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.
Our world gone mad…
Stay with me on this…please?
I read an article decades ago and I have never forgotten it…about a teen [for sure…an american teen but he could be substituted for any person any colour any age any where any time any culture…] who was running off the rails, he was uncontrollable and his mother was at her wit’s end. She had tried soft and firm parental discipline, school guidance, the police, the correctional system, counselling, psychology, psychiatry…to no avail.
After a recommendation she booked him in to see a nutritionist or a naturopath [I am not sure which] who enquired about his diet? What?
It turns out he had ‘breakfast’ of soft drink and chocolates on the way to school and had ‘lunch’ of whatever passed for food at the school cafeteria, more soft drink, chocolate and chips on the way home from school and I can’t remember what he had for dinner but he dished up more grief for his mother.
The nutritionist/naturopath, seeing the bleeding obvious, put him on a junk food fast and he started eating real food…you know…real food…fruit, vegetables, starch, protein…stuff his ancestors would recognise and what millions around the world ate every day. Within a week his turnaround to a calm/normal[?] teen was stunning to his mother and even more so…to himself. But not to the nutritionist/naturopath…she had seen it many times before.
Our gut is our second brain…[and follow the google wormhole on that one if you dare]…feed it well we think well, feed it crap and we think crap. I can tell when I have too much dairy I turn into a cry baby,…when I eat too much wheat I am unproductive…when I eat too much sugar I get rebellious and resistant…when I eat unnatural food I get unnaturally hungry…when I eat them all together you had bleeding well watch out…so it’s best for me to minimise them to condiments or treats rather than staples and I stabilise and am a much nicer person. So not rocket science. I am 58 years old and I wish I knew this decades ago.
So I tell a long story to make the correlation between our unnatural diet and our unnatural fears. Can not our cultures ‘parents’ apply damage control and look to our food system to improve our world’s mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health thereby calming us down rather than dumbing us down…focus on natural food and sustainability rather than growth and profits of factory food…duh!
So my input is to suggest that people stop outsourcing their care and their family’s care to the corporations that only pretend to have your health and wellbeing top and centre…Spoilers…profit and growth is…stop buying the crap and they will stop making it…stop buying into their crap and they will stop selling it…stop blaming them for the fact we handed control over to them…they are as addicted to their bottom line as we are to their products.
The earth has gone through five great extinctions and recovered the sixth will be cause by mankind…I hope she can recover this time. She is not indifferent to us she will support us or expel us…or die trying.
And…on a final note for EACH of those that their guns are their ‘religion’…
Quote: “If your religion is worth killing for, start with yourself.” JFDI
I want to my visits to be an exchange of informative, mind boggling, happy, healthy, well fed inter-reactions between my host country and me. This is a travel blog and food is a big part of travel for me…so the above has relevance…and that’s my story…
My favorite terrible-food story was from someone whose parents were coming to visit her on one of the American coasts. They were from the Midwest, and they had heard that the fish on the coast is great, so they got some, but were disappointed. They told their daughter about it, so she asked them where they got it. They told her they gotten fish sticks from the frozen food section, like they always do.
FAVORITE. EVER.
LOL…some daughters do have them…
I am Australian, live in the tropics and my second overseas jaunt was to get married on Hawaii a couple of years ago [cliche, much!], the first was take the local buses around Fiji…I know I know…same same…as the Whitsundays on my doorstep.
I embarrassed my daughters when my topic at the dinner table the first night was about the shape and the flushing action of the toilets in our hotel…And my well travelled stepdaughter had to inform me the waiter’s professional friendliness was directly related to how big my tips were…And I found out that entree’s Are the main course after I ordered four to share with the table…And I found out that beetroot is not on a burger with the lot though the burger bun sure was huge…
I ordered coffee with cream…you know real cream…I am lactose intolerant but…joy of joys…for some reason I can have butter and cream. No? OK I will half and half with the local coffee…so me being me and a tiny bit precious about coffee just left it after the first sip.
Back to our room we go after some inquiries about what in the world half and half was and buying some of those pre-ground local coffee beans, cream and a small plunger to support my habit. Same…after the first sip it landed in the sink…and I had a drink of water…Ah Ha! it was the local water…where were the warnings. So we purchased bottled water from there on in and I drank wine when we ate out.
NB: I never buy water but my sister who lives further north always brings some from home when she visits because she has even better water than ours due to high rainfall.
Yep! travelling sure teaches us a thing or many…I heard somewhere “she has her version of the truth…and then there’s wrong!”…I so don’t want to be her…but…don’t mess with my coffee.
Sorry, I’m removing this site from my reading list. It’s devolving into something else. Thanx for the packing tips. Carl
No problem. Be sure to visit any other developed country in the world on your next trip, where gun violence isn’t nearly such a problem, and then check to see if it’s a tyrannical dictatorship at the same time. If not, then hopefully you’ll learn something.
I’m from The Netherlands and I’ve never felt like I needed a gun to defend myself, so I guess I’m very lucky to be living in such a safe country. Should I ever travel to the US, I understand it would be wise to acquire a gun. Can this be done at the airport? I imagine I’d feel a lot safer with a gun, with all the abhorrent evils and what not, so I’d rather get one soon after arrival. Do you recommend purchasing a gun, or just renting one for the time of one’s stay? In case of the latter, which companies offer the best deals and how do their plans work? Does one just pay a fee for the time one rents, or do they also charge extra for every fired bullet? I imagine some deals include an amount of free bullets? Also, what model do you recommend for light, carry-on only travel? I guess we’re looking for something lightweight and blood resistant. O, and a practical question: what if, in the process of defending oneself, an attacker gets killed. Does one just leave the body there, or are there corpse removal services that can be called? When renting a gun, would the costs of corpse removal be covered by the rental plan?
Also, when a cop wants to arrest me for smoking marihuana, I understand I grab my gun and fire at will in order to protect my freedom, yes? WAIT- why is it that smoking marihuana has been legal in my country forever while owning guns is not, whereas in the US it’s the other way around? You guys have been protecting your freedom with all those guns, right?!
These are all excellent questions, and I’d be happy to help someone who wants to visit the US for the first time, so that his trip is a satisfying one. There are plenty of cultural differences between our countries, and it’s great to take the time to learn more.
But it’s actually quite simpler than what you’ve described. You see, there are so many guns in the US that, much like a ski pass or a festival ticket, people will simply give their guns away to the new arrivals as they’re leaving. They can’t take them on the plane, so they’ll just hand them off and you can pick one up as soon as you get off the plane. If you’re traveling through a major airport in a big city, you can often get your choice of weapon, but if you’re flying through a smaller airport, you might have to take whatever you can get until you arrive at your hotel, and then you’ll be able to take the one from the previous tenant.
You’re an absolute fucking genius. No sarcasm intended. Glad I found this post and instantly shared it on my Facebook page. I spent all of my formative years and a little more in Texas and now live in London and I’m glad to be out of there.
“We’re protecting ourselves against tyranny” get the fuck out of here. You think you can protect yourself against the U.S. military if they want to come for you and your makeshift militia. Please. Guns need to go. People want to go to the movies, go to school, sleep at night, without the risk of getting shot. America is turning into/already is the Wild Wild West and many of the citizens prefer to live in fear rather than at ease. Shame on them. Well done Snarky Nomad for voicing your opinion. A drop in the ocean littered with fools but it all starts somewhere. Thumbs up.
Happy to hear the support. There have been some weird reactions to this; none were surprising, but they seemed to be a strong majority, or at least were just more vocal. I hope somebody actually gives this a try, though…it might actually work.
I happen to be pro Gun and I fully agree with the statistics. Here’s the difference….BIG LONG TERM PICTURE. Sure, if we took guns away, the US would fall into the lower left of the graphs. BUT, as other posters have pointed out, if the government goes rogue how many millions of lives could be lost? I knows it’s speculative, but I would prefer to error on the side of caution because the reality is that governments turn on their people if given enough time. We can’t look at “oh, my life is fine right now and the leader we have is great”. We have to look 200+ years down the road.
One more thing I’ll submit to you. If the slaves in the United States had the right to gun ownership, how do you think that whole “slave” thing would have turned out?
I see your point, but ending the gun show loophole and requiring background checks wouldn’t eliminate the right to own weapons for self-defense purposes. It would just get rid of criminals or the mentally unstable being able to buy guns with no problems whatsoever, and so on. I also think that all the pro-gun people should be fighting in favor of voting rights, because they’re being restricted in lots of states and none of the gun people seem to be doing much to stop it. Seems like freedom would be kinda their thing.
Hi Snarky,
The problem with what you have written is that the subject is emotional, not logic based.
Examples of the lack of intellect and emotion and flights of fancy are:
– somehow equating the US government as a dictatorship.
– only let good people have guns
– it’s the 2nd amendment right, therefore it’s ok to be able to buy military level assault weapons from a supermarket.
Comedian Jim Jefferies addressed this in one of his shows and did a good job pointing out this. He’s very course and unrefined, but his points are valid. Two of his points are- It’s an “Amendment”- therefore it’s actually possible to change it. Yes you can change laws. Remember slavery? Women’s right to vote? One problem the US has is they are Number 1 in confidence, but Number 17 in education. Thus you have a lot of big headed but stupid people. And they are lethally armed.
Your intellectual word play is quite witty and I always smile when you show a photo and then have an unexpected comment labeling it underneath, like the Dolph photo -IQ 160.
There’s a saying I read from a popular financial advice series- It takes a ton of information to overcome an ounce of opinion. Keep this up for another 200 years and you might drop the gun ownership level 1%.
As an aside, I think Kuzco has a valid point. Although you are correct about US gun violence and ownership, your blog is about hiking and it’s a very good one. I don’t want to see it get dragged through the mud by violent loud gun nuts or by too much politics.
Cheers mate, have a good day!
I agree with all of your points; however, that was part of the reason I wrote an emotion-based strategy, which wouldn’t convince the gun nuts on a logical level, but would just horrify them. There are already “Muslim-free” gun stores, which just proves my point that Muslims getting access to guns would immediately change the minds of all the racist/Islamophobic white people, who would immediately demand background checks. They’re already totally on board with voter ID laws, and they seem to support the idea of voting, so I think they’d be on board with gun ID laws. Not to say that they would work out the way I’d like (maybe they’d demand Muslim-free gun ID rules), but it could work.
And a lot of people have pointed out that this is just a travel blog; but a big part of the reason I travel is to understand the world around us, and it’s an invaluable tool to understand your own country as well. The reason we don’t have universal health care is because half the country is blinded to the facts of the world around them, and angrily shouting about how universal health care doesn’t work, despite how Americans have a lower life expectancy than other modern countries; they say there’s no possible way to stop using fossil fuels, but random places like Costa Rica are already there. The same ridiculous problems exist for our prison system, educational system, terrible internet speeds, and so on. Discovering how easy it is to fix these problems is a big part of why I travel, and there’s no way I wouldn’t talk about it. That’s part of what travel means to me, and it’s been part of this site since the beginning.
Hi Snarky,
Thanks for your reply. You make many valid points. I don’t necessarily think the Muslim tactic would work out as you hope- could easily go the other way and lead to active racial targeting, MORE guns being given to white people for “protection”, and if yet another Bush gets into the Presidency, another US lead invasion of the middle east.
But I totally get what you mean about travelling to see and experience and learn about other places, and other ways to do, and not do things. In fact I didn’t know about Costa Rica. Good on them. On a similar theme, I went to Kunming, China a little while back, and every motorcycle there is an electric one. Not retarded bicycles with a motor added, but full on motorcycles, except the engine is electric. It was amazing how much more peaceful the city was without the mad scooter/motorcycle noise.
But guns…yeah…….sure everyone can have a gun, just make them muskets like in the 1700’s, and the time it takes to load one will give people time to cool down, and there’s won’t be anymore massacres.
The stats are somewhat skewed. It really is necessary to remove all the suicides committed with a firearm. I’m just guessing that any data you looked at included those.
Our right to bear arms is essential to our freedom.
No, that’s silly. If the chart includes suicides, it means those lives would be saved too. There’s good evidence to support the idea that gun control would be even more beneficial in preventing suicide than homicide. A lot of suicide victims end up having second thoughts after the suicide is initiated…but not if they use a gun, because it’s too late by then. If they use any other method, a lot of people change their mind.
As for defending our freedoms, I think voting restrictions have a far greater impact on our freedom than gun restrictions, but I never see any gun rights activists bother to do anything about that. I guess they just don’t care much about democracy, or just don’t pay much attention to it.
Easy there partner. There’s a whole world out there that you’ve been shielded from. It’s time to educate yourself. Please consider the following real-life situation for starters . . .
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/27/us/oklahoma-man-is-said-to-behead-co-worker.html?_r=0
What would have happened if Mr. Vaughan hadn’t been armed? Imagine what you might do if something similar were to occur to you. If, wherever you are seating right now, someone were to enter the next room in a violent rage hacking whoever is in there to pieces?
It’s worth noting in this horrid terrorist attack that occurred right here in OKC, that the 30 year old attacker who was shot survived his wounds, while the 54 year old woman whose head he cut off with a knife did not.
For the next lesson, consider the current state of terrorism in the world . . .
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCUQFjABahUKEwiH2_mph-vHAhWHPogKHUDuDxA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhomeland.house.gov%2Fsites%2Fhomeland.house.gov%2Ffiles%2Fdocuments%2FComplete%2520September%2520Terror%2520Threat%2520Snapshot.pdf&usg=AFQjCNGJpLyQDVjtvOrNQ8vH-Uimxqdpyg&bvm=bv.102022582,d.cGU&cad=rja
I don’t think I’ve been shielding myself from anything. There are plenty of cases where guns are useful, and plenty of cases where they create more problems than they solve. And if you look at every other country on the planet, where gun deaths just don’t happen nearly as often, there’s a pretty straightforward answer as to whether they provide a net benefit or a net cost. As other commenters have pointed out, suicides are an even bigger problem than homicides, and gun suicides have a much higher “success” rate than other methods, because slow-acting methods cause people to have second thoughts, whereas guns work far too quickly for people to think about backing out. So yes, occasionally guns can fix problems. But they cause a lot more of them than they solve.
Snarky,
I did not mean to suggest that you have been shielding yourself. Neither you, myself, nor any other member of a free speaking society is capable of having produced the shield that has protected us since before we were born.
If what you propose were truly the solution, and it had been enacted long ago, how pathetically short our American Revolution against British tyranny would have been. Their first move was to disarm the colonists, which turned a political argument into a shooting war – Boston, September 1st, 1774.
You can’t put the genie back into the bottle. This is something the forefathers of our great nation understood all too well. They knew that if the British seized their weapons, they would have no means of defense against tyranny. They knew how power corrupts. They devised a system of governance whereby the will of the people was protected through a series of checks and balances. Can you not see any examples of tyranny in today’s world?
Look at the atrocities that have been occurring in Syria since the ‘Islamic Spring’: millions of refugees fleeing for their lives because they have positively no means of defense against the terror that seeks them. Please include these yet-to-be-counted-millions-of-victims into your calculus. What form of checks and balances did they have at their disposal?
Speak to any officer of the peace who has walked the beat. If he is honest, as most of them are, he will tell you that he cannot possibly protect you. The police force is a deterrent, not a body guard. Criminals are less likely to commit crimes that are enforced by heavy penalties as they wish to avoid these punishments. They include the possibility of getting caught into their deliberations, but when they decide to take their chances and strike they do not call ahead to set up a calendar appointment. They come when you least expect them. In the case of mass murderers, their escape plan is often suicide or capture such that the penalties provided by our legal systems provide zero deterrence.
Such killers may, however, include defensive obstacles into their decision making process. There is some evidence of this. Breivik planted a bomb in Oslo to divert authorities, dressed as a police officer, then proceeded to an island to slaughter adolescents he knew to be unarmed. James Holmes targeted a movie theater at midnight and even though he could reasonably expect himself to be the only one armed, he tossed smoke grenades for cover. Dylann Roof attacked a church during a prayer service. As for the horrific string of school massacres we have endured from elementary to collegiate, the killers had reasonable assurance that they would be the only ones armed. So although they may not fear our laws, they do seem to worry about our defensive capabilities.
The problem you have weighed in upon is not so much a matter of gun control as you have proposed, as it is a matter of mass murder deterrence. History has shown that you cannot possibly disarm all bad guys.
Hind sight is always 20-20, but how can you determine whose gun to take before the crime is committed?
You cannot. I suppose you could go to the extreme of disarming the entire society even though our Constitution strictly forbids it, but then you would hand over absolute power to governing bodies and we all know that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Isn’t our government corrupt enough already?
So then, in order to provide for the pursuit of liberty, self defense, and to deter mass killings – we must preserve our right to bear arms. Without them we’re just slaves waiting to be shackled, victims waiting to be assaulted, or sitting ducks waiting for slaughter.
Indeed, given the mental state of the Union, how do you know that gun ownership hasn’t in fact deterred more mass killings from occurring?
Reasonable background checks and restrictions against fully automatic weapons (such as already exist) make perfect sense. Reducing the endless stream of violent graphics that our youth digest through movies, TV, and first-person-shooter games would be an even more effective way of preventing future ostracized and dejected individuals from emerging out of their psychological moratorium as mass murderers.
Pearlchaser
I was going to respond to this when I had more time to give it an appropriate response, but, in the time since that comment was written, three more school shootings have occurred, including two in the same day. This will continue to happen, literally forever, until better laws are put into place…whereas a tyrannical dictatorship taking over the country is not guaranteed at all. In a democracy, the first line of defense is the vote, and if voting rights are being restricted due to voter ID laws (exclusively down party lines and counties that swing in a certain direction), then democracy is already under threat. And yet…no gun rights advocates seem to care. They talk about freedom and defending our democracy, yet they won’t do a thing about it. Which means either they simply don’t know, don’t care, or are partisan enough that they’re happy to subvert democracy to advance the interests of single-party rule. None of those is commendable.
And no, you can’t disarm all bad guys, but how is that even an argument? If you disarm half of them, you’d cut gun violence in half. Do we also do nothing for earthquake safety because we can’t achieve 0% casualties?
I am glad we agree on better background checks, because that should be a non-issue. “Do you want a weapon that can kill people in a matter of seconds? Cool. Let’s see if you’re a criminal first, or if you have a history of mental illness.” That should be so clearly the correct answer that no one should argue against it…and yet, gun advocates immediately stand up and shout to stop this from happening. Which only ends up with more people dead.
The correlation you draw between GUN deaths per 100K and guns owned per 100K is interesting but a more interesting stat would be TOTAL deaths (by any means) per 100K and guns owned per 100K. I think you’d find a different result.
You might find this fellow’s research interesting between violent crime and gun ownership:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=51&v=Ooa98FHuaU0
His research shows that a better correlation exists between violent crime and population density. Also interesting is when USA FBI violent crime stats are compared to England’s Home Office violent crime stats, America is 300% safer than England. That’s right, you are 3x more likely to be a victim of violent crime in England than USA.
Cheers.
What I still find troubling is the difference between all 50 states, whereby it’s quite easy to measure the level of gun ownership state by state, and the ones with more guns have more problems, and they’re usually less densely populated.
I’ve been a fan of this site, and of yours, for some time now. Your travel and gear advice helped me through my first international voyage to Japan. I was actually on my way here to post some one-year follow up reviews on the pieces of kit I picked up on your suggestion when I found this article.
I’m sad to say, as a law-abiding, gun owning U.S. citizen, you’ve lost a reader. “Snarky” is fine, as are opinions on a topic. However, this article was very biting and personally targeted individuals who may well make up a large portion of your following. Myself included.
My parting advice? Stick to talking about travel.
I’ll start by saying this was a mostly respectful comment–though I will also point out the mild hypocrisy of telling me not to express my opinion on this issue, while simultaneously expressing an opinion of your own. If you don’t want people talking about an issue, you should pay them the same respect and refrain from expressing your own opinion as well. Or, even more respectfully, vice versa. If you want to talk, you need to listen. Fair’s fair. Don’t tell anyone to keep quiet unless you’re willing to do the same.
That said, think about this for a moment…the present circumstances in the United States are such that anyone…anyone at all…can get a gun, no questions asked, at a gun show. No background check, no nothing. Not a single obstacle besides cash. Terrorists, for example, or people with a previous criminal record. And now think about what side you’re on. If you support the current system, you are in favor of terrorists being able to walk right into a gun show and walk out with a truck full of AK-47s. If you support the current system, exactly as it is, that’s the side you’re on.
And secondly…you’re willing to cut someone out of your life entirely…a stranger, of course…simply for expressing that this is a serious problem. That should tell you something. Something as simple as “hey, maybe we should have a system that prevents terrorists, criminals, and the mentally ill from getting assault rifles” (which is the political position I hold) causes you to shun someone to the point of never listening to them ever again. Is that healthy? Or rational? It seems to me that if “don’t let terrorists or criminals get assault rifles” causes you to become irreparably upset…maybe it’s time to rethink your positions.