06 January 2013

Political Rant


I am staying out of the Facebook "gun control riot" as I call it. I discovered last year that even people I call friends go absolutely batshit crazy about their politics and will insult others personally, post stuff that is so far out of the realm of reality (and when called on it, get defensive beyond words to the point of unfriending you - no loss in my book), and in general just have a stroke when it's pointed out that whatever mishmash they "shared" this time is untrue or insulting to their alleged friends. So I'm not getting into it over there. But I can have my say here, so all six of you can read it. Here goes:

My political rant du jour

Everyone in the world is aware of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. It breaks my heart to even think about it. Well, of course the liberals now want to ban all "assault weapons" and the 2nd Amendment wonks want to prove that guns don't kill people, people kill people. What kills me is the latter's STUPID STUPID comparisons and statistics that they post. I honestly thought that most of my friends on Facebook (whom, with very few exceptions have been or are friends in real life) had more brains than this. I'm not going to argue either point here, but I am going to rant about the chosen statistics.

Fine statistics (and you can bet one of these original posters copied off the other, I can't find that damn "323" number anywhere). Probably at least true by proportion if the actual numbers are a bit off. Here's my problem with them. FIND ME ONE FUCKING INSTANCE OF A MANIAC WITH A HAMMER KILLING 20 SCHOOL CHILDREN and SIX STAFF MEMBERS IN MINUTES, THEN BLUDGEONING HIMSELF TO DEATH WITH IT. Ditto baseball bats, rolling pins and crowbars. The same applies to knives. Drunk Drivers? Here we're back to apples and oranges. And the 195,000 dead by medical malpractice? How the hell is that relevant at ALL??? (Not to mention that in 2011, most of "Obamacare" had not even kicked in yet - still hasn't as a matter of fact, at least not most of what the conservatives are constantly frothing and foaming at the mouth about.)

I thought most of my friends would be smart enough to realize that the majority of murders are "crimes of passion" - a husband catches the wife cheating or vice-versa, or some a drunk playing poker catches another drunk cheating. An awful lot of murders are committed under the influence of alcohol, drugs, or rage. They grab the first thing handy (which is seldom an assault weapon since they are in such a small percentage of peoples' homes versus baseball bats, knives and rolling pins which are probably found in 90% of peoples' homes. Most of these murderers are "one timers", they're not hit men, they're not mad men (well, they're mad in the sense of incensed as opposed to mentally ill), they've killed, they've gotten it out of their system, they are usually remorseful as hell, and they wind up in prison even though there's a good chance they'd never kill again even given the same set of circumstances. Now I know there are drug-related deaths, and gang-related murders, but again, they are a small subset of the murders, and they are almost always carried out with small handguns (they used to be called Saturday night specials).

So, am I arguing that it won't do any good to ban assault weapons? No, I'm arguing that smart people ought to use smart arguments to try to influence others to come over to their side, or at least see their side of an issue like gun control. Stop posting disingenuous crap that means nothing, doesn't contribute a damn thing to the "conversation" and for Pete's sake (whoever poor old Pete is), you better be ready to have a conversation because it's coming, and trying to dig in your heels and not be willing to compromise usually means you won't get what you want, or even a small portion of it.

Here's one final comment:
Perhaps fewer Secret Service Agents with guns would be necessary if there weren't so many irresponsible owners of guns out there now that allow others to gain access to said guns, and/or are mentally ill themselves and therefore liable to act in a dangerous manner no matter what guns you might or might not ban. Also, name one president that has been assassinated with an assault weapon as opposed to a small handgun. OOOO, that ought to get the arguments and stupid statistics started up again!