Where We Stand, Where We Fall

You can stand where I stand, but you will not see what I see.

You would think, year after year of constant mass shootings numbing the national psyche, that Americans would cheer on the simplest solution towards ending gun violence: By getting rid of the goddamned guns.

After all, every other nation struck by a mass shooting tragedy went on to pass harsh laws restricting ownership, banning certain types of firearms, and limiting the lethality of both gun and bullet.

Mass shooting at Ecole Polytechnique in Canada back in 1989?  Canada required gun safety classes, 28-day waiting periods, universal gun registration, and magazine clip capacity limits. After a mass shooting in Nova Scotia in 2020, they're trying to ban 1,500 (!) models of military-style assault rifles as well.

Mass shooting in Port Arthur, Tasmania back in 1996? Australia banned all semi-auto rifles and pump-action shotguns, and pulled off a gun amnesty and buyback program that took 250,000 guns off their streets.

Mass shooting at Dunblane Primary School in Scotland back in 1996 with semi-auto handguns using high-capacity cartridges? British Parliament passed legislation banning those types of handguns, and they maintain strict laws about the types of assault rifles allowed along with registration and certification for gun owners.  

Mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019? New Zealand banned semi-auto rifles, limited magazine clip sizes, and made modifications illegal. Like Australia, they hosted a buyback program to get as many of those guns off their streets.

Mass shooting in Ohio, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and any other Red State (or states compromised by Far Right / NRA lobbyist control) across the United States? Watch the Republicans in power pass new laws making it easier to get assault rifles and even worse avoid any certification or license.

What's maddening is how the Far Right, pro-gun politicians and pundits all proclaim how "if we ban guns, all it will do is make it so only criminals have guns." With the implication that we would see an increase of crime and gun violence because of it. However here in the United States, we get the inverse: Making it easier to get guns makes it easier for the angry guys who conform to the mass shooter profile means we still get the high body counts.

Note this: Nearly every mass shooting in the United States has been from someone who made legal purchases (or got the guns from someone who did) of those firearms. It's the legality of the process that horrifies along with the death of so many innocent lives.

Note this: We had an assault rifle ban in the United States for ten years - 1994 to 2004 - which wasn't renewed under Republican George W. Bush's administration (and maddeningly enough we never got it reinstated under Obama when we had a chance between 2009-10). It shouldn't surprise anyone that once the ban lifted, assault rifle sales went up and so did the body count (chart via Financial Times article by Justin Jacobs):

Everything from 2005 rightward to 2022. Those dots
multiply... and get bigger...

This shouldn't surprise us due to one thing: Most other nations do not have a Constitutional Amendment codifying the existence of firearms and what restrictions the states (and Congress) could impose on them. The Second Amendment is a very big reason why the U.S. can't just ban every firearm, as the Supreme Court spelled out with their Heller ruling back in 2008.

But that Second Amendment is a bit of a problem. When you read it - A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed - you'll notice the first half of the deal involves the regulation of state militias. The pro-gun forces tend to ignore that half, obsessing over the second half saying the right of people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

They treat that "right" as an absolute, avoiding the whole part of "well-regulated" that could be used by Congress and our states into passing firearm regulations. You'll see them on social media insisting on SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED - all caps, for emphasis - as though it's a mantra, no worse dogma.

Because that dogma creates the very huge problem we have now in the United States: We have a very dedicated, very insistent, and potentially very violent minority of Americans - not even every gun owner is this paranoid and devout about the SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED dogma - who believe so much in their absolute right to own firearms that they will NEVER give them up or even allow any restriction on gun purchases to hinder their quest to buy even more weapons to an arsenal already filling up their gun sheds.

Search social media for families happily posing in their houses, driveways, back porches with every rifle and handgun they own. You will see them with hundreds of firearms they cannot possibly need. It's like an addiction, a craving to buy more weapons as though they'll be going out of fashion next week.

They buy that many because a lot of them do fear that sooner or later the federal government is going to get frustrated by all the mass shootings, and that a permanent assault rifle ban will finally get passed (and even a conservative Far Right SCOTUS would have to uphold).

And a good number of these gun worshippers buy up all these guns because they genuinely believe they will be in a shooting war - if they're not already - to overthrow what they view is a corrupt, demonic federal government.

Look at every "Come and take them," "Pry them from my cold dead hands," "Second Amendment solution" threat the gun nuts toss out there on social media. They genuinely believe they can take on a massive federal government - not just the agencies like the FBI or DEA or ATF, but the U.S. military both National Guard and standing armies if called upon to fight an insurrection - and win a "new revolution" for a truer, purer (Whiter) US of A.

These gun-worshipping acolytes can't stop because they dare not. And they're convinced a majority of "True" Americans - not the 65 percent who want a ban on all assault rifles, not the 80 percent who want universal background checks - will fight with them.

The gun nuts of America are convinced they are standing for their grand, godly cause of murdering everyone they view as a threat.

The rest of us are going to fall to their guns because of that.

This was never going to end well.

And the trigger moment - when we're no longer on the knife's edge of the Far Right's Culture War, falling into the blood-pits of insurrection and chaos - is closing in.