It’s a monumental moment that has given some survivors hope for change, nearly 12 years after 26 first graders and educators were killed in the shooting.
Yet the outcome is still the same, you just spin it so me being dead is the favorable option through posing a false dichotomy as if me owning guns (never been nor will be a school shooter) is somehow directly tied to school shootings, it isn’t, yet it did directly keep me alive the one time I was unfortunate enough to have to pull it (guy with knife said “nevermind” and walked away, I don’t think the cops ever caught him and that was the last I heard of it.)
We need to prevent people who shouldn’t have them from having them, but not in such a way that can be abused by racist/-phobic sheriffs and governers, and still allow the people who can handle the responsibility the ability to. Pointless feature or gun type bans or just making things more expensive like we mostly seem to push for are not it, they’re just another vector to keep the poor (and largely marginalized POC) down while allowing the rich in their gated communities to skate by, like the drug war. Frankly we need to actually fix the underlying socioeconomic issues like wealth inequality for instance that cause the violence to begin with rather than attempt to wish away the tools people use to commit the violence. It’s harder yes (well, maybe, it actually might be easier than removing 600,000,000 guns and stopping all violent crime by force, that’s harder than you’re giving it credit for), but it’ll actually work better than the bullshit we keep trying to pass now, and it’ll solve more than just the violence.
But for now, until we fix that, because there’s still so much gun/knife crime, disarming people who are not a problem only serves to make them victims if they do get attacked. Go after the people who are the problem, charge them with something before they buy a gun so they can’t pass a check (don’t just ignore 41 calls about one kid so he can shoot up parkland, for instance) and try and fix the issues that drive them towards such acts.
You may prefer to be a victim than to defend yourself, that is your right and I won’t take that from you, but I’m also not going to go after people, who have done nothing wrong, who would rather defend themselves just because some other people did something bad.
Yet the outcome is still the same, you just spin it so me being dead is the favorable option through posing a false dichotomy as if me owning guns (never been nor will be a school shooter) is somehow directly tied to school shootings, it isn’t, yet it did directly keep me alive the one time I was unfortunate enough to have to pull it (guy with knife said “nevermind” and walked away, I don’t think the cops ever caught him and that was the last I heard of it.)
We need to prevent people who shouldn’t have them from having them, but not in such a way that can be abused by racist/-phobic sheriffs and governers, and still allow the people who can handle the responsibility the ability to. Pointless feature or gun type bans or just making things more expensive like we mostly seem to push for are not it, they’re just another vector to keep the poor (and largely marginalized POC) down while allowing the rich in their gated communities to skate by, like the drug war. Frankly we need to actually fix the underlying socioeconomic issues like wealth inequality for instance that cause the violence to begin with rather than attempt to wish away the tools people use to commit the violence. It’s harder yes (well, maybe, it actually might be easier than removing 600,000,000 guns and stopping all violent crime by force, that’s harder than you’re giving it credit for), but it’ll actually work better than the bullshit we keep trying to pass now, and it’ll solve more than just the violence.
But for now, until we fix that, because there’s still so much gun/knife crime, disarming people who are not a problem only serves to make them victims if they do get attacked. Go after the people who are the problem, charge them with something before they buy a gun so they can’t pass a check (don’t just ignore 41 calls about one kid so he can shoot up parkland, for instance) and try and fix the issues that drive them towards such acts.
You may prefer to be a victim than to defend yourself, that is your right and I won’t take that from you, but I’m also not going to go after people, who have done nothing wrong, who would rather defend themselves just because some other people did something bad.