought no child should ever have. And yet here we are. not a week without a shooting happening.
I agree 100%. I think it's a failure of our society that ANY child has to think about defending themself from ANY sort of violence- be it a psycho with a gun, or crime on the street, or a bully who will beat them up. We should aim to do better as a society.
But the society I'd consider ideal is not the society we have. We have violent people in our society. A few go psycho and commit mass murder, most don't. And thus, we do our children a disservice by pretending otherwise.
We do a bigger disservice by doing little or nothing to identify violent people and help them become less violent.
Blaming the gun is a placebo pill we can take to make ourselves feel better about Doing Something. But it's like blaming the car for the actions of a drunk driver.
It may be dangerous, but it's also not wrong.
If 65yo grandma is approached by a 25yo male thug, she cannot defend herself whether thug is armed or not. The thug is bigger, stronger, and faster than she is.
If 65yo grandma is approached by a 25yo male thug, and she has a gun, she CAN defend herself. The worst case scenario for her is he also has a gun, in which case they are physically equal.
To be clear- I agree with you that we should not HAVE to defend ourselves. I'd love a society where nobody ever needs a gun. But pretending that society exists when it really doesn't does nobody any favors.
Excuse me what? The Grandma is shot dead before she could even pull the trigger.
And even if she defends herself then she will probably never live a happy life ever again because she just took a human life.
Why is it always Americans who do not understand that guns do kill people.
Yes, mental illness might also be an issue but you also dont do shit to solve that issue.
You dont even have healthcare. The one thing that could help is just banning guns but since every Jon Fuckwit sees himself as a one man militia we get columbine after columbine. But oh no you cannot take my guns its in my amendment that i am militia and i need my gun gun to defend myself from the bad guys. Two days later is the next shooting in a school, or a parking lot or a super market or on a highway.
No single other country that actually manages who can have a gun and who cannot has this problem.
While Germany, Canada and France together had 5 School shootings since 2009 the US had 360.
Even after Uvalde and 30 dead. Children! Dead children! You just said "oops the mental illness" and did NOTHING
And she could be stabbed from behind, or hit in the back of the head with a bat before she even saw her attacker. Yeah there's no guarantees in any sort of fight.
You are right on one thing- she'd probably never be quite as happy. I think you assume gun owners are spoiling for a fight, eagerly awaiting 'their moment to shine'. It's really not true though. Not for myself or anyone I know at least.
As a gun owner, I've spent a lot of time thinking about such things. Being shot isn't like in the movies where someone falls down and music plays and the hero rescues the girl, it's ugly and painful, it's like stabbing someone with a giant screwdriver by remote control. I hope I can live the rest of my life without ever shooting anybody or taking a life by any other means, because I'm pretty sure I'd never be quite whole ever again. I've always declined invitations to go hunting because I don't want to be the one to take the life of an animal, I don't even squish insects most of the time I capture and release them outside. So taking the life of another human is not something I ever want to do.
But what I want even less than that, is to do nothing while people I love are harmed. And so, if I have to trade my conscience and mental health for the physical wellbeing of my family or myself, then I will consider that a more than fair trade.
And I think the granny in our analogy would rather be alive and feeling guilty than dead. I know I would be.
This is one thing I HATE about my country- we have forgotten how important it is to take care of our own citizens. And I blame conservatives (the usually pro-gun ones) for this a lot more than liberals, but liberals deserve plenty of blame as well. Both parties find it effective and expedient to whip up voters with 'those other guys hate America!'.
It's not just mental health, it's everything. Look at student loans- kids take on crushing debt because they're told it's the only way to get a good job, only wages are stagnant and they can't make ends meet. Do we help them, the millions of our fellow countrymen who are in a really bad situation? Nah, fuck them, they did it to themselves.
And look at healthcare as a whole. People get cancer and go bankrupt with health insurance and it's just like oh well, like that's the way things are supposed to be.
Meanwhile the wealth of our nation is being extracted by a bunch of business interests that basically have the government in a state of regulatory capture (that video is from 2011 and it's even worse today) and the people of the nation are too busy blaming each other to work together and FIX some of our VERY REAL problems.
So yes, I support gun rights. But please don't lump me in with the loud and obnoxious lemming-conservatives who only use mental health as a way to defend against gun control then do nothing at all to actually improve mental health.
If it were up to me, we'd be spending BILLIONS on mental health, if not tens or hundreds of billions. If it were up to me, our defense budget would get a haircut (we really don't need to spend more on military than the next 10 nations, including all of our major enemies, combined) and that money would be re-invested in America's PEOPLE. Education, mental health, health care, etc. Schools should be palaces and teaching kids should be a well-paid, sought-after, competitive position that carries respect and prestige, not the current situation where teachers are basically underpaid babysitters that are expected to teach the test and then we act confused when entire generations of kids grow up with no critical thinking skills.
I believe the markets, and the corporations, and the government, do and should exist for the benefit of the populace overall, not the other way around. I think many in the US have forgotten that ideal.