Conspicuous Absence: My Thoughts On The Gun Debate

I do talk about them. Just not often, relatively speaking. You’d think I would, huh? Being a leftie, quite the lil tree hugger and empath for looking all big and burly the way I do, you’d think that every time this happens I’d be right there, outraged and demanding to know why this keeps happening and why nobody’s fixing it.

Here’s why I’m not:

It’s a waste of time. I did it for decades, and I’m telling you: it’s a waste of time.

We know what needs to be done. A vast majority of Americans favor common-sense gun regulation to help mitigate two of the biggest sources of gun violence: impulse purchases made in the heat of anger or depression, and background checks to ensure we’re not selling guns to people who have shown in the past to be incompetent to be trusted with a deadly weapon one way or another.

We’ve been talking about it for my entire life and the pile of bodies just gets higher and younger. Enough talking.

We’ve been asking why for my entire life and the pile of bodies just gets higher and younger. Enough asking why.

We know why nothing’s being done: because the National Rifle Association, acting as the public relations and political lobbying arm of the gun manufacturing industry, has spent a hundred years deliberately warping the intent of the second amendment out of shape, stoking and helping to perpetuate all kinds of evil including racism, sexism, domestic violence, and especially toxic masculinity for their profit.

They pay politicians to write laws in their favor; they pay media companies to make movies that make guns look positive and strong and powerful.

None of this is a secret or a “conspiracy theory” or in any meaningful doubt; there’s a century of – ahem – smoking guns marking the trail.

Gun manufacturers have conspired for a century to constantly reinforce messaging that benefits their sales against the best interests of public safety and the operation of a truly free society.

They do enough of it directly and openly so they aren’t accused of being a secret cabal, mind you, but they do plenty of it in back-door style deals as well – think in terms of product placement in films, but this is as much “idea placement” as for any specific brand or item.