1. “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”
Catchy. But bullshit. A murderer without a gun has a pretty hard time committing mass murder, unless he uses a grenade or bomb or something. And most people don’t have access and/or the technical know-how to use those. To really rack up those mind-blowing death counts – to make sure that many lives are destroyed and families ruined in the space of five or 10 minutes – people need a gun. If all you care about is apportioning blame and declaring that someone does or does not have murderous intent, then by all means, claim a knife and a gun are equivalent weapons. For those of us who are more worried about preventing unnecessary deaths than merely acknowledging the hate that resides in some people’s hearts, however, the sheer amount of damage a gun can do is reason to limit who can get their hands on one.
2. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
Also catchy. Also bullshit., If you look at the real world, you’ll find that far from being our only hope, good guys with guns are barely any help at all. No mass shootings in the past 30 years have been stopped by an armed civilian; In 1982, an armed civilian successfully killed a shooter, but it was only after he committed his crime.
It’s not that there aren’t enough guns, either. There are as many guns as people in this country, and fully a third of people are armed. Even when shootings happen in gun-happy places, where armed people are sure to be nearby, this vigilante scenario simply doesn’t work. That’s because pulling a gun out and shooting back in the chaos of a mass shooting just makes things worse, as was discovered when a would-be hero at the 2011 shooting of Gabby Giffords very nearly shot the wrong man. (The actual shooter was tackled by an elderly man.)
3. “It’s mental health!”
Opponents of gun control love bringing up the problem of inadequate mental health care after a shooting. This is strictly for deflection purposes, as there is no indication that Republicans will ever work on meaningful reform for our mental health systems – which, its true are woefully inadequate. It’s an issue that only matters to them in the immediate aftermath of a shooting – then it’s forgotten, until there’s another shooting. Rinse, repeat.
Also, the “mental health” gambit, in this context, is always vague. What exactly is the plan? Round up everyone with a mental health issue and put them under lock and key? That amounts to 1 in 5 Americans, the vast majority of whom have no violent tendencies. Will we have some kind of extensive mental health registry? A lot of Americans who struggle with mental health are undiagnosed, though, and putting them on a government list that restricts their rights is not a great inducement to get a diagnosis. There are a lot of shooters in this country, so we have some pretty good data on mass shooters. And that data shows there’s no reliable way to tell who is going to go off like this, and only 23 percent of shooters have a diagnosis. Even if all of those individuals got gold-star treatment, the system would only stop a few shooters.
4. “Second Amendment, baby.”
Yeah. Let’s not kid ourselves. The framers had peashooters compared to the guns now. They didn’t intend this massive self-infliction of American-on-American crime. And also, there was no standing army back then, just a militia (I’m pretty sure that word is in the Second Amendment, too). THAT’S what the Second Amendment was for. But yeah, the Supreme Court (which suddenly, the conservatives LOVE when the subject becomes the Second Amendment) got it wrong. The good thing about amendments? They can be repealed. And if this shit keeps up… conservatives are going to WISH they had allowed some reasonable gun restrictions when they had the chance.