Skip to main content

America, it's time to point the guns at yourself (wait... what?)

Note: I originally wrote this article earlier in the year and then didn't publish it as I felt the outrage over the mass shooting that inspired it had subsided and the article no longer was topical. However, looking at this list of mass shootings during 2015 in the USA  I can't actually recall which one inspired this article (it may have been the Charleston Church Shooting in June 2015).  However, looking at the list I noticed you only need wait about a week or so for the next mass shooting in the USA.

Unless of course you follow the FBI's guidelines for classifying mass shootings, in which case data provided by Mother Jones: A Guide to Mass Shooting in America is far more pleasing to the eye with only four mass shootings in 2015.



Either way, people rampaging with guns is always topical in America. It happens so often they only seem to report the ones with unusually high casualties or particularly unusual locations. Anyhow... on to my article...

The coup has flown when it comes to gun control laws in the USA. Gun owners, who support tighter gun controls, probably would turn on a dime if the new criteria suggested in any way shape or form that they're no longer suitable candidates for gun ownership and should hand in their guns.

Gun owners who don't support tighter controls, and believe current laws are just fine, or in some cases lobby for even more gun ownership, usually have an answer for every argument supporting tighter gun control laws. Whether their answer is right or wrong is moot. Their political power appears to be just too strong against any kind of further restriction on gun ownership.

Regardless, no matter how much you try to legislate for tighter controls on legally owned guns, there's always someone who points out that a considerable amount of gun crime occurs using stolen guns. Usually this will be pointed out by a pro gun activist who rarely mentions that a large percentage of those guns are stolen from legal gun owners during home burglaries. (Secure your guns people).

The argument is that Americans need their guns for self defense (once you get beyond the people who own guns for legitimate reasons such as their job requires it or they're an active participant in a sports shooting association for example). The idea that somehow carrying, or at least owning, a gun makes you feel safer and somehow lessens the chance of being attacked. The more people who own guns the more likely it is a criminal will encounter someone with a gun - hence it's not worth the risk trying in the first place. Yet they do. Here are some examples that demonstrate gun ownership can reduce deaths provided citizen public is pro-active.

Personally, I don't feel any safer knowing people have guns and I wouldn't feel more safer owning one myself. People who walk into a school randomly shooting are expecting to die, or at least haven't thought much about that as an outcome. Time and again people don't see this type of crime coming. Even if you carry a gun how pro-active do you think you'd be against someone that's shooting anyone in their line of sight?

A sniper shooting randomly is going to be very hard to take down by Joe or Jane Public. It's fortunate that sniper shootings are less of an occurrence because that would be my choice of random killing spree (wait... what? no, think about it... if you just want to see the world burn why make yourself an easy target? Stick around to enjoy the outrage and pain you're causing.).

In my opinion, the only self defense you need to know is how to keep a cool head along with strategies to disarm someone with a gun if you're in immediate danger and, strategies to get you and others to safety if the threat isn't immediate. Leave any actual shooting to law enforcement - it's much less complicated if they deal with whether opening fire was justified.

Gun ownership in America seems less about protecting people from terrorism than it is about protecting yourselves from each other. Terrorists tend to prefer bomb attacks over mass shootings anyway. No amount of gun ownership can protect you from a well concealed bomb. Note, if you're a terrorist using guns openly in the USA, you're doing it wrong.

Americans are more likely to become victims of domestic crime than they are a terrorist attack. That's what people feel they need to defend themselves against. Americans are already pointing guns at each other and, if you haven't and you own a gun for self defense, you're at least thinking you may have to some day.

Perhaps it's time to point the gun at yourselves gun owners? Well not literally. Regardless of the arguments for or against guns one fact is indisputable: There is a death toll from gun related crimes that is causing a real concern in many communities. Just like any other type of crime that toll needs to be reduced rather than just accepted as the norm. Who better to tackle it than responsible gun owners?

It's not enough to say you already have gun control laws, gun safety and education programs. Or even that there are gun education and safety programs for kids. All of that only targets people who have every intention of being responsible gun owners. What are you doing to reduce the number of illegal guns and illegal gun owners? What are you doing to prevent emotionally unstable people from using their legally obtained guns to lash out at the world?

I really think the onus is on gun owners to practically demonstrate that an armed country is a safer country - because that's their logic.

My question is, if a gun owner is in a situation where they could've saved lives by using their gun and they don't... can I hold them accountable for not taking action?

That's right. If you're carrying a gun and you don't take a pro-active stance to save lives in a hostile situation can I sue you? Can I hold you accountable since you've embraced gun ownership as a way to make the country safer? Or is your argument just lip service?

Or worse yet, if you do take a pro-active stance and actually put lives at risk because you didn't disarm the hostile person but instead provoked them into firing shots, can I sue you for putting lives in danger?

At this point I feel like I'm just musing possibilities. The list of What if it all goes wrong is always longer than the one where it all turns out okay.

My point is, if you want to own guns without the backlash then you need to be doing much more than just teaching people how to handle and fire a weapon safely. You need to get actively involved in reducing gun crime or at the very least supporting organisation who are.

It's not good enough to point to your right to own a gun and say that makes the country a safer place because 36 years ago I don't like Mondays happened. I'm pretty sure there are more gun owners now than there was then and mass shootings still happen quite frequently depending upon whose stats you believe.


Comments

Buy Gifts and Apparel featuring art by TET.

Popular posts from this blog

TV Series Review: The Office - Australia (Prime Video) (2024) *No Spoilers*

W hile I'm a late comer fan of The Office, only watching after the original and USA versions were both available on streaming services, I did watch them in the order of release i.e. I watched the U.K. version first. Now, with the release of the Australian version of The Office on Prime Video, I think it's best to approach watching this new version understanding that it is not those shows. More importantly, remembering the US version was not well received or as popular as it has become since streaming became a thing. I personally remember people often saying the original version was better, back in the day. Of course, the Australian version has analogues for all the same characters you're familiar with from the previous versions, with their characteristics, so you can easily see who is the Aussie version of each character. While there are actually 13 different adaptations of the series worldwide, I was surprised to learn this is the first time the boss has been female. No...

TV Series Review: Velma (2023-2024) *No Spoilers*

A s a kid, Scooby Doo cartoons were something I used to watch fairly regularly. I wasn't a diehard fan but it was one of the better, of the many, cartoons I used to watch. I had heard about the new animated series, Velma , around the time of its release but it wasn't coming out on any streaming service I was subscribed to so it went off my radar pretty quickly. Quite by chance I signed up to a streaming service so I could watch DC Entertainment's, The Penguin, and noticed Velma was on that platform. I figured I may as well get my money's worth out of the subscription. I did know that Velma, herself, had been race swapped for the show, which made no real difference to me, though I do prefer classic Velma if pushed to choose. However the first episode of season one was a real shock to my expectations! No where had I heard this series was skewing very much into adult humor and themes. I was expecting something more along the lines of the original Scooby Doo show. Instead I...

Trump's 2024 Election Win Will Change Everything - At Least I Sure Hope It Does!

Trump by Leonardo.ai & TET A s an outsider looking in on the US 2024 election, right up until election day, it is beyond my belief that the election continued to be a 'close race'. It is even further beyond my belief that Trump won, without question.  Even if the Democrats wanted to claim the election was rigged somehow (which I'm sure Trump was gearing up to do had the outcome been different) it would be hard to make the case, beyond a recount. There's no slim margin here. Trump clearly won. While I would've preferred a Blue win, I at least got one outcome I was hoping for. A clear winner on election day. If I could give the Democrats some free, unsolicited advice for the next election. Stop targeting the opposition as if they're somehow selfish, evil villains. That's not how political parties work. At the end of the day the all represent the public. The people. The everyday citizen who you're trying to convince that you have what it takes to meet t...

Movie Review: Memory (2023)

S omething a little different for me in terms of movies I usually review,  Memory  is a film I was invited along to see by my partner, and both of us didn't know much about the movie going in, other than it was a film where one of the leads has dementia. The basic premise follows adult, special needs social worker, Sylvia (Jessica Chastain), who leads a simple and structured life. When Saul (Peter Sarsgaard) follows her home from their high school reunion the surprise encounter profoundly impacts both of their lives. The film starts out very awkward and disjointed to some degree, which I feel is intentional, to reflect that Sylvia, who is also a struggling single mother, is fairly resilient, she is, in many ways, just barely holding everything together because she doesn't have any other option. When Saul sees Sylvia at their high school reunion it seems like some unpleasant memories from her past are fast tracked into the forefront of her life, and things move forward fro...

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices.  My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe?  Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us...

Movie Review: Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) *No Spoilers*

I f you're like me and didn't go to see  Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom  in theatres you made the right choice. For context, I loved the first Aquaman movie . It's one of my favorites from the Snyder/DCEU era. It is a relatively well made adventure story, with some fantastic world building, amazing visuals, and included some commentary on  environmental issues as well. Despite having, mostly the same creative team, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom comes across as a film that couldn't decide what it wanted to be, in terms of a sequel. On the one hand it wants to showcase the cool, fun, wisecracking, but bad ass, rock'n'roll  version of Aquaman (Jason Momoa) with another rollicking adventure. On the other it feels like someone said it had to be epic with potentially world changing stakes so Aquaman would have to do 'King Shit' and be all serious, navigate deep sea politics, and generally try to be a responsible heroic good guy that he is when he's not being ...

Optimus Robots, Self Driving Cars and Buses - Tesla's 'We Robot' Event and the Evolution of Optimus

Tesla Optimus Robot Serving Guests. Image: Tesla O n the tenth of October Tesla held their 'We Robot' event, which I guess is the new incarnation of their previous Tesla AI Day annual event. There were three much talked about reveals, the driverless taxis, a driverless bus, and Optimus robots moving around the event, fully interacting with people 'on the ground'. Tesla Driverless Taxi. Image: Tesla While it was cool to see so many driverless taxis, that you could get in and experience for yourself as they drove around the Warner Brothers lot, and the driverless bus was something of a surprise reveal nobody expected, my attention was on Optimus. Tesla Driverless Robovan. Image: Tesla It was in September of 2021 that Elon Musk first announced his plan to create an affordable, humanoid, domestic robot, that would eventually be in homes worldwide. That vision was underlined with a person wearing a robot suit, that wasn't as well received as Elon may have liked, despite...