“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”
If you’ve been around the gun control/gun violence debate long enough you’ve heard this logically flawed argument at least 1000 times or more but some conservative or libertarian gun nut who thinks guns are benign “tools” and that people are the real problem.
You’ve probably also heard this beauty, “If people didn’t have guns they would just use something else.”
Arguments such as these, as childish as they are, have managed to keep sensible gun reform from becoming law for several decades.
In Writer Nathan J. Robinson’s brilliant Current Affairs article titled “Guns? People? Whatever It Is, Can We Put Some effort Into Trying To Stop It?” Robinson delves into the psychological reasons as to why conservatives have a difficult time adopting in the form of gun control, no matter how reasonable or universally desired it may be.
“But liberals need to realize that for the right to accept the liberal position on guns, it doesn’t just need to accept “common sense.” It has to give up a core part of its worldview. The conservative creed is: “People make their choices and the government shouldn’t try to alter those choices, and when it does it almost always makes things worse.” Compromising on gun control means compromising on conservatism. That’s also why nobody should be shocked that conservatives offer few “solutions” after massacres: if your general take on the world’s problems is “life is violent, cruel, and unfair, suck it up,” what solutions could you possibly offer?”
In this seven-minute video comedian and YouTube personality, R.J. Aguilar, savages the fictitious “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument with cold hard facts that would send death machine sycophants and gun lobby prostitutes like National Rifle Association spokesperson Dana Loesch into a frothing Ad hominem-filled rage.
Earlier this year, the Loesch produced a video for the NRA titled “Your Time Is Up!”, which vaguely threatened any and all media which failed to subscribe to the NRA’s bible of logical fallacies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGxqdk4yIZs
It’s evident that the NRA is only interested in helping gun manufacturers sell more guns by offering “more guns” as the first solution to any problem related to gun violence. Take for example in 2015; the NRA successfully stripped a provision from Louisiana’s anti-domestic violence bill that would have allowed law enforcement to charge those accused of abusing “dating partners” with domestic abuse battery, a charge that previously only applied to abuse victims who were “household members.
However, the NRA lobbied successfully to have the language stripped. According to Kim Sport, Chairwoman of the United Way of Southeast Louisiana Public Policy Committee, the NRA “didn’t want to increase the pool of people who will dispossessed of their firearms.”
Here was the NRA’s defense of allowing thousands of abuse victims (mostly women) to continue to live in fear of their armed abusive dating partners. NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker said this in an email statement to NOLA.com on May 5, 2015.
“The NRA agrees that more can be done to protect victims of domestic abuse from their violent abusers, but HB 488 is so overly broad that it could make a felon out of a girlfriend who pulls a cell phone from her boyfriend’s hand against his will.
“If the sponsor of the bill is serious about preventing domestic violence, she should focus on the provisions of the bill that would deter domestic abusers like better enforcement of restraining orders and increased penalties for people who violate restraining orders.”
Meanwhile, over the years, the NRA targets women as a new consumer group, urging them to arm themselves to protect against the same domestic abusers whose “gun rights” they so vigorously seek to defend. Here’s a video featuring NRA personality Billy Johnson in which he tries to convince people of how much the NRA cares about stopping domestic violence.
It’s time that we the people, take a stand and finally start the process of shutting the NRA out of our public policy. This organization has proven that it’s primary objective is to act as a policy broker for the gun lobby, not protect the 2nd amendment (which by the way actually favors gun control).
Americans have a choice in November, we can either stay home and passively accept the NRA’s iron grip on our local and national political institutions, or we can fight back by supporting the blue wave.
Featured image via YouTube.
