In which the Posse defends guns while sounding like a hippy

Horrible news from Connecticut, and what can one do but pray and hold loved ones close?

Well, one could try to capitalize on it for political gain, but that would be stating the obvious.

Whenever a story like this comes out, one can predict with absolutely certitude two things:

1.  Gun control will be brought up as a solution, and

2.  The shooter will have turned out to have left a string of blindingly obvious hints as to his intentions.

What gun control does is absolve us from individual responsibility to take care of people who have serious mental or emotional problems.  People who are in pain and suffering can be left to their agonies so long as no one else is impacted.

Gun control is therefore the opposite of true compassion.  It outsources caring to a bureaucratic machine - the same bureaucratic machine that failed to help the perpetrator in the first place, incidentally.

The illness we speak of manifests itself all over the world, and gun control has no effect on it.  Even in heavily regulated jurisdictions like Great Britain and Germany, these people commit their heinous crimes.

In Japan and China, they use blades and their victims are just as dead.

For people wishing to take action in the wake of this horrific event, I suggest you take a close look at the people around you.  Are they pain?  Are they in need?  Instead of shrugging off someone's death-obsessed facebook posting (and then recalling it afterward to a sympathetic reporter), engage them NOW, before the vile deed is done.

I oppose gun control because it doesn't work, and it pains me to no end the callous politicians who make jokes about prison rape and cavalierly drive off in their limosines while their constituents struggle in crime-ridden streets claim moral superiority by virtue of their position on this issue.

Saying that we can cut crime by banning guns is like saying we can reduce rape by banning short skirts.

It is not a compassionate position, it is a lazy one.

Let's face it:  it is easier to blame an object than hold our mental health system accountable.

Comments

[Childe Roland]

I saw a few conservative platitudes in there I'd like to combat. Not that I disagree with you about gun control, but I disagree with the typically weak arguments conservatives make in favor of looser gun control. For how thin they are, it is amazing the arguments have been winning.

Sure, somewhere in Japan people are stabbed to death. If we look at the actual numbers however, there are about 4.28 homicides per 100,000 people in the US, compared to just 0.5 per 100,000 in Japan. Japanese may be stabbing people to death, but at nowhere near the rate Americans are shooting and stabbing one another. The argument that "they'll simply use other weapons" seems to hold no water by the numbers. The big problem in Japan is the high suicide rate typically caused by pressure to succeed financially. I was shocked to find that the US actually has a higher suicide rate than Japan. When it rains, it pours.

But in reality, these sorts of comparisons are pointless. Perhaps comparisons like GDP per capita or energy consumption make sense between the US and the far east, as they are not influenced by things like cultural differences. Having friends from Japan and China, I can say second-hand that the cultures of the west and the far east are as different as night and day. So while statements like "oh in Japan and China they just stab people" are demonstrably false, it doesn't mean that tighter gun laws in the US will lower murder rates, because in the US we likely would just stab people.

Going away from numbers and facts, I will say that a large part of the gap is probably that the criminal lifestyle is much more glorified in the US than it is in other countries. While every society will have its Adam Lanzas for which there may not even be a cure, the parading of criminal activities as a glamorous lifestyle is almost uniquely American among developed countries.

[K. N. McBride]

Allow me to clarify.

If the goal of your policy is to ensure that multiple-victim attacks never, ever happen again, gun control will not work.

This is demonstrated by recent massacres in Japan, China and Germany, to name but a few. Culturally, we have a great deal in common with Germany (more than most people realize).

So people saying "if only we had a waiting period," or "if only we banned x" are either idiots or lying. By any objective measure, gun control is a failure. But some people feel better when they advocate it, and it gives politicians more control (that's the key word) over your life.

[Childe Roland]

True that, KN. I read recently that there were 30-something federal laws Lanza broke before and during the rampage, from things like how he obtained possession of the weapons, and bringing them into certain areas of the city, etc. As someone said in the comments section of whatever site I was reading, "I'm sure the NEXT gun control law will be the one that makes a difference." You know, because the previous 30 did such a wonderful job.

That's the part of the argument I've never understood from the left. These sorts of shootings aren't carried out by only the mentally ill. They are all carried out by people determined to commit premeditated crime. If you've convinced yourself you're going to massacre 20 school children, I don't think you are daunted by a couple of gun control laws attempting to stop you from building your arsenal. By definition, criminals commit crimes. To quote a popular former football player and coach, "Hello?"