It’s like clock work. A shooting happens and before I see it on the news, I find out about it from some politician trying to push their agenda. I hop onto social media and enter a fierce market of repeated ideas. Echochambers pop out of nowhere. Memes flood my friends walls. Statistics are spat out only to be countered by people claiming they are inept statistics. Logical fallacies abound. Emotional arguments that make no sense get repeated constantly. It happens every single time.
While the squabbling goes on, I tend to sit back and think. I read the comments and get a sense of how the rabble rousers are moving. In the midst of the chaos, I am calm because I am a free thinker. A skeptic. My knee-jerk reaction is to not allow myself to fall to emotional appeals or peer pressure… but to instead become offended at any medium trying to force me to believe what they want me to believe.
The one thing that has never changed is that when our federal government gets to take freedom from us, it doesn’t give it back. So when I see our media attempt to create an emotional appeal in order to entice Americans to give away freedoms to the government, I cringe. These pleas are almost always a simple “blank check” to hand over to the government.
When I say “blank check”, I mean that advocates for gun laws will almost always just say “we need better gun laws”. What does that mean?! When you have people like Rosie O'donnell publicly announcing her opinion that legal gun owners should be jailed, it’s easy to see how this can be taken too far really fast. When our government gets public consent to take our freedoms, it’s a blood frenzy.
Curious, I began asking people on social media a single question: “If you could change our gun laws, what would you change?”. The responses would have been funny had it not been so horrifying. I was told that they would make automatic weapons illegal (they ALREADY ARE). I was told that people that can’t mentally handle having a gun should be screened (already in effect!). Where things got shady, however, was when people started saying that the government should keep lists on people. How these lists are formed was never declared.
So not only did these gun control advocates show me that they didn’t know what they were talking about, but they also demonstrated openly and proudly that they were fine with blindly handing these powers over to the government. After all, everyone knows the government is trustworthy, right? No.
So if only 3% of Americans believe that the government will almost always do the right thing when it comes to creating legislation that flies in the face of our bill of rights, why do they so blindly give our freedom away to our government?
Emotional appeal and lack of understanding. We are taught that the only way to end children getting shot is to restrict gun owners. This idea is not only foolish, but dangerous as well because of one simple tautology: criminals don’t obey laws.
Even more, let’s enter the mind of a mass shooter. As a mass shooter getting ready to perform a shooting, which of these signs would you rather see at your target area?
Do you know why? Because people (even criminals) don’t like to get shot. It fucking hurts.
I say all of this while at the same time realizing that I am changing no minds. This is common rhetoric at this point. It’s like trying to convince an alcoholic that alcohol is bad for them and harms their liver. They know. My words will not convince anyone at this point. But I still have hope.
In 2020 Kokesh will probably win the presidency. He will then dissolve the federal government thus transferring the power back to the states. This means that gun control advocates can have their states where they have very strict gun control... like Chicago, for instance. Meanwhile, other states can maintain their freedom. Since people will be able to then vote with their feet by moving to their preferred state and laws, these ideas can openly compete. If the “gun law” pushers are correct, other states will see it and thusly adopt these proven ideals. If freedom is what is required, then “gun law” states will see it and change accordingly.
Squabbling on the internet won’t make America evolve to how it should. Decentralizing power and actually seeing results without forcing everyone else to give up their freedom is the answer. If you want to protect the children in whatever way ACTUALLY WORKS, vote Kokesh 2020. Let’s heal this nation together.
-Michael P. Wood
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