America does NOT have a gun culture. I like guns. I always have. Like Adam Lanza, I started going to a gun club with my mum when I was about 11 years old. Like the Lanzas, we used to shoot targets. But at our club, the object was to Fire five .22 sized holes into a target a little bigger than a US quarter, at 25 metres. It seems to me that American 'target shooting' is all about using an anti-personnel weapon to fire large calibre rounds into the 'kill zone' of a target shaped like a person. It's not quite the same. Not at all.
You see, America does not actually have a gun culture - America has a weapons culture. It has an obsession with anti-personnel weaponry. This is why comparisons to other countries with similar gun ownership are meaningless. After each massacre, the gun lobby argues that if only someone there had been armed then they could've shot the shooter. But arming the populace does not bring safety. America has horrific murder levels precisely because the populace is armed.
These Weapons have no place except in law enforcement and the military. America does not need all this weaponry to guarantee the people's freedom - they are not free, this weaponry has imprisoned them in fear. The weaponry must go - it is not keeping anyone safe, it is killing their children. Keep your guns if you like, but lose the anti-personnel weapons.
In 1996, Australia banned semi-automatics. In the 18 years before, there were 13 mass shootings. Since then, there have been none. None at all for the last 16 years. Can you imagine that, America?
You see, America does not actually have a gun culture - America has a weapons culture. It has an obsession with anti-personnel weaponry. This is why comparisons to other countries with similar gun ownership are meaningless. After each massacre, the gun lobby argues that if only someone there had been armed then they could've shot the shooter. But arming the populace does not bring safety. America has horrific murder levels precisely because the populace is armed.
These Weapons have no place except in law enforcement and the military. America does not need all this weaponry to guarantee the people's freedom - they are not free, this weaponry has imprisoned them in fear. The weaponry must go - it is not keeping anyone safe, it is killing their children. Keep your guns if you like, but lose the anti-personnel weapons.
In 1996, Australia banned semi-automatics. In the 18 years before, there were 13 mass shootings. Since then, there have been none. None at all for the last 16 years. Can you imagine that, America?
This post first appeared on It's Honestly Not That Complicated., please read the originial post: here
