As I am sure you can imagine, I take a lot of flac from many people heavily invested in Firearms. Otherwise average, everyday people get agitated when someone utters the word "gun." Ears pique and heads turn. Sometimes the very weak minded will start yelling 2nd Amendment, others will give a look of derision and some even try to go toe-to-toe with me on the subject of guns in America. Pfft.
Unfortunately, the American conservative mindset has become a living, breathing, Dunning-Krueger experiment. Without as much as a "huh?" All heavily invested, square off and close down. The most common thing I hear when someone thinks they have a viable angle is that the yearly shooting numbers are disingenuous because a very large percentage of the yearly gun death in our country is by suicide.
First, if these people could read beyond their continual text messages they might read my book and find the answers that negate their argument. Second, They are following the age old anti-gun trope. The trope that pits gun murder against suicide.
I will spell it out here for those that are unaware and for those that think they belong on the debating team.
Let's randomly use the numbers for the year 2017.
15679 Gun Murders - 23854 Suicides by gun.
This is where the Conservative trope stops. They claim that putting these two numbers together is disingenuous.... and they are correct. The total number added together in this way is 39533. So if we add these number together as any 3rd grader can do, the percentage of suicide to murder is quite lop-sided. They dont consider suicide a gun problem at all, and I'm afraid I agree on that one. It would be VERY hard to stop gun suicide at the gun level... if not impossible. It can be lessened quite a bit with responsible gun ownership of those people that left their gun available for someone else to kill themselves with, but never stopped unless guns are not around.
But there are two more considerations waiting.....
First, the total gun SHOOTINGS number sans murder for 2017 was 31265. If we add that to the murder number, AND WE SHOULD, the total shootings number including murder, is 46944.
DOUBLE the suicide number. So we don't care about the folks that were shot but lived? Serves em' right? Yes, that's the attitude, "serves em' right, they must have done something to deserve it." And of course this is another conservative failing, blaming the victim.
Well, you better be concerned, because those people can still think and talk, and they are the ones that are raising hell about the uncontrolled gun issue in the United States. They are the ones that want to take your guns. Forget about them and your problems will only get worse by the shooting. With each one of these people stand AT LEAST five more friends and family that now see it their way. Actually the number is closer to ten, but I like to be conservative sometimes also.
If that is so, then conservatively, 2017 created 234,720 Americans soured on guns. If we step up to 4th grade math.... we've only got a decade or so before the voting majority will end guns in the U.S. But unfortunately we will have a couple million martyrs before then.
I hate to spell this out though, It will be easier if the conservatives keep deflecting.
Then there is the real world happenings and costs of suicide that are conveniently forgotten, dismissed or not made aware to the people who say they care about keeping their guns.
- Suicide devastates friends and family - Add another 5 people per, to the gun sour list.
- Who pays for the cleanup after a suicide? There's alot of money involved post suicide.
- Whose gun was used for the suicide? 30% of the time, it was someone else's.
- So murder suicide doesn't count? - another 5% +/-
Suicide IS WORTH worrying about for all the above reasons and more. More reasons than a problem denier can't see... until it's them getting the call.
Live Love,
M/
