A little while back I wrote about the shooting in Colorado and gave more or less the exact argument you'd expect out of someone like me -- the constant occurrence of such mass shootings clearly indicates something needs to be done, and while what specifically if obviously up for debate, those who say we don't need any sort of gun control or that such gun control would do nothing really need to come up with some evidence for their argument stat. Because otherwise they're setting public policy with their ridiculous Dirty Harry fantasies, and this is directly leading to people dying.
I'm not going to rehash that here, because the post exists, and because I'm tired of having this argument right now.
But what I will point out is that the Onion tried to make a joke about our rampant gun-murder culture with its article Nation Celebrates Full Week Without Deadly Mass Shooting, mockingly suggesting going a full week without someone using a gun to shoot up a public place would be reason for celebration.
And yet in a horribly sad illustration of where our nation's obsession with guns has gotten us, between the time the article was written and when it was published, the Empire State building shooting happened. So they couldn't even make satire about it, because our gun culture is too extreme to even satirize.
So I'm not going to get all into this debate again, but when shit is so fucked up you can't even mock it, that probably indicates something needs to be done.
1 comment:
I found it interesting in a disturbing way that some of the injuries in this incident were probably caused by stray shots from the police. This would be evidence for your position that more citizens carrying guns would only make these situations more dangerous. Police obviously train regularly and yet civilians got hit by their "friendly fire". It would be seem likely that an ordinary gun owner would most likely cause far more damage if he or she decided to return fire in these types of situations.
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