I live in the United States. Home of the brave, land of the mass shootings. Last year, a homophobic shithead shot up a gay club. A day or two later, a racist shithead shot up a Walmart. Before that, we had like three fucking school shootings in a row. And every time a mass shooting happens (which is an almost weekly occurrence at this point,) you get the familiar chorus of talking points. The liberal Democrats will decry this country’s lack of gun control laws. Sure, they’d love to pass some, but the mean old Republicans won’t let them. That’s the Democrats favorite refrain. “We’d love to do something about this very important issue. We just caaaaaaannnnnn’t. Now give us money and votes!” The conservative Republicans, on the other hand, will say that the ridiculous proliferation of and ease of access to deadly weapons in this country is not actually a problem, and what we really need is more Jesus. Or whatever the NRA (National Rifle Association – a lobbying organization that represents the firearms industry) tells them to say.
Meanwhile, mass shootings continue to happen and the victims, along with their families and friends, end up being little more than shields for half baked talking points.
The reason gun control laws don’t really work is because they tend to be very localized. You can outlaw anything even resembling a gun in Chicago, but that doesn’t really make much of a difference when you can drive like two hours to fucking Wisconsin and buy an arsenal. So any kind of gun control legislation absolutely has to be done on a federal level. Otherwise, it’s not going to make a bit of difference.
One big problem is the issue of illegal guns. How exactly do you regulate firearms that are obtained illegally? No amount of ID requirements, background checks, and mandatory waiting periods is going to make a damn bit of difference to someone who is acquiring their firearm through illegal means. So how do you address that?
Well, it’s actually kinda simple. The best way to reduce illegal gun ownership is to reduce legal gun ownership. The fewer legal guns there are in circulation, the fewer guns there are to steal and/or misuse. With fewer firearms being legally obtainable, the fewer firearms are going to be produced. The fewer firearms are being produced, the fewer firearms can make their way into the hands of criminals. It’s important to remember that illegaly obtained firearms don’t magically appear out of thin air. They are produced legally in a factory.
Unfortunately, this approach has some pretty big drawbacks. For one, outlawing the manufacture of new firearms does nothing to address the existence of firearms that have already been produced. You could outlaw the possession of firearms, but now you just turned a whole lot of law abiding citizens into criminals overnight. Best case scenario, whoever enacts this law loses their next election. Worst case scenario, they lose their head.
When we think of illegally obtained firearms, we usually imagine some kind of shady deal taking place in a back alley. But most illegally obtained weapons aren’t bought from a weird guy in a trehcncoat. They are stolen. Most school shootings are committed by kids, and most kids can’t exactly afford to buy a gun on the street. That shit is EXPENSIVE! So what’s an aspiring school shooter to do? Simple! They just use their dad’s gun! The kid ends up either committing suicide, getting shot by police, or going to prison for a really long time. But what happens to the person whose gun was used in the commission of the crime? Usually? Nothing.
It’s really not that hard to keep your gun out of your kid’s hands. Gun safes, trigger locks, and really tall shelves exist. If a kid is able to get ahold of their parent’s firearm and use it to shoot up a school, the weapon’s legal owner should at the very least be charged as an accompllice. Children don’t have fully formed brains and tend to make shitty rash decisions. That’s the kind of behavior we expect from a child. Adults, on the other hand, are held to a higher standard, and rightfully so. If you are an adult and a child was able to gain access to your firearm and use it to hurt someone, that blood is on your hands. There is absolutely no excuse for a child being able to gain access to an adult’s firearm. Until these adults start being held responsible, nothing will change. Once a couple of shitty dads end up doing time because Junior shot up his school with their gun, others will start being a lot more careful about how and where they store their guns. A robust background check database doesn’t achieve this. Having skin in the game, on the other hand, very much does.
Finally, gun control laws are not wihtout flaw. For example, what kind of gun control laws do you pass? An assault wepaons ban? Sounds great. Now define a fucking assault weapon. People do (and should) have a right to defend themselves. People do (and should) have the right to own and use firearms for recreational purposes. Whehter it’s target shooting, hunting, or what have you. So, again, how do you limit that?
Then you have the fact that gun control laws (at least as they currently exist) are inherently discriminatory. Preventing felons from owning firearms sounds like a great “no shit” idea. Until you start thinking about it a little more. Most people, when they hear the word “felon” think of someone who probably killed a guy, tried to kill a guy, robbed someone at gunpoint, shit like that. We automaticlaly imagine someone who is violent and dangerous and absolutely should not have access to firearms. But a TON of things classify as a felony that have nothing to do with violence. Got caught with a joint ten years ago? Congratulations, you are a felon now and can’t own firearms!
So you say “OK, well let’s just apply it to violent felons.” OK, what classifies as a violent felony? Get in a fistfight when you were 20 years old? You’re a violent felon now. Say goodbye to some of your basic constitutional rights for the rest of your life because you were a shithead at 20.
Then there’s the concept of restorative justice. If you do a crime, and you do the time, should you really continue ot be punished for the rest of your days? You’re never really free then. The stripping away of constitutional rights just seems like a very extra judicial way of fucking people over. Especially when you consider the fact that our so called “Justice” system is racist as fuck and minorities get railroaded over bullshit offenses ALL THE TIME. Gun control laws included. Hell, the main reason we had gun control in this country in the first place (and it had broad political support0 is because black people started arming themselves to protect their communities from racist cops. Implementing strict gun control laws, without addresisng the issues of systemic racism is only going to give cops a pretext to shoot even more black people.
These mass shootings aren’t happening in a vacuum. We’re seeing a spike in mass shootings at a time of extreme inequality and wealth disparity. The best way to address mass shootings in my opinion isn’t to outlaw guns. It’s to make sure that people’s basic needs are met. So many of these shootings are motivated by racism, antisemitism, or some form of conspiratorial thinking. That kind of thinking tends to bloom in times like these. When people’s basic needs aren’t met, they tend to look for someone to blame. Who do you think they’re more likely to blame? A complex system of levers, pulleys, sticks, and carrots that is designed to keep them barely scraping by while exploiting their labor for profit, and one from which they may have tangentially benefited? Or the Jews? Especially when they are being bombarded with megatons of fucking propaganda on a daily basis that is expertly designed to make them reach those exact conclusions.
Make sure that people’s basic needs are met and mass shootings will decrease. They won’t go away (they will never go away) because as long as there are people there will be shitheads. But you’ll get much better results than you will with gun control legislation, which is little more than a neoliberal bandaid on the gaping wound of capitalism.
