First, let me state that I’m a born and raised Texan. As such, being a gun nut is inbred in me, like that family who lives in a house trailer out in the woods. I had a 22 in my hand before I started school. And yes, I had to walk barefoot on a dirt road two miles to school and carried my lunch in a Steen’s syrup pail.
As a kid, it was common to see someone at the feed store with a hog leg on their hip but did we shoot one another? The world seems to have taken a big turn for the ditch in the last decade or so. My dad wouldn’t leave the house without a rack full of rifles to defend himself in case of some type of uprising. Still, to my knowledge, none of our clan has ever raised a weapon in anger or robbed a 7-11.
Our hearts go out to the students and teachers slaughtered in Texas. I cannot begin to imagine the pain felt by their loved ones. It is unlikely that we will ever know what pushed this teenager over the edge, but something needs to be done.
Hippies used to say, “Make Love and Not War,” which I’m beginning to realize should be repeated every day. The pandemic, which has cost over a million lives in the United States and is far from over, seems to have put another nail in the coffin for you and me.
I’m sure that once the chest-beating dies down, the Republicans will go back to business as usual, and nothing will change. While I’ve never had the urge to own an AR-style rifle since they are useless beyond shooting your next-door neighbor. I don’t know what the solution is but know that something needs to be done about gun violence.
Today’s Pearls Before Swine cartoon was right on point, which drove me to today’s rant.
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These days? Got a beef with someone? Go shoot them… and anyone who has the misfortune to be in the area. Tired of the way your life’s been going? Get to busting caps, take a hostage or two, and then step out in front of law enforcement and point a gun at them… or eat a bullet to escape having to answer for your crimes.
That right to bear arms is one thing… but when the answer to whatever is bothering you is to go on shooting sprees, well, to say that something has to be done becomes pretty damned obvious. The political bullshit that’s been going on over all this time needs to stop; so-called gun control legislation is laughable and the system for background checks can be bypassed easily enough. I can’t imagine, like you, why someone would need an AR-15… then get the easily obtained mod kit to revert it to be able to shoot at full auto.
And instead of stepping up to resolve this pandemic, all we do is talk about how much of a goddamned shame that something like what happened in Uvalde is… and then, all the finger pointing begins anew… and this tragedy will just keep on happening until we get our heads out of our asses and DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS.
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Amen, brother.
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There are three types of gun violence/death in this country, and IMHO, the root cause for none is the gun.
IIRC, suicide is nearly half of all gun deaths. That’s a mental health issue. If you eliminate guns, those people will find some other way to kill themselves. It isn’t hard. Jump off a bridge, hang yourself, OD on pills, drive into a bridge abutment, etc.
So improving mental health care will do a lot to help them, getting rid of guns, probably not so much.
The other major part of gun deaths is gang related. They are primarily fighting over turf and that turf is critical to their illegal drug profits. Just look at what happened in Chicago over the weekend for a good example.
It wasn’t the Elliot Nesses of the world who stopped Al Capone, et. al., it was the repeal of prohibition. So maybe it’s time to make drugs legal. Cigarettes and alcohol create a boatload of problems, but they’re legal. I don’t think legal drugs, regulated similarly to cigarettes and alcohol, would be any worse than what we have now. As a bonus, maybe the government debt can be reduced with the tax revenue from it.
Finally you have the mass shooters, like in Texas. They make up a small percentage of the problem, but they too are a mental health issue. So you can fix two problems by enhancing the mental health care system in this country.
I doubt that would actually happen, because it would mean that politicians, on both sides, would have to sit down and reach agreement on what can and should be done to fix it.
But should they do so, then they would run the risk of actually being held accountable for making policy that is actually intended to help everyone in the country.
No far easier, and safer, to make some sort of sound bite that demonizes the other side and appeals to your base. That way you’ll get reelected in November without actually having to do any hard work.
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I agree that prohibition created the mafia type organizations as we didn’t have a need for them until liquor became illegal. I agree that mental health issues which have likely been exacerbated by the pandemic have made things worse. But unless we find out differently, the shooter in Texas was not on anyone’s radar other than then ones reading his posts. Raising the minimum age for assault type weapons to 21 would be a good first step in my mind. I don’t advocate taking our guns away but some steps have to be taken.
Now with Chicago, that is another story. They have something like 50-60 shootings a week and as a gut reaction, I’d think mostly drug-related. The government has been fighting the drug war with very limited success. I for one would consider decriminalizing it and make it available to those who want to ruin their lives. If a drug habit only costs a few dollars a day, then everyone could afford them.
It’s not going to be an easy solution that’s for sure but I don’t think inaction by our elected officials is going to solve anything.
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If you only raise the age to buy for assault weapons, then someone who wants to shoot up a school will just buy high capacity pistols.
That might actually be worse, since they will be easier to conceal, and they can easily carry more than one. So rather than reload the weapon they can drop it and pull out the other.
So if you’re going to do that, you’d have to raise it for all guns.
Even then, it won’t stop all of them. The guy at Sandy Hook used his mother’s weapons, as have others.
Another thing we should do is to refuse to release the names of the shooter(s). A lot of them do it to “become famous” and if they don’t get their 15 minutes of fame, it might make the action less appealing.
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Today we had I think it was 4-5 people killed at a hospital because the shooter was still having pain after his surgery. And another group at a cemetery. Whatever we’re doing isn’t working.
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I’m a U.S. citizen but have lived outside the U.S. for more than two decades.
You really can’t imagine how the rest of the world looks at the U.S., with regards to guns.
My friends and colleagues from Europe, from Asia, from the Middle East, from Australia and New Zealand, can’t understand the stupidity that gets in the way of common sense gun laws.
Even Australia, which has a similar frontier mentality and culture to the U.S., severely controlled guns after their first big mass shooting. And guess what? They haven’t had another one, in over a decade.
I’m appalled, and ashamed.
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Our political system has devolved into a strictly adversarial system of us against them. This in my mind has exacerbated the problems of mass shootings that are occurring at what seems to now be a daily event.
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