Sea-Slug Stupid over Guns, Again

Thirty-one years later, she wants to “form a committee.”

In the United States, you can enlist in the military at age eighteen without parental consent, at age seventeen with parental consent. Uncle Sam gives you military weapons (duh!), military training, and you may lose your life fighting for your country. Throughout the history of the United States, the highest numbers of military deaths are those under 22 years of age.

Do you really want to tell those that fight for the United States that, if they survive, they cannot have a beer, buy a pack of cigarettes, or own a firearm? Is the Constitution only for old men that start wars, but not for the young men and women that actually fight them?

How is it that deaths of innocent people are rated? Roughly 64,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2016. 40,000 Americans died in vehicle deaths in 2017, again, for 2016 also had over 40,000 vehicle deaths. What level of intelligence exists that anything that we don't want in our backyard means a needy, hapless cry to politicians in Washington to “do something”?

If we have learned anything at all, we know that just throwing tax dollars at a problem hardly resolves it. We have the most expensive government in the world, the most expensive prison system, and the United States imprisons more of its people.

“Though only 5 percent of the world’s population lives in the United States, it is home to 25 percent of the world’s prison population. … Not only does the current overpopulated, underfunded system hurt those incarcerated, it also digs deeper into the pockets of taxpaying Americans.”  

–Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)

This ridiculously high figure cited by Rand Paul is unfortunately correct. Again and again, we foolishly think that merely throwing money at something automatically fixes it. Again and again, the record shows that all too often it doesn't fix anything, it just makes things worse.

We like to blame things, just because. Do video games and comic books cause car crashes and drug overdoses? Movies? Sugary drinks? If you can fog a mirror, you know that it isn't so. Background checks that so many have cried for hardly work when there is no background to find. We call for more of them anyway.

Check out https://heyjackass.com/ . Someone is shot in Chicago every four hours and seven minutes. Chicago has plenty of restrictive guns laws, but to no avail. Making more paper doesn't work well. It doesn't seem to work at all. However, guns are used up to 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year -- or about 6,850 times a day. (Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun," The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law.)

Ignorant comedians turned part-time pundits and criminologists (Jimmy Kimmel) do nothing when they sob for Washington to “do something.” Everyone has to do something, everyone has to contribute. Making more paper laws that criminals and the deranged completely ignore is just plain stupid. Those that wish to kill do so, with trucks, cars, matches, airplanes, and rocks.

Only a buffoon expects a simplistic answer to a multi-faceted, complex problem. There is the mental health component, there is the family component, the community component, the security component, and the response time component, as well as many others. By overlooking all of the factors, there is not only no solution, but often no progress.

There are people that need help and we, as a society, need to get them help without stigma and derision. There will always be cracks, there always have been, and shortening response times always works. The hero who stopped the gunman behind the deadly Texas church massacre, former National Rifle Association instructor Stephen Willeford, used an AR-15 that enabled him to end the bloodshed. Mr. Willeford stopped that shooter from slaughtering additional churchgoers. Jimmy Kimmel, however, did nothing.

It is of course better to address the causes of behavior, long before it comes to that. When all else fails, shorten the response time, the reason concealed carry works. Those bent on killing need to have very, very short spans of activity.

You can alert your family, your friends, your neighbors, local police, and state police departments in the mean time, Or, you can call Jimmy Kimmel. Or, you can wait for another delusion speech from Nancy Pelosi, who has been in the United States House of Representatives since 1987. Now, 31 years later, she wants to “form a committee.” This is no one's version of being a quick study.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders now says “Congress might want to consider common-sense gun safety legislation and save innocent lives.” Mm-hmm. Bernie has been the senator from Vermont for 11 years. Senator Bernie has long called gun control largely a state issue but apparently socialist independents are not immune from belatedly looking for feckless political hay.

Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, and Jimmy Kimmel have all contributed nothing measurable to the conversation. Photo-ops and speeches from politicians, ratings grabbing from CNN and other who profit from tragedy, and commentary from the comedic criminologist Jimmy Kimmel have all combined to not save a single life.

There are things to do, to be sure. Jimmy Kimmel has not only literally done nothing, he has absolutely done nothing. It is worse than nothing, as far as I'm concerned, when education, enforcement, awareness, and shortened response times get results, where semi-coherent commentary only serves to avoid taking steps that bring tangible results.

 

Copyright 2018 by Randy Wakeman. All Rights Reserved.