Guns are a blight.

A study in the American Journal of Medicine found that “Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the United States’ gun-related murder rate is 25 times higher. And, even though the United States’ suicide rate is similar to other countries, the nation’s gun-related suicide rate is eight times higher than other high-income countries, researchers said.”¹

The same study goes on to say that it has been found that when people expect their opponent to be armed, they’re more likely to respond with deadly force. Meaning, if you think someone has a gun, you’re more likely to attempt to kill them rather than incapacitate them.

The NRA is a massive problem. People assume that because the NRA doesn’t contribute much money directly to candidates, they don’t influence elections. This is at best naive, and at worst, purposefully oblivious. What the NRA does is independently spend money for candidates instead – to the tune of more than $145 million. They fear monger, as if there is actually something worse than the more than 12,000 gun deaths so far this year, or that there is something worse than the 533 children killed by guns so far this year. Or the more than 1,300 unintentional shootings so far this year. The number of gun deaths is rising every single year. The number of little kids killed by guns rises every year. The NRA would rather you believe you are in immenent danger unless you have a gun, but the reality is that the NRA wants a gun in every hand, and a bullet in every body.

People really like two arguments. One is that they like to hunt, and they should be able to have their guns, because they’re responsible. The other is that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. I’ll get to the second amendment.

Gun hunters don’t need guns. They want guns. They don’t need guns to hunt. If they genuinely enjoy hunting (or need to hunt for food), they can use a bow. There is no credible argument to complaining that they don’t like hunting with a bow, only with a gun. That means they like shooting a gun, not hunting.

Guns actually are killing people. Guns have killed nearly 70,000 Americans since 2014. 3,200 of those Americans are under the age of 11. I can think of a thousand dreadful things, and trading those children’s lives so you can own a gun is worse than all of them put together.

When people argue that if more people had guns, then we’d all be safer, what they’re saying is that we’re murdering the wrong people, and should definitely be murdering (to be clear), just different people. We should be murdering the people who we think have guns. Stand your ground! Get murdering! In order to legitimize guns, let’s just shift who’s in the crosshairs. When you argue for more guns, you’re advocating for specific people to be shot; not certain people you designate, but these other people who you would prefer to get shot – they should definitely get murdered.

More than 90% of Americans support gun reform, but we will never get it when politicians know that by publicly rejecting gun reform after mass shootings, the NRA will give them free advertising (most often by creating attack ads against any pro-gun reform opponents) during the next election. People are, by and large, idiots when it comes to TV. They are inclined to believe what their TV tells them. We know this because Fox News, which is actually designated an entertainment channel (not a news channel), is very popular. In the way that tabloids are very popular. Fox is accurate 10% of the time. Their stories are false or mostly false 59% of the time. The rest of the time, their stories are a mishmash of what suits them, true or false.

Gun reform is not about you. Gun reform is about us. When you say you should get to own a gun because of the second amendment, you’re being incredibly selfish. You’re saying you’d rather that 3200 little kids get shot with guns than you give up your gun, because that is the direct consequence of the system we have now. We’ve tried the old “everyone gets a gun just in case we need a milita again” thing for 242 years, and that genuinely isn’t working. Now, if we had mandatory military service for everyone who owns a gun, then we may be more in the spirit with the original amendment – which not a single person actually cares about. And we have a standing army. It’s enormous, you all. $600 billion a year enormous. We don’t actually need all of you with your guns to come a-running (and frankly, if your argument is that you will protect us with your dumb guns in an emergency, you’re doing a terrible job – you’ve failed 70,000 times in 5 years). Further, if you believe that the government gets it right every single time (that is, the second amendment is sacrosanct), you are saying it was right when it said people of color weren’t people, and that women were too dumb to vote. Those are things we’ve had to change, that the government decided once. This is another of those things. And maybe you are a selfish racist misogynist! That might be your thing! It is certainly how I think of you, knowing you’d rather have your gun – which again, is the reason that babies are dying – than vote for anyone who supports gun reform.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-u-s-gun-deaths-compare-to-other-countries/