Two years ago, almost to the day, I wrote a list of what I thought were common-sense ideas for reducing gun crime (whether “repeal the second amendment” is common sense or not I’ll leave to you, but given the Supreme Court’s modern interpretation of it, most of my thoughts on implementing gun control would be hard to implement without doing so). Since that time, it’s become increasingly obvious to me that those ideas are insufficient when it comes to preventing large-scale atrocities like this one. It’s also become increasingly obvious that even if they were sufficient, nobody in Congress would care.
How do we deal with this sort of assault on society when the tools that made it possible are sold freely at every Walmart in the country? How do we deter the perpetrators with threats of punishment when they’re already willing to add themselves to their body count? When anyone in the country can legally amass a battalion’s-worth of weapons and ammunition because it’s their “right”, how can we possibly guard against the risks of such people snapping and taking out their fears and frustrations on literally hundreds of innocent people? What do we do when an entire political party is dedicated to needlessly stoking the fears and resentments of the people most likely to own these stockpiles?.
Clearly, “do nothing” is not an option, because this chart from the BBC (which horrifically has to disclaim that it still may not yet fully account for the death toll) shows that things are getting worse, not better:
The fact that this happened in Nevada, where there are virtually no obstructions to gun ownership whatsoever, is also proof that de-regulating the problem will not solve it, and that “more guns” and “eliminate gun-free zones” are not solutions.
Two years ago, my approach to gun control was to institute corrective measures that, while imperfect, would at least hopefully work to address the more egregious pain points in this epidemic. Now, I’d rather just melt down every single god-damned gun in the country, because people have demonstrated over and over and over again that they can’t be trusted with the fucking things. The utter absence of any attempts to do anything about this uniquely American problem have exhausted me to the point that I’m no longer interested in playing nice or meeting people half-way here. Every gun owner who defensively shouted “but we’re not the problem, don’t make it harder for us to own single-purpose death machines!” is complicit in this fucking bullshit, and I have absolutely no interest in listening to anything you have to say anymore.
