No more talking points or false equivalency arguments
Scientific American has an editorial piece about gun control with sources lilnked. The sources being actual peer-reviewed articles, not FB or Rumbl entries. The Science Is Clear: Gun Control Saves Lives - Scientific American. If these statistics weren't factual, we wouldn't have the Dickey amendment, which even Jay Dickey himself now regrets. https://www.npr.org/2015/10/09/447098666/ex-rep-dickey-regrets-restrictive-law-on-gun-violence-research
Gun control does save lives - period. Quit pretending it doesn't. Every time laws are repealed and made easier, the deaths go up. The NRA will stop at nothing to keep ensuring their piles of money. So much money that they can afford billions to give to politicians to keep who they want in office. Yet they don't pay taxes. Even after they were revealed as a Russian foreign asset https://www.npr.org/2015/10/09/447098666/ex-rep-dickey-regrets-restrictive-law-on-gun-violence-research. And the propaganda around cops and weaponizing teachers is bullshit and a distraction. The number one killer of cops is Covid right now, and they have the 22nd most dangerous job. My trash collector's job is statistically more dangerous. Yet something 100% preventable is the number one cause of deaths among our babies. Stop for a minute and think of your child in elementary school. Or grandchildren. Just give yourself a moment to imagine if this had been your family.
This isn't about doors - that didn't even come up until the cops had changed their stories 11 times. And it's Texas. They may not be done changing stories. This isn't about video games - those exist all over the world. This is about a culture that doesn't give a damn about you after the fetal stage. This is about defunding schools and cherry-picking text books to dumb down our population while inundating them with messages all around them about how they aren't good enough unless they look like this and won't be good enough unless they own that. A culture where people get rich telling you that others are evil and/or are laughing at you. We need the hope of a brighter future that votech and shop programs used to offer. We need mental health that goes beyond praying away the gay and goes far enough to include what marketing algorithms are doing to us online. We need critical thinking beyond math class to help these kids differentiate all the information coming at them as well as how it works.
But we also need stricter gun laws. Feel free to tell me how background checks or licensing is going to infringe upon the 2nd amendment, because so far no one has helped me understand that. We see, from facts and statitistics, that gun ownership is actually dangerous. We know that in states with the most gun ownership, we also have the most violence. Look, seatbelts didn't prevent texting while driving or drunk driving, but we know they reduce serious injury and death by 50%. I think when someone can't be reasonable enough to compromise, it's a huge red flag for their ability to responsibly own a gun. I come from a military family. I come from a family of hunters. No one ever in the history of my family has had an issue getting their guns. Not ever. Even a couple who maybe should have.
My dad, in his retirement, is an armed guard. Despite the lax gun laws in his state, he is required to do a certain amount of training as well as a classroom each year to refresh. Every single year, over 3/4 of his class has to retake. These are armed guards too out of practice who don't pass basic gun safety classes and field shooting and have to do a redo. The second redo they pass or find other jobs. Because of this, they were running short-staffed before it was cool. But the company he works for understands that there is more to having a gun than just wearing it. A good guy with a gun is useless without a lot of practice and a demonstrated ability to stay cool under intense pressure. We saw this in Uvalde when the gravy seals couldn't go in with all their thousands of dollars in equipment because the fat fucks were too worried about being shot.
Here's an example of a "good guy" from 2015: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/good-guy-with-gun-shoots-carjacking-victim-in-head-runs-off/article/445111
Here's an example just last February: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/houston-texas-shooting-warning-gun-owners-ncna1289385
Let's stop this story about a good guy with a gun. What we need, if we must have a gun, is a responsible person with a gun who actually knows very damn well how to use it. Guns were made for the sole purpose of killing. That's it. If you have some great reason why gun ownership still needs to be our identity as a country, I'm all ears. Regale me with your wisdom and experience. But please understand, I'm tired of bullshit. Yesterday, someone literally tried to tell me that our numbers aren't that bad because with our millions of guns we only have a few hundred mass killings a year. Wha? I told him it only takes the one to lose everything you've ever cared about. If your argument against gun control is to tell me that guns are necessary because so far it hasn't hurt you, then don't bother. Again, while this is not about feelings, it is a time to stop and think about how you'd feel. Because it's not out of the realm of possibility that you might end up in that situation.
We have a gun crisis in this country, but through propaganda and misinformation, we've become a health crisis, and we need to fight back. Against the NRA and against the politicians they've bought. Against this culture war of propaganda. Please, if you do nothing else today, take a moment and look up a reason someone opposes your point of view.