The desperation is grotesque:
In most places, this guy would have been taken to jail the first time it happened. Most people with guns don't behave like this. Most people with guns don't shoot people when a basketball rolls into their front yard so it's not "well said" to reduce it all to "fucking guns".
Most gun owners don't act like that and most never have. Some of these problems are relatively new.
Most neighbors don't kill each other even in states where everyone has a gun.
People drink too much beer and drown every spring riding floats down rivers. It isn't as simple as saying let's get ride of the fucking beer. Some stupid stuff happens as long a people are involved.
The prospect that a person didn't do anything is, in this context, generally irrelevant to what that another person actually did. The proposition that we ought not explore the relationship between the gun and the shooter's decision to shoot, and that we should be so negligent in our inquiry for the sake of some purported responsible gun owner three towns over, or in another state, is beyond ridiculous. Even over at FOX News, poll respondents seem to think the guns are the problem, with majorities supporting various gun control measures, and more people carrying guns did not achieve fifty percent. But that particular poll was asking about reducing gun violence; maybe for the people who are okay with what happened at Uvalde because it's just the way things go, adding more guns in more people's hands might even seem like a good idea. Maybe they actually want more violence in their communities.
Meanwhile, we tried alcohol prohibition, and it didn't work. We tried marijuana prohibition, and it didn't work. Outright firearm prohibition isn't coming anytime soon, but we have tried wars—civil, gangland, and police style—and those didn't help reduce violence.
But as long as you want to compare a gun to a mind-altering substance, remember also that we do have the laws obliging alcohol offenders to rehab, and prohibiting them from future possession and use.
It's one thing if you're not thinking through your arguments before posting, but this performance is depraved: In most places? Ah, so we should think about something other than the circumstance right in front of us. The reason why, unlike some other place, it doesn't go a certain way in Texas is for the sake of the guns. In most places?
Most gun owners? We've heard that argument the whole time. Well, remember, compared to what's going on, here, most gun owners aren't very useful toward reducing firearm violence. But since so many people need to die so those gun owners don't have to actually be responsible or useful or anything other than self-satisfied, maybe we ought not―... oh, right, even a majority of gun owners seem to think the guns are the problem. Even most gun owners seem to recognize that bawling about other people,
i.e., responsible gun owners, does nothing to address the facts of what is going on in our society.
And what is it about "gun owners" that makes them so much better than anyone else in the eyes of the law? We make exceptions to our laws for gun owners¹, and pass laws to protect the damn guns².
There is an old line from a
song↑, about how, "'Gee, whiz!' and 'Golly!' don't cut it." And it's true, sometimes being polite doesn't suffice. But even if the complaint is simply that, "'It's the fucking guns' is hardly a 'well said' bit of prose", the death toll is a bit more pressing than,
「Pardon me, but I was wondering, if it wasn't too much trouble, if perhaps you'll forgive me for suggesting that it might be helpful if you would be so kind as to ....」 Besides, sometimes what seems an otherwise reasonable request gets people shot to death. Because, sure, sometimes people lose their tempers about being asked to behave less disruptively, but when mass shooting is the response to being asked to not behave so disruptviely with a gun, yes, the difference is the gun.
In truth, the only reason a critique about what is or isn't a "'well said' bit of prose" stands out is because, in the face of everything else going on, that is apparently someone's priority.
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Notes:
¹ It's one of the reasons certain domestic violence is not charged as a felony, and changing those statutes has long been controversial for the same stupid reasons we always hear.
² While public health officials sometimes view firearm violence according to public health metrics, but the Dickey Amendment (1997) prohibited CDC, and has only been clarified (2018) to allow such assessment as long as the information is forbidden from consideration in firearm policy.
