OMGWTFBBQGUNS - Jimbo the hated kid grabs his standard issue revolver and uses it on his most hated classmate/teacher only to get promptly gunned down by everyone else.
2 people dead. Possibly more if the frustrated kid is smart about it... but frustrated kids are rarely acting smart.
Do you remember when that Democratic senator (I can't remember her name) got shot in the head by some guy a couple of years ago? The civilian who took down that shooter actually carried a gun himself. He chose to not use it though, and instead brawled the shooter down. Why? Because he knew that if you start firing a gun in a crowded space you not only risk missing your target and hitting innocent bystanders, but because other panicked, gun-carrying bystanders might then mistake you for the perpetrator in the confusion and gun you down. In both cases you risk causing a lot of damage to both yourself and the other innocents.
Gabrielle Giffords.
And yeah, that's exactly why the spiel about "if everyone had a gun, nobody would be shot" or whatever doesn't fly. Criminals, terrorists, disgruntled workers, angsty teens, and general crazy people are going to try to kill other people regardless. If they have guns, they're going to be more effective at it. If everyone else also has guns and are willing to use them, you've got a bunch of other people sending up a hail of gunfire at whoever they think the threat is, which in most cases will be anyone they see shooting that isn't family or a close friend. Keep in mind, too, that most Americans don't have the time or willingness to learn proper gun safety or go to a range regularly. Even outright NRA gun nuts. Remember those asshole "militia" types that showed up to threaten federal officers who were trying to stop that asshole rancher from illegally grazing cattle on public land? Remember the photos of them not practicing proper trigger discipline, of them aiming their rifles at people with their fingers on the trigger?
So yeah. "More guns" is only the solution if you're delusional. The solution is to remove gun.
Those folks that fellate the Second and talk about having to pry their guns from their cold, dead hands? If they go through with it, good riddance.
The whole thing about guns being necessary to prevent government tyranny is just as much out of the 18th century as most of the other shit the far-right in the U.S. spews. Personal firearms are not and have not been an effective method for dealing with unreasonable and authoritarian states for a long time, because military technology and information infrastructure has advanced sufficiently that a band of armed assholes means next to nothing. Look at how badly ISIS is failing, and all they have to contend with are other armed assholes, a back-asswards government, and occasional foreign air attacks. It only worked for the colonies because: Britain was embroiled in other, more important wars; they were on the other side of a big fucking ocean that was exceptionally time-consuming to traverse; they had relatively weak forces here to begin with; we got a bunch of aid from pretty much everyone else that hated the British; and it was a time period where a bunch of assholes with guns
were capable of effectively fighting real military forces, mostly because those real military forces were
also essentially a bunch of assholes with guns who were
also bound by tradition and orders to fight as stupidly as possible. The modern weapons with which to contend against tyranny are either nonviolent or somewhere on the NBC field.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14841017 times)