From the Desk of Pat Greene
Fear and Loathing of Contemporary Gun Culture by Pat Greene
Last year there were 33,636 deaths in the United States from fi rearms . Of those , 11,208 were murders and 21,175 were suicides . In-depth studies of gun deaths in this country have been blocked . The Center for Disease Control ( CDC ) was banned from researching gun violence in 1996 . The NRA pushed this . This just smacks of blatant dishonesty . What are they afraid of ? I ’ ll answer that rhetorical question . The truth . I ’ m sure they know the truth , but they would like to keep it among friends .
In 2015 automobile accidents killed 38,300 . The pro-gun people often say , “ Cars kill people too , why don ’ t you make them illegal ?” They say it in a lessons , telling us how large the barrel is or something that takes away from the fact that the gun just killed several people .
There is no real outcry when medicinal marijuana gets voted down in this state , yet I ’ ve never heard of anyone dying from marijuana . In 1987 , one kid died from Jarts ( lawn darts ). They were immediately banned . Yet after mass shootings like Sandy Hook , Pulse , and the too-many-to-list , the NRA will unload insensitive platitudes that are supposed to prove that guns are not dangerous . Then they will say it ’ s insensitive to talk about gun control or politics at a time like this . I don ’ t think I need to cite any of this because
photo by Christopher Bolton dumb know-it-all tone . They usually fail to mention that cars are necessary for most Americans to get around . Cars are designed for transportation . Guns are designed for killing . Most people can get to work or school without a gun . There is a constant effort to make cars safer . Mandatory seat belt laws , airbags , and car seats for kids are just a few examples . If you own and drive a car you have to have a license and insurance in many states . The license requires passing a test . The car-gun argument is just one of the many inane and distracting arguments I hear from the NRA types . I am tired of people saying things like : if guns are illegal , hammers , forks , or whatever should be illegal . First of all , these other items have purpose beyond killing . Most are suggesting sane restrictions , not making guns illegal . There is no comparison between the possibility of quickly killing several people with an AR-15 , or pulling out a knife and a hammer . I am tired of smug engineering
13 it ’ s everywhere and constant , especially following a tragedy . Then there is all this noise about their second amendment rights being violated . The second amendment reads like a proto-dada poem . A well-regulated militia ? That ’ s our fucking point . I ’ m really tired of hearing about the fucking second amendment . People are dying . A lot have died , and a lot more will die . And all I can hear is a bunch of white dudes ( full disclosure , I ’ m a white dude ) that have probably never had their rights infringed upon , worried their rights are going to be infringed upon . Stop being so selfi sh . Think about what is really going on .
Do these same people who probably never read much more than the comment section on Facebook , ( but come at us like they are constitutional lawyers ) have any idea what the second amendment even means ? Do they
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