Wednesday 15 June 2016

Playthings and Platitudes

Listening to KQED's Forum this morning drove it home: I cannot listen one second longer to men arguing that gun control laws would do nothing, have no impact, where the disease of mass shootings in the US are concerned. 

No. Just no. We have a supply problem, as well as a demand problem. Guns are cheap and plentiful here, including military-style weaponry designed purely for mowing down human beings at high speed. And all for the sake of self-righteous assholes who want to cling to their toys and their paranoid delusions of Minuteman-style patriotism. 

This is masculinity in crisis, folks. It's not about anyone else's safety, and it's not about rights. If it was, I wouldn't be scrapping away over here for rights to my own uterus while women are being gunned down by angry partners in the confines of their own homes. 

We're always going to have idiots. Mental health will remain a struggle for some section of the population at any given moment, always. Waves of hysteria and hate are an unfortunate feature of humanity, but we can temper their effects. No solution is perfect, but we could at least try. 

No more moments of silence. I want moments of action. I want Congress to stop cowering in the face of the NRA, to vote on bills closing loopholes around background checks and to reinstate the assault weapons ban. Now. 

BTW, if you're an argumentative dude thinking of fighting me on this, you're picking the wrong battle. I will straight up delete you. You're not a rebel, you're an accident waiting to happen. I'm done pretending this is a debate. I've had the joy of living in a country where I had virtually no fear of being caught up in a mass shooting, and the glory is real. No mass knifings, either. It's divine. 

There's a single argument for guns, and it's not weighty enough to balance the sea of bodies stacking up on the other side. I don't give a shit about your playthings, or whether you "enjoy" guns. I enjoy life. I enjoy days unmarred by catastrophic tragedies. My right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is more important than your desire to cling to instruments of death. 

As an addendum, I'm sharing this--again. Because the USA still hasn't moved on in this conversation, and it's still the best rebuttal to the many protestations of the gun-lust set. We might not be able to stop every single tragedy, but we could take action now to make mass shootings prohibitively expensive. We can stem the tide. Other countries have proven this is the case. 



1 comment:

  1. Hey Kimberley, I just happened upon your blog and read this article about gun control etc in the USA. I live in a beautiful peaceful part of the world and we have very few shooting incidents..I do have some American friends and quite frankly we cannot believe the attitude of some Americans who keep using the 2nd amendment as a reason for keeping and using guns...it's crazy!..when the amendment was written it took about 1 minute to load a rifle and I bet those in power never thought about how fast an automatic gun could be fired 300 years down the track...You write a good argument for gun control, perhaps President Clinton can work a miracle...but I won't hold my breath :-) Good luck!

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