In principle, the Second Amendment makes sense. A people should be empowered to take down a government that’s gone rogue. However, since the amendment was written, things have changed. It’s no longer rifle against rifle or bayonet against bayonet. Governments now have access to weapons that render impotent any weapons that civilians can buy. Governments have drones, and they have jet fighters, aircraft carriers, nuclear missiles, sound-based weapons that can be used to repel protesters en masse, radiation weapons that can be pointed at crowds, and that would literally bring their blood to a boil under their flesh. If you think your assault rifles, automatic or otherwise, will be of any use in defeating a government gone rogue, then you’re at least a hundred years behind.
The weapons the government allows you to access are good for nothing but attacking other civilians, helping gun lobbyists line their pockets, and giving the NRA something idiotic to defend. If you really want to follow the intent of the second amendment, then you need to permit Americans to buy the kind of weapons so far only available to their military, and since this isn’t happening anytime (soon or otherwise), then the point is moot. Arguing that criminals can still get firearms even if they’re illegal is feeble, since yes – they could, but it would be far more difficult and would cost a lot more, and the result would be far fewer weapons with far fewer criminals.
You can get a gun in the USA for next to nothing, whereas buying an illegal firearm in the UK could cost you around 30,000 dollars. Arguing that gun restrictions would not save lives is simply ignorant since homicides declined by more than 80% when gun restrictions were put into place in Australia. That’s 80% fewer dead people. Instead, Americans are teaching themselves to accept (as a fact of daily life) constant mass shootings, and they comfort themselves by calling the perpetrators ‘lone-wolves’, as though that does any good to the victims. Hint: It Doesn’t.
So what’s the new norm? Parents being terrified of taking their children to any crowded venue in case some ‘lone-wolf’ decides he’s going to try to set a new high score? Parents being terrified every morning when they send their children to school because they don’t know if they’re ever going to make it back home in one piece? This is all insane. It’s also delusional. Calling somebody a lone-wolf absolves the culture of the murders, as though there is no systemic cultural problem, and ignores the fact that, for the most part, only the USA suffers such an abundance of ‘lone-wolves.’ This does not happen elsewhere, and certainly not at this frequency.
Whether or not it wants to admit it, America glorifies violence, murderers, and serial murderers. Look how many TV shows are guilty of this, how many books are guilty of this, how many viewers and readers are obsessed with murderers, and how well these things sell. It’s not rational, and yet – it has become the American norm. Serial murderers are often portrayed as being somehow more ‘evolved’ than non-murderers. The term ‘Apex Predator’ is often used in this context. TV Shows like Hannibal portray the serial murderer as a man of refined taste and culture, an intelligent, thoughtful individual whose murders are ‘art’ and whose fame, even if he is caught and sentenced, is assured in a pantheon of murderers. Sure, you can’t say somebody killed a bunch of people because of shows like this, but you also cannot say that such influences do not glamorize the violence and that being inundated with such references does not exert a collective cultural influence.
There’s a reason the advertising business is enormous, and it’s because you can influence people, and you can create norms, and you can create trends, and most people, even if you do not include yourself among them, are subject to such influences.
America has to confront its demons, deal with these issues, and Americans have to put the safety of their people, or at the very least, their children, above petty political concerns and blind flag-waving.
