Ugh, those things. I abhor them, and I despise the story their existence tells about the sorry state of the world. While I can certainly sympathize with people who wish to have gun control laws, and agree that guns are tools that inspire violence, I simply cannot agree with banning them.
I AGREE THAT GUNS ARE A PROBLEM
Before you skip to the comment section and type your rebuttal; I will say --
THE RIGHT TO SELF DEFENSE IS A PRIMARY HUMAN RIGHT
I wholeheartedly implore you, please let me explain some things that make me VERY uncomfortable with gun owners:
I have seen the way that those on the ‘Right' side of the political spectrum nearly froth at the mouth when talking about their guns, or their right to own guns. Almost in a power-trippy, near-orgasmic kind of way, and at times I think they are possessed! This is really off-putting and a little worrying, guys. While I am supportive of that ‘right’(see note 'a', below), this attitude gives me pause.
Look, most of the people who owns a gun are not raving lunatics. The majority of people who carry a gun in my presence aren't asshats (...at least when it comes to guns -- ha!) Having a gun is a HUGE responsibility, and they take that responsibility very, very seriously. However, I can see how the Left HATES this attitude with the fury of a thousand suns. "So what?" you might ask. I say this to you because if someone isn't scared shitless of you, they might be more receptive to what you have to say.
I have seen the way some gun owners tend to unconsciously (or even consciously) invite confrontations which will lead to them having to use their guns. I once watched an altercation between a friend of mine and a drunk guy leaving a hockey game. He was mouthy and grumbly because her car was stopped at a light in the middle of the crosswalk, blocking his path. The man bumped her car with his hip, sure we heard it but it wasn't hard enough to cause serious damage. She screamed out the window at him, "I have a gun, m*****f******, back off!"
That left me thinking, "What if he had a gun, too?" Were they going to have a showdown at the OK Corral while I was in the car with her? Yeah, I can't say that I was comfortable in that situation at all. I felt like she was needlessly putting my life at risk with her brazen, amped-up behavior.
Finally, I truly wish to see a world that does not have the need for guns (or violence in general). I also wish that I were taller by several inches. But let's be real here: both aren’t likely to happen in my lifetime.
BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE... THIS IS THE GOOD PART
Are you still with me? Good. I'm really glad you are. I’ll explain one simple point about why I do not think gun control laws is a solution to the problem of homicides.
Despite my distain for guns and what they stand for, I cannot lend myself to the support of a body of governance which will use force to take away guns.
The only way that governments can enforce laws is ultimately with the threat of deadly force. Don't think this is true? Do a little mental exercise and pretend you've broken one of the millions of arbitrary laws in the world. If you're caught breaking the law, you are fined or you go to jail. Refuse to pay the fine, go to jail. Resist going to jail, well, all the government truly has left to do is to threaten lethal force. If you're still unmoved by the threat and continue to resist, the government will kill you.
Here's some more dreadful things about government which earns my fullest distrust:
Governments do not serve the people, they serve an elite (military-industrial complex, medical-industrial complex, etc etc ad nauseam). Take a dispassionate, objective look at the revolving door between legislative bodies and the industries they regulate, and you'll see this truth with absolute, crystal clarity.
In the last century (see note 'b', below), governments have directly caused the deaths of around 203 million people, when you add in all the casualties of war (another function of government). (See link '1', below.) Depending on which source you check, around a half million people in the US die from heart disease every year. Extrapolated to a century, that is 50 million US deaths from heart disease alone.
IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, GOVERNMENTS KILLED AROUND 4 TIMES MORE PEOPLE THAN THE MOST DEADLY DISEASE IN THE UNITED STATES.
Let’s look at another metric if that one doesn’t convince you about the severity of #DEMOCIDE. From 1930 to 1999 there were 71 million tobacco-related deaths in developed countries. Compare this to the 200m + souls who perished due to governments.
Historically, gun control almost universally precedes #democide. I consider the #institutionalized #racism inherent in metropolitan police districts across the US to be a somewhat less organized form of #democide. Gun control is used to make the population dependent on the state's (terrible) security, and the drug war marginalizes a certain group of the population. It's a one-two punch, basically giving the state a golden ticket to murder people.
A government’s only resource for enforcing the law is with violence, WITH GUNS. When I ask the government to solve the humanitarian crisis of violence, I am in effect bringing more violence into the world. Before he sold out to the Trump-thumper camp, Stefan Molynoodle (see note 'c', below) once said: “The government is the gun in the room.” He is still right about this, despite his current insane ramblings.
Homicide rates have been dropping steadily around the world for the last century and a half. Despite this trend, the spikes we see in Australia, UK, and the United States are all around the time where gun control laws (full or partial bans) came about. The numbers don’t lie -- murder rates spike when gun control is implemented, then steadily decline around the same pace as it has been trending over the last century and a half.
Gun control doesn’t actually solve the homicide crisis. For instance, you are twice as likely to be knifed to death in the UK as you are being murdered by a gun in the US.(see link '2', below) And it certainly doesn't solve the problem of mass shootings. If anything, the advent of gun control has slammed the gas petal down on the incidences of mass shootings all around the world. And this is if you believe official narratives about who is responsible for these mass shootings (I'm not convinced that even most all of them are actually organic and/or genuine).
The ATF, FBI, CIA and other alphabet soup agencies have either smuggled guns themselves, or they have allowed it to happen under their noses. Do you really think if the program is "officially" stopped, that the government won't just go on in secret? Look at #MKULTRA and #OPERATION #MOCKINGBIRD. It's clear that these programs never stopped, they only transformed (sometimes the name is just changed).
THE REAL PROBLEM
In my view, many often complex factors contribute to the crisis of homicide. I can't say one is more responsible than the others, so I'm just listing a few here:
The need to control. Perhaps one of the most basic human needs is a need to be in control of the seeming chaos around us. Often in staving uncertainty, we become the monsters that we wish to slay. Humans have a universal need for safety.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow defined a hierarchy of needs, with the particular revelation that when needs on the lower tiers of the pyramid are not met, the higher-level needs will be abandoned. (see link '3', below)
Focusing specifically on Safety in the graphic above, loss of it during childhood can lead to trauma, lifelong fixation on security and safety, violent tendencies, and co-dependent behavior.
Centuries of conditioning, particularly with mass media. Around the world, people have forgotten how to reason and negotiate. They reach for violence since it is (seemingly) a quick and effective way to regulate human behavior. While it is true that violence, or the threat of such, will certainly ‘control’ a population, as the old adage goes “violence begets violence.” When a society attempts to control itself with violence, a portion of the population becomes marginalized. And when the marginalization becomes unbearable, the reaction is usually more violence (revolutions, uprisings, coups, etc).
The conditioning of violence as a solution can begin with spanking children. I say “can begin” because I was spanked as a child, and while it caused many psychological issues with me, violence isn’t one of them. But I see its effects in other people around me, and in the world at large. The message you are giving children when you spank them is most definitely “Using violence to solve problems is an acceptable way to conduct ourselves in society.”
Violence is about the worst way you can ever solve a problem, I think most of us can agree. Yet, most people do not understand what the state actually is (hint: it’s a vehicle of force and violence), and as such embrace it as an enlightened way to conduct the affairs of humanity, when it is anything but. #uncivilized
From a very young age, people have been traumatized by simulated death on TV and in movies. Particularly this latest generation. I cannot help but feel such sorrow when I think of the effect of simulated violence on young children. The conditioning can cause co-dependent behavior involving a psychopathic, destructive, completely corrupt, and overdue-to-be-defunct system of governance. Example: the ‘gun banners’ ask the government to take away guns while the SAME government kills people in the streets like dogs.
Exposure to simulated violence at a young age can also lead to psychopathy and lack of empathy, or other psychological traumas.
The education system is a sham. It is mainly a human conditioning factory (gotta have those worker drones, you know), teaching subservience to authority and smashing independent thinking. See John Taylor Gatto, The School Sucks Project by Brett Veinotte, and Tragedy and Hope Media’s works for a more in-depth look at how the Prussian Education Model is destroying the minds of children around the world. (see links '4', below)
Tribalism and dehumanizing those with differing viewpoints. Once, I showed a video of the Don’t Comply Show openly breaking the law to feed the homeless in Dallas, TX to a friend of mine. Their immediate reply to me was “This is just humanizing them.”
Whaaat?
I was floored, naturally! That statement is absurd to my mind. Of course it’s humanizing them, because they ARE human.
If you don’t know them, Don’t Comply is a militia in Texas, and they protect the homeless and marginalized population there from the inhumane, draconian laws that seek to eradicate homelessness by criminalizing it (see links '5', below). Don’t Comply open carries rifles while providing food, clothing, and protection from the jackboots that often steal their sleeping bags and cut holes in their tents.
“Whoever is not us is our enemy.” Dehumanization is one of the ways we objectify one another, forgetting that we are ALL human beings with an entire universe of hopes, dreams, ideals, and varying thoughts inside. Forgetting that we aren’t just widgets in a machine; forgetting the very humanity and empathy which defines us and was to our great evolutionary advantage (if you believe in that sort of thing ;) ).
The ‘reptile brain’. Failure to use the frontal cortex as it should be used: to control and quell the ‘reptile brain’ aka fight or flight instincts.
It’s the easy way. Violence is the ‘easy way’ to solve problems. Outsourcing it to a government makes it a lot less messy, too, doesn't it?
SOLUTIONS
I’m not a perfect person, nor am I all-knowing. Frankly, there is no one neat and tidy, one size fits all solution for the problem of homicide and violence in society. As I said above, it’s not likely that I’ll see a change in this for as long as I live. But, that doesn’t dissuade me from giving it the gold old College try.
First, watch this video by Robert P. Murphy, an admitted pacifist, on the necessity for security and how it would work out in a stateless society. It gets you thinking about alternatives to the current system of violence and tyranny we are mired in.
End the drug war! It is ruining our inner cities, killing hundreds if not thousands a year from overdose, and turning our streets into blood baths. Prohibition of any substance causes more net harm than good. All you have to do is look at history.
Get to know your neighbors. Start neighborhood watch programs. Join clubs. Support your neighbors when you find them in need.
Stop taking the main stream news as gospel (Fox, CNN, MSNBC, Vice, HuffPost, all of them). In the case of mass shootings, these shameful institutions provide positive enforcement to would-be mass murderers by means of the 24 hour news cycle coverage. That is also assuming that all of the mass shooting incidents are genuinely perpetrated by 'lone gunmen' or them rascally 'terrorists'!
Stop buying into FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) prophets. Sure, they have some good information SOMETIMES - a broken clock is right twice a day, after all. You need to discern things for YOU. Do not believe anything until you have examined it fully.
Work on your irrational fears. These are fears that are not caused by direct threats to your life or person at that moment, like the butterflies you get in your stomach when looking over a ledge. No, these are fears that exist ONLY IN YOUR MIND. I suggest Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras for this. Realize that the fear of inanimate objects (like guns themselves) is irrational. You are not fearing the gun, you are fearing some unknown or known story you have in your head. Understand what you really fear, and get to the bottom of it. Ask, “What then?” over and over again. As Swami Vivekananda once said:
Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, fear is wrong life. All the negative thoughts and ideas that are in the world have proceeded from this evil spirit of fear.
Root out all fears; bring them into to the light of rational examination. It is not only for the good of yourself, but it is for the good of the world.
Find as many gun owners as you can. Ask them honest questions of inquiry into their point of view. Why do they have a gun? What does the ‘right to bear arms’ mean to them? Why is it so important? Do this with a serious examination of what they say versus what you think about the subject. Connect with them as a human being, if possible.
Seek out all the information you can on both sides of the debate. List the pros and cons. Ponder. Consider. Entertain the ideas of your opposition. Then, after a thorough examination, if you are still unconvinced then at least you have considered the other side. That alone changes everything.
notes:
a. I put ‘rights’ in quotes because I don’t believe in the fairy tale that putting words on a magic piece of parchment actually defines or protects anything at all. m'kay?
b. my data research is from 1900 to around 1990… perhaps add another 10-20m for the subsequent wars and government caused famine, etc
c. didn't really feel like looking up the spelling of his name, sorry
government death count, not including war casualties. Democide is a thing, okay?: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM Bonus material: ‘How many people died in all the wars, massacres, slaughters and oppressions of the Twentieth Century?’ http://necrometrics.com/all20c.htm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1546085/The-vagaries-of-UK-knife-crime-statistics.html ; http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/guncrime.htm ; http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
http://schoolsucksproject.com/ ; http://www.johntaylorgatto.com ; https://tragedyandhope.com
http://www.trueactivist.com/dont-comply-activists-break-the-law-to-feed-the-homeless-in-dallas/
The truth does not abide by my wishes. The #truth simply is.
I'm Sara. I'm an unlabeled spirit having a human experience. I found my way into anarchy/voluntaryism since some of the concepts resonate with my understanding of The Principle of Ahimsa. If you find my blog posts useful, please join a Facebook group I created: Philosophy, Spirituality and Liberty. Namaste!