gun control – and the lack thereof

melt them all

I do not support your right to own a gun. I do not buy the argument that guns are a part of culture or society worth keeping. I have no sympathy for the idea that guns are important to anyone’s culture or lifestyle.

Of course I have no beef with hunting. But this isn’t, has never been, and will never be about hunting. For decades, responsible gun owners have chosen not to act in support of sensible legislation out of fear that their hobby might be inconvenienced. So my willingness to concede the validity of niche use cases has evaporated.

If someone’s cultural pastime was making bombs, we would not pause and say “well hold on now, many people are responsible bombmakers, we just need to teach responsible bomb usage to our children and tone down the reckless display of bombing in movies and video games”. This is an inane line of thought.

I am done drawing nuanced distinctions about guns. Throw them out, melt them down, and never look back. That’s the path to a society where we don’t get another mass shooting every month. That’s the society I want to live in. The one where we don’t have to do active shooter drills in elementary schools.

groundhog day

I want to talk about guns, but let’s talk about hate first.

We do this thing, as a society, where we start calling someone a terrorist, and that makes it really easy to think of them as some kind of alien. A terrorist materialized in our midst and caused great suffering. In our lexicon, terrorist is basically the antonym of American.

But the majority of these shooters are Americans, born and raised. Most of them white. They speak English. They had jobs, cars, phones, bills. They lived in our society for decades. Often we hear every variation on the phrase “we never would have suspected” from friends and family. And I bet most of them weren’t lying.

We’re so hung up on ISIS and Islam. But maybe this guy, and the guys before him, just followed the lead of our culture, the examples of our role models and aspiring leaders. We had 29 years to talk this guy out of it. He spent his life in America. Maybe he learned his hatred from us.

Can we not find daily examples of homophobia broadcast across all channels of life? This last year has seen the campaigns of Cruz, Rubio, and Carson – people actively denying basic truths about sexual identity and promoting draconian ideals about gender and sexuality. More explicitly anti-LGBT laws have been proposed in state legislatures this year than ever before.

Why should we be surprised when someone takes to heart the messages from our society that some people are less deserving of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

Continue reading groundhog day

massecrate

I generally try to avoid jumping on media bandwagons when picking topics to explore, here, but I’ve seen one too many glib quotes from people who want to explain the world as having one big problem that just so happens to coincide with their worldview. I get as choked up as anyone else reading about the Sandy Hook shooting, but there’s some hard facts that demand recognition.

This is going to happen again. And again. And again. No matter what.

The only factors we can control are the frequency and the severity. I’m entirely on board with much stronger gun control – but we’re kidding ourselves if we think it was a lack of legislation that allowed this event to happen. Broad legislation is not effective in dealing with lone individuals that aren’t a part of any organization or group. It’s the same with drugs; prosecuting users is a waste of time, and that’s why the focus of law enforcement agencies is on producers and distributors. The goal is to reduce availability and increase the cost of acquisition to the point that it’s no longer desirable or feasible, particularly at larger scales.

Continue reading massecrate