It’s been a weird few weeks. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of health care subsidies and marriage equality, which is a bit like a drunken hippopotamus sweeping a gymnastics competition with perfect scores all around.
But there’s one thing that wasn’t solved, and that was gun violence. Yet another mass shooting came and went, with no policy changes of any kind, nor any hope that such a thing could possibly happen. For whatever weird reason, it sparked the removal of the Confederate battle flag from all sorts of buildings, and that’ll perhaps lead to an incremental improvement in matters of entrenched racism, but it certainly won’t solve the underlying problems related to gun violence.
You see, the United States has a problem with guns. Despite 6 in 10 Americans thinking guns make us safer, the evidence is overwhelmingly the opposite. As gun ownership rates rise or fall, gun homicides follow the same pattern precisely. As gun ownership rates vary by region or state, gun homicides vary right along with them. More guns = more murder.
This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, except for those 6 in 10 Americans who think the exact opposite of reality. If you’re one of those people, you’re simply wrong. And your wrongness is destroying America.
But this is a problem that can be solved.
With racism.
You see, if there’s one Americans hate more than the metric system, it’s weird foreigners. Just take a look at the last century of American cinema, with Russian villains all over the place.
Outside of film, we even have entire color-coded paranoia movements, like the Yellow Peril and the Red Scare. Remember “No Irish Need Apply?” And segregation?!?
This fear is misplaced, of course. Terrifying though Dolph Lundgren may be, it’s the Americans who are killing you. But Americans have pretty much made a national pastime out of being scared of the wrong thing. Just look at Shark Week.
As for guns, the problem for quite some time has been that gun-loving Americans view easy access to gun ownership as fundamentally good. And how can we possibly get gun-loving Americans to view easy access to gun ownership as fundamentally bad?
Easy. Get Muslims to do it.
Take a look:
This photo comparison made the rounds on the internet, generally under the title “Explain the Difference.” But a lot of gun lovers claimed they could explain the difference, and quite easily, because one is a freedom-loving American, while the other is a freedom-hating Muslim.
As far as this plan goes, it doesn’t matter if they’re right or wrong. The only thing that matters is that they view only one of these as fundamentally dangerous. They’re happy to see white people getting guns, but they’d be absolutely horrified to find a bunch of Muslims doing the same thing.
Hence, bunch of Muslims:
Start doing the same thing.
Load up on as many guns as you can. Tweet about it all day, every day. Talk about how easy it is to get assault rifles and grenade launchers from the neighborhood vending machine without even having to show an ID of any kind. Post photos of your kids holding assault rifles with captions like “isn’t it so cute how they can barely lift them?!” You can even use toy guns, since they look the same anyway. Go ahead and mention how it’s practically impossible to get a gun in your home country, but here in America it’s soooo easy!!!
In fact, you don’t even have to do it. This’ll work even just saying so. Go ahead and write letters to NRA members thanking them for ensuring the ease of your many assault rifle purchases, and mention how you’ve recently expanded your collection with high-capacity magazines, explosive rounds, laser scopes, and bullet-proof vests so no one can stop you. Oh, and make sure to sign it Muhammed. That’ll get their attention!
Heck, you don’t even have to be Muslim. Americans can barely tell them apart from Sikhs and Hindus anyway, and I’d be willing to bet that anyone of Mediterranean or Latin American descent with an especially nice tan could scare the hell out of white America just as well as anyone. And Iranians?! Do I even have to mention how terrified Americans are of Iranians?!?! This plan practically writes itself!
Besides, you don’t even have to be within the US to do this. You can even borrow photos already posted by whichever paramilitary group is making headlines this week, and just start passing them around online, claiming they got all the guns at a Wal-Mart in El Paso, laughing and shouting “Can you believe they didn’t even do a background check?!! Thanks Obama!!!”
Yes, make sure to throw an Obama in there. And remember to call him Barack Hussein Obama, and mention how when he personally handed you your assault rifle and map of nearby elementary schools, he said, “It doesn’t matter if you have a criminal history. That’ll just be our…no, your little secret,” and he winked at you, and a tear streamed from your eye.
We’d have gun control in 5 minutes.
Do it, guys. Do it for America. We’ll never be able to do it without your help. We’ll thank you later, by making you the super-cool villain in every action movie for the next 50 years.
I don’t think I’ve laughed so much at blog comments ever. Some of the comments are hilarious, and the responses even more so.
Thanks for yet another fantastic post, Mr Snarky. I love your stuff.
Please unsubscribe me.
Will do. If someone wants criminals to have effortless access to assault weapons with no background check whatsoever, I can’t imagine we’ll get along.
Great article. I’m so glad I live in a country that treats gun ownership with the respect it deserves. Subscribe the heck out of me!
Interesting article Mr. Nomad.
I think the main issue with more gun laws is that criminals, by definition, don’t follow laws. Some of the regions in this country with the strictest gun laws on the books are also places with highest instances of gun violence (i.e. Chicago).
If you could wave a magic wand and get rid of all the existing guns in this country, then regulation on future purchases might work. But you mentioned the issue in your post – there are already enough guns floating around the USA that we could arm nearly every man, woman, and child. The genie is out of the bottle, so to speak, and a lot of seriously crazy people already have their guns. I would carry around a policeman every day, but it’s just not practical (and they are notoriously bad shots).
We don’t live in a perfect world, and until we can figure out to make massive reductions in the number of currently armed criminals and mentally-unstable I’m going to continue to rely on myself for my personal safety and that of my family. It’s a sad state of circumstances, but often the only thing that stops a bad-guy with a gun is a good-guy with a gun.
I don’t know if you ever read Sam Harris, but he has about the most impartial write-up on guns in America I’ve ever read. I’d encourage anyone who’s interested to check it out: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-riddle-of-the-gun
Keep up the good work,
Mark
Buyback programs would remove a lot of the guns from circulation, so if that were to be combined with background check programs, that would remove new and old at the same time. If assault rifles were to be banned, you’d pretty much have to do a buyback program, so that all the people who have assault rifles would actually have a method to get rid of them, rather than just keeping an illegal weapon in the closet or throwing it in a trash can or something.
And New York has made the point that, yes, guns still show up even after a ban, but that’s just because states have different laws, and people can just cross the border. So there would have to be a nationwide ban on certain types of weapons, followed by background checks and buyback programs, in order to reduce the supply nationwide instead of just one place or another. I think it would work. And besides, if it only solves the problem halfway…those are still plenty of lives saved.
Sorry, but I just don’t envision any relevant number of criminals or armed-violent-mentally-unstable persons lining up to turn in their guns. If it suddenly became a federal crime to own an “assault weapon” I highly doubt it would have any measurable impact on the gun-related homicides in this country.
Firstly, long-guns (rifles) only account for only 3% of all murders in the US (according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report) and ‘assault weapons’ would only encompass a small fraction of that 3%. Secondly, putting more gun laws on the books will only serve to regulate law-abiding citizens, and embolden criminals by sending the message that they are less likely to meet any resistance from armed citizens.
Seriously, sit down with your favorite beverage and take 15 minutes to read through the article I linked. It’s not right-wing NRA propaganda; It’s written by a Liberal neuroscience Ph.D. and member of academia most famous for his books on Atheism. It’s rare to find clear, nonpartisan thinking on such a hard and ideology-fueled topic.
Cheers,
Mark
It is worth noting that the hardened criminals are not the ones shooting up movie theaters, black churches, schools and on and on and on. This is largely done by young, angry, white men.
Here is a quote lifted directly from that article:
He goes on to say it will not fix the problem completely, but I would argue that it would fix the following problems: New people easily getting guns who shouldn’t; people who commit a small, non-gun crime, and during the routine police check, they could check to see if he has a gun license and a gun and could then search for and confiscate it; a parent/friend/family member passing away, and all of his/her guns going into the hands of whoever finds them, increasing the number of unlicensed guns in circulation, and likely ending up in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, which could easily be fixed by putting the guns in a will, just like money and assets, but requiring the recipient to obtain a license to receive one.
Also, ignoring the assault rifle problem is…odd. It causes a small percentage of gun deaths, so we should…do nothing? And you’re right, criminals might not turn them in…except those who are in need of cash. Also, it will reduce the problem of adults who happen to own assault rifles, and whose children use them for mass shootings. It will also reduce the problem of people who own assault rifles and aren’t criminals, but may one day become them. All of these would be beneficial.
So no, it won’t solve all gun-related problems, but a few easily-enacted policies would solve several of them.
In response to gun buyback programs, they are just plain ineffective! If they worked at all then why don’t they have drug buy bacl programs… snarkity snark LOL.. http://www.policemag.com/blog/gangs/story/2013/12/the-fallacy-of-gun-buyback-programs.aspx
The title of that article makes a halfway decent point, which is that you won’t get criminals to disarm with a buyback program, which is partially true. The opposing argument, however, is that you will definitely get plenty of law-abiding citizens to disarm, and none of them, or their children, will be able to shoot up a school afterwards. The thing is, the world isn’t split between criminals and non-criminals. 100% of all criminals were non-criminals at some point. But if they have no guns, they won’t do nearly as much damage when they cross that line. And the buyback program worked just fine in Australia.
I totally understand and appreciate your argument. I was appalled at how easy it was go out and acquire my concealed carry permit. Gun ownership, and especially every-day carry, is something that should not be entered lightly and should require a serious thought coupled with serious training. I guess the point I’m really trying to make with my responses is that there are several good reasons why sane people would want to own and train with a firearm, and that ultimately guns are just tools – there is nothing inherently evil about them.
I agree that we need to be having a sane national conversation about the role of firearms in our society, but I think that working to identify and address the mental issues of the “young white males” Alan refereed to in his response would go a lot further to curbing mass shootings than putting another “assault weapon” law into place.
I would definitely agree with all that. I’m not against handguns for home defense, but it could be regulated like anything, instead of this gun show loophole nonsense. That’s part of the problem with bringing it up for debate; people will assume you mean a ban on 100% of all weapons, and they immediately launch into Stalin and so on and so forth. I didn’t specify in this post what sort of level of gun control I’d like, so they didn’t know, but I think a few sensible steps like background checks, licenses, and no assault rifles would be sensible.
Love your blog post. Your comments are so true and to the point that I laughed out loud – and I rarely find stuff funny enough to laugh out loud. I would be happy to live in a world without any guns, but in absence of that moderately unrealistic situation I am glad I live in a democratic country where there is a licence system. This is helped by the local population having a general mindset that for ordinary civilians, guns have little applicability in modern life. Even the police do not routinely carry weapons, and a recent suggestion that they should do so was much opposed. There are no mass shootings and no deaths of children in supermarkets because the mother took a loaded weapon with her. Of course there are hunting accidents. Of course criminals use them, and murders are committed with them, but in my view there are criminals in any society and people will always find a way to murder each other. The best you can do is make it as difficult as possible. I do not feel any less safe, nor any less free. To the contrary.
I am a Canadian who has recently moved back to Canada after living in the US for 16 years. I started reading your blog for travel tips because in November I am starting a round the world journey. Honestly at first I felt a little nervous reading this article because it was curving into the political arena. Then I realized that this is actually a travel article written for any non US citizen who is planning to visit the US. It is important to be aware of the local culture when visiting any country.
There are many excuses, but absolutely no valid reasons for the absurdity of how Americans cling to their guns. It’s ludicrous that the CDC can no longer study reducing accidental death by guns due to lobbying by the NRA.
Its probably true that an article like this will not change anyones mind, but thank you for standing up and pointing at the elephant in the room.
I will continue to read and recommend your blog to my friends.
Thanks for that. A couple people have asked why a travel blog would have a political article, but the way I look at it, travel is one of the best ways to confront one’s preconceived notions of what’s “normal.” For a lot of Americans, guns are normal, and they have all sorts of explanations for what would go wrong without them, or how reducing the supply of guns wouldn’t fix the problem, and so on. But if you just check literally anywhere else, it works out just fine. The same is true of government-provided health care, and plenty of other things. Americans object rather strongly to all sorts of things that work extremely well in all sorts of places. So the reason I felt it was appropriate to include here is because this is quite obviously a localized problem, and travel is a great way to find alternative solutions…and this problem really needs a solution.
I was in Hobby Lobby today looking at all the pro-NRA merch for sale, you know, like “WE DON’T CALL 911!” or “KEEP CALM AND CARRY” with guns plastered all over the signs, etc, and I wondered: how would this company (much less the rest of ‘Murica) feel if a whole bunch of black folks came in and started buying all this stuff? How WOULD America react if they started appropriating white gun culture for themselves? Terrified. Which is, of course, how the rest of us feel in an open carry state in a Walmart. I love shooting, myself (and even hunting) but the gun culture is really freaking creepy and honestly not really OK, considering how exclusionary and white it is.
I agree, though I think that white people think that black people with guns just kill other black people, so I think it would work better if they were brown. Not to say they wouldn’t get upset, because I think they would. Definitely worth a try.
What do you know, another ignorant article on gun control that ignores facts like how criminals don’t register guns and will always have them no matter how much you punish law abiding citizens. A travel writer that thinks he knows all about the idiosyncrasies of the social politics of gun control is like a celebrity that thinks they have what it takes to run for office cause they’ve been on TV. Stick to what you know my friend.
What I know is that other countries don’t have this problem, so this “criminals will always have them” argument is just imaginary.
Just imaginary? So…take a look to Brazil. No one can have even handguns here. It’s against the law. But criminals don’t care about laws. 60.000 deaths a year by guns is good for you? Good people don’t have guns, but it’s perfect possible to bad people find one. It’s a complete disaster. It’s like being in a war everyday.
60.000 deaths every year is not so imaginary for us…
Central and South America gets a lot of its guns from the United States, so a big part of the reason they’re so available down there is because we make them up here, which is pretty awful. But other countries don’t have nearly as much of a problem, which is why I have a hard time buying the argument about how they’re always available. I did not mean to minimize such a big problem in the places where it’s a serious issue, so I apologize for that. But reducing the number of guns available illegally makes it harder and harder to get one, and rarer and rarer for people to use them.
I really enjoy your gear reviews I don’t enjoy reading your political views. Do you plan to continue this or will you return to what initially drew me to your site – informative reviews of travel gear and clothing?
If you go back through the archives, you’ll notice a mix. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. This is true of all information everywhere on the internet. But this is my site, and this is what I have to say. Travel to me is a way to learn about the world, and to learn about one’s own country as well; to see what works, and what could be done better. And for something that causes such an immense destruction of life, I see no reason why someone shouldn’t observe how other countries handle the problem, and talk about importing the solution.
Imagine if it were any other issue in which thousands of lives were at stake; a simple water treatment strategy, road safety laws, engineering methods that can withstand natural disasters, etc etc etc…and then imagine someone coming along and saying that no one should bother talking about it, because it’s “political.” Would listening to those objections make much sense? I think not.