HERE is a great piece debunking the seemingly logical but actually stupid and false arguments against gun control. Share them, and use them when someone trys to use them on you. From HuffPost....
It's been just over eight years since the assault weapons ban
expired, and in that time new gun control bills have been scarce. There
are a variety of reasons for the deafening legislative silence,
including a cowardly lack of political will and a river of gun industry
cash that flows into campaign war chests every day. But it's also
because radical gun fetishists led by the NRA have been supremely
effective with clever marketing and misinformation campaigns intended to
undermine the brutal realities of the American gun culture.
You've probably seen many of their finest agitprop slogans plastered
all over Facebook, Twitter and the right-wing blogosphere these days.
They're artfully designed to be digested by people who desperately want
them to be true -- in this case, kneejerk gun enthusiasts starved for
solid, airtight, easy-to-remember trump cards that are capable of
defeating liberal gun control arguments with swift precision.
Unfortunately for them, the slogans are about as thin as the bumpers
stickers they're printed on.
PROPAGANDA: Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
REALITY: This is probably the most prevalent, yet
silliest line. No, an inanimate object can't spring to life and kill
anyone. But a gun's intrinsic purpose is to kill, wound and threaten
living beings. It's why they exist. Period. The firearms used at Aurora,
Tucson, Sandy Hook and so many other mass shootings are specifically
categorized as "assault rifles." The intention is, by definition, to
assault.
They're aggressive weapons intended to physically attack and do harm.
Otherwise they'd be called "defense weapons" or "protection weapons."
So, no, guns don't kill people, but
people with guns and bullets kill lots of people. Around 30,000-plus per year in America.
PROPAGANDA: But cars kill a lot of people and no one wants to ban them!
REALITY: How do we deal with cars in America, compared with how we deal with guns in America? Cars and drivers are
heavily
regulated by the government, from emissions standards to annual
inspections to safety features, and so forth. You can't legally drive a
car that doesn't feature seatbelts, or a car that spews too much exhaust
into the air. You have to take both a written and a behind-the-wheel
test to get a license to operate a car. You often have to renew that
license at regular intervals and, if you're older, you have to prove
that you're physically capable of driving a car. You can't drive a car
while drinking alcohol or impaired by other chemicals. There are
thousands of police officers patrolling our roads and, as most of us
have experienced at one time or another, they will penalize or arrest
you for improper handling of a car -- with literally hundreds of laws to
abide, and considerable penalties, ranging from fines to imprisonment
to the government stripping you of your right to drive a car at all. So
if gun fetishists are going to keep using this car analogy, then let's
talk about regulating guns and gun owners the same way we regulate cars
and drivers.
PROPAGANDA: You can kill someone just as easily with a knife as you can with a gun!
REALITY: Outrageously wrong. Ask any average soldier
whether they'd prefer to attack an enemy with knife or with their
rifle. After they laugh in your face, they'll obviously tell you they
prefer their rifle. During the American Civil War, soldiers would rarely
if ever use their bayonets in combat because the experience of stabbing
someone was much more offensively visceral and gruesome than simply
shooting them from a relative distance. Furthermore, how many mass
stabbings (including meat cleavers) have there been in America?
Two that we know of.
The number of mass stabbings in world? Eleven. On the other hand, how
many mass shootings have there been in America? Twenty-six since
Columbine and not including any prior massacres. Some gun fetishists
have noted that
a mass stabbing occurred in China last week, with 22 victims. However, what they won't tell you, perhaps because they don't know, is that not one of those victims died.
PROPAGANDA: It's safer to have a gun in the house, or concealed on your person.
REALITY: Nope. Not true. I'll let conservative analyst and former Bush speechwriter David Frum
take this one:
A gun in the house minimally doubles the risk that a household member will kill himself or herself. (Some studies put the increase in suicide risk as high as 10 times.) An American is 50% more likely to be shot dead by his or her own hand than to be shot dead by a criminal assailant. More than 30,000 Americans injure themselves with guns every year.
And here's
Science Daily:
In a first-of its-kind study, epidemiologists at the
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that, on average,
guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in an
assault. The study estimated that people with a gun were 4.5 times more
likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun.
Need more? Here's the
American Journal of Lifestyle:
Author David Hemenway studied the various risks of having a
gun in the home, including accidents, suicide, homicide, and
intimidation. Additionally, the benefits of having a firearm in a
household were also examined and those benefits included deterrence, and
thwarting crimes (self-defense). From this in-depth look, it was
concluded that homes with guns were not safer or deter more crime than
those that do not. In fact, it was found that in homes with children or
women, the health risks were even greater. "Whereas most men are
murdered away from home," wrote Hemenway. "Most children, older adults,
and women are murdered at home. A gun in the home is a particularly
strong risk factor for female homicide victimization."
One more...
PROPAGANDA: Banning guns won't stop mass shootings because of the outlaws, blah blah blah.
REALITY: Once again, totally not true. Australia,
May 1996, a lone gunman killed 35 people and wounded an additional 23.
Subsequently, Australia passed a very strict gun control law that
included a buy-back program that managed to recover 600,000 assault
rifles and other arms -- 20 percent of all the known firearms in
Australia. There were no more private sales of firearms, there were
stringent registration laws, and, as with other nations, you had to
prove to authorities that you had a specific reason for purchasing a
firearm. And no,
according to Slate, self-defense wasn't a valid excuse. What happened after that?
Violent crime and gun-related deaths did not come to an end
in Australia, of course. But as the Washington Post's Wonkblog pointed
out in August, homicides by firearm plunged 59 percent between 1995 and
2006, with no corresponding increase in non-firearm-related homicides.
The drop in suicides by gun was even steeper: 65 percent. Studies found a
close correlation between the sharp declines and the gun buybacks.
Robberies involving a firearm also dropped significantly. Meanwhile,
home invasions did not increase, contrary to fears that firearm
ownership is needed to deter such crimes. But here's the most stunning
statistic. In the decade before the Port Arthur massacre, there had been
11 mass shootings in the country. There hasn't been a single one in
Australia since.
I think that's enough for now. If you spot any more of these slogans
and arguments, drop me a note via Facebook, Twitter or in the comments
below and we'll work together to debunk this specious clap-trap once and
for all. Doing so will help to unravel the deeply entrenched gun
culture in America, and this must be an ongoing commitment, running
concurrently with any and all legislation that comes as a result of
these horrifying gun massacres.
Cross-posted at The Daily Banter.
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