Current Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States
nejm.org
nejm.org
On the one hand I am from Massachusetts, was raised in an anti-gun environment, and have never owned a gun. I remember a particular billboard in Boston near the Berkeley college of music which was a "quote" (obviously not a quote because he was dead) from a Parkland school shooting victim saying something like "If my state [Florida] had Massachusetts gun laws I wouldn't be dead", or something like that. Of course this could be true, I find the particular Massachusetts gun laws to be fairly reasonable (background check, waiting period, etc.), but I was always put off by the fact that whatever group put up the billboard falsely quoted a dead teenager to push their agenda.
On the other hand I completely understand the stance of 2nd amendment absolutism, where the crux of the argument is that the second amendment directly prevents tyranny by allowing an armed populace to act as a deterrent. I've also seen the historical examples of populations willfully disarming themselves only to fall to outside invasion or internal tyranny (both striking possibilities in America today). I also understand that other countries which have outlawed guns are insufficient comparisons, because if the _entire_ western system was unarmed, then tyranny could prevail, but as long as only the singular America was armed, tyranny could not take over the western world.
I can't help but to feel that we are collectively missing the forest for the trees here, and school shootings are simply a symptom of greater evils. I also can't help but feel that the reaction to these evils (calls for eliminating gun rights altogether) will inevitably lead to more evil.
The billboard in question, when I saw it: https://www.stophandgunviolence.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/...
This gun fetish - that the second amendment is the only thing that can protect us from tyranny - is a smoke screen, and it is stopping us from fixing the actual problems that are leading us to tyranny, like unlimited money and gerrymandering that have completely corrupted our political system. In addition it is being used by outside forces to pitch us against each other, the NRA used to be in support of reasonable gun control.
We could retain the second amendment and have reasonable limits on it, it shouldn’t be treated as an absolute right, especially when the cost is so high and the solutions are proven.
It’s maddening to see then pretzel twisting logic just to avoid the simple truth that these kind of horrific incidents are the direct result of unlimited access to firearms.
That said I agree that billboard sounds in pretty poor taste.
I certainly understand that these institutions are more important, but, to play devil's advocate, it could be easily argued that those institutions have already failed exactly because of the unlimited money you pointed out. Without proper protection from those institutions, one could say that firearm rights for individuals are even more important.
That said I definitely support reasonable gun control, as long as its implementation did not eventually lead to gun prohibition (another fear which I understand).
This goes back to Reagan’s « the government is the problem », the government is not the problem, the government is us (or at least supposed to be). But maybe we’ve already reached the point of no return where there is so much money and power at stake that the system’s only purpose is to protect the interest of the people who have it.
Wonder how this has changed since the lockdown. I bet its wildly different, probably a lot more is my guess.