re: #30 goddamnedfrank

I’m not sure exactly what “everyday civilian use” means to you, but it seems like you’ve already decided that responsible ownership is some kind of metaphysical impossibility.

Why? Because I don’t preface every comment with how I believe in 2nd Amendment individual rights, and how I only want to stop the bad guys and bad guns and not inconvenience responsible gun owners?

Well, I don’t ‘believe’ in the 2nd Amendment, certainly not in the way it’s interpreted. But I’m also a foreigner, and thus was not raised to ‘believe’ in the Constitution. It’s a legal document, not a religious text. I accept that for people born and raised here, that’s how it is. So be it. But I have more respect for the Founders than to believe that they intended the 2nd Amendment to enshrine the culture of human sacrifice for profit that it is currently interpreted as.

That said, I’m not interested in debating the intent or verbiage of the 2nd Amendment, nor am I interested in telling people over the internet that I’m sure they’re responsible gun owners, but it’s those other gun owners and those bad guys with guns that are the problem. That sort of complacency is part of the reason why nothing ever changes and why Americans continue to die in unconscionable numbers. Like I’ve said, after every massacre I’m sure Nancy Lanza and all those at her gun range congratulated themselves on being responsible gun owners, not like those other guys. The problem is larger than gun safes, or gun locks, or magazine sizes, or scary black guns versus nice cuddly guns. The problem is widespread proliferation of guns, and a culture that treats them like magic totems rather than the very lethal objects they are. The problem is a culture that responds to every public tragedy by rushing and buying more guns, and avoids any actual solution to gun violence, but especially any solution that involves even one less precious, precious gun.

The facts and data on guns, such as they are, are clear. Guns in the home are far, far more likely to harm you or your family than a criminal. Carrying a gun makes you more likely to be shot than not. Widespread gun ownership does not significantly impact crime overall, but definitely increases gun deaths and gun violence. Whatever a responsible gun owner is, it’s not someone who ignores these basic facts. Insisting that gun ‘rights’ trump these basic facts, or believing that guns somehow are the same thing as a right of self-defence, does not in my mind make for responsible gun ownership.

Even with that said, though, I think it’s possible for people to own guns without widespread gun violence. They do in other places, after all. But for that to happen, people have to treat them as what they are - extremely lethal weapons that have a few specific civilian uses as tools or entertainment, not magic wands that protect you from tyrannical governments or bad guys. And they will have to understand that to change this toxic culture here in America that blithely accepts far, far too much blood in the name of profit-motivated fantasy, there are going to be more important concerns than ‘inconveniencing’ people who want to own lethal objects.

And that it’s going to involve a lot less guns.