Mass Shootings Are A Choice

Dozens of people were shot in Baltimore. We don't have to live this way.

There was a mass shooting this weekend at a block party in Baltimore. One 18-year-old girl was found dead at the scene, one 20-year-old man died in the hospital, and 28 people were injured, three are in critical condition and 14 were children. All 30 had gunshot wounds.

 Mass shootings are a choice . They are not "just one of those things that happens" anywhere but the United States. We know exactly how to stop them, because other countries have shown us the way. Even other countries that have guns have figured out how to properly regulate them so that this does not happen there. Iceland has lots of guns and they haven't had a single gun-related homicide since 2007. 

People in this country, people who, unfortunately, seem to have a lot more power than we do, have made the very calculated decision that mass shootings, that 12,520 gun-related homicides a year, are a reasonable price to pay for their unrestricted access to whatever weapons tickle their fancy. No matter what they say, no matter how much they talk about their idiotic "good guy with a gun" fantasies, they are making this choice and they are making it for all of us. They need their weapons!

PREVIOUSLY:

 Well-Regulated POS Fatally Shoots 20-Year-Old Woman Who Pulled Into His Driveway 

 Kansas City Confirms It Is Crime To Shoot Black Teenager Who Rings Your Doorbell 

 Only A Sick Culture Worships Guns 

  And why do they need their weapons?

Because they may need to kill us all someday. That is literally their reason. They need their guns because they might want to overthrow the government someday, a thing they still seem to think is perfectly legal, despite all of the January 6ers sitting in prison right now.

They claim they need absolutely unrestricted, unregulated access to weapons in the event that the government does "tyranny" to them, but given what they consider "tyranny" to be (and not to be, given how fond many of them seemingly are of authoritarian leaders like Putin and Pinochet), it is fair to say that we would be on opposing sides in any dispute of this nature.

"Tyranny," to them, is fucking Bud Light sponcon. It's people taking their own kids to drag story time. It's store clerks not wishing them a Merry Goddamn Christmas. It's other people talking publicly about their experiences with racism or sexism. It's having to attend a sensitivity training seminar at work because their boss doesn't want to get sued for discrimination or sexual harassment. It's not being allowed to discriminate against people at their own businesses. It's other people wanting their own kids to have access to gender-affirming care. It's people they don't personally find attractive feeling good about the way they look or (gasp) being allowed to pose in Sports Illustrated. It's school libraries and libraries in general carrying books they don't like. It's not enough people liking their posts on Twitter, and a whole lot of other very stupid things.

What is it that they want to do with their guns that they are so scared of "gun registries"? They're not mad about having to have driver's licenses. They're not mad about the census (I think). They're not mad about having to register to vote, but they want that "right to privacy" they swear isn't in the Constitution when it comes to abortion to apply to their guns.

These are the same people, by and large, who consider themselves real "tough on crime" because they want to play fast and loose with the justice system and send everyone convicted of a crime to prison forever or to death row (except, of course, for well-off white rapists with bright futures, those who try to overthrow the government, and ex-presidents who keep top secret government documents in the loo). They want to "stop crime" in stupid ways that we know for a fact do not work, just because those ways feel very personally satisfying to them. They don't actually care about keeping anyone safe. They just want to get their metaphorical dicks hard, and careless, vicious, cowboy bullshit is what does it for them.

Really, we should never, ever allow them to call themselves "tough on crime."

Those who oppose gun control measures don't like this being framed as a choice. They want us to believe mass shootings are simply inevitable. They want to be able to pretend that they just have different ideas about how the mass shootings that plague us could be stopped. But we know exactly how they can be stopped. We know they aren't inevitable anywhere else, and we know that none of their "different ideas" have worked. So they are, without question, choosing their personal interest in gun ownership and their dreams of a future civil war with the rest of us over the lives of children in schools, of teens at block parties, of people doing their grocery shopping and of anyone else in this country who leaves their house at any time.

Nice people, really.

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