Thread by @robbystarbuck

THREAD ON GUN CONTROL:

The #GunControlNow crowd is mostly made up of good, very empathetic people who know very little about guns. I don’t blame them for being afraid when they see so many innocent people dying from mass shootings.

Seeing people die in your country from senseless mass shootings is maddening. What they don’t understand is it’s maddening to us too. The disconnect is how we understand the situation we’re in and how we can get closer to ending it.

Let’s recap some facts...

Just under 50% of all civilian owned guns in the world are owned in the US. We have 400+ million guns owned just by civilians in the US, a ban or confiscation will NEVER happen. It would literally be the 2nd civil war. Now let’s review some history.

We’ve had nearly all the same guns we have today (including the AR-15) for over 60 years. The guns haven’t changed. We changed.

So let’s examine the ways our society has changed over the last 60 years...

The rise of technology, the weakening of the nuclear family that kept its members accountable, the desensitization to death & pain that is infecting kids + adults by glamourizing evil in every form, the social media driven addiction to serotonin boosts, rising political division,

The need for instant gratification, the idolization of all things celebrity, the culture of celebrating the humiliation of mostly nice people, the new practice of assuming the very worst in our ideological opponents... The list goes on but THIS is the root of OUR problem.

Let’s discuss a key psychological flaw in the idea that gun laws will stop mass shootings. We’re talking about people willing to break what’s arguably the most serious law in the world, Murder. They want to kill on a mass scale. Why would they think twice about breaking gun laws?

So what do we do? How do we fix this? I do know that we won’t fix it as long as we’re treating each other like enemy combatants for holding different views. We can start by having a civil informed conversation. We can start by being rational.

(Keep reading for more)

We can start by uniting both parties to fund bipartisan mental health prioritization & funding, we can start by being the change we want to see, we can start by being kind when it’s hard to be kind, we can start by having compassion & empathy for the mentally ill. (Keep reading)

We can start by trusting & working with law enforcement to report those who may be at risk to commit this kind of horrific crime, we can limit what we expose our most innocent & vulnerable to, we can stop celebrating what has essentially become a culture of death. (Keep reading)

Don’t trust scary words. If you don’t know much about guns then the word semi-automatic sounds scary. Nearly every handgun in the U.S. is semiautomatic. AR-15’s look scary but they’re functionally the same as most hunting rifles. If you hear "automatic", know those are illegal.

Lastly... Let’s act more human online. The reality is if you found yourself at the wrong end of a gun with a crazed murderer on the other side and I was concealed carrying a handgun, I would save your life in a heartbeat and so would most well trained gun owners.

You’re entitled to believe gun control will fix this but I think if you read this with an open mind & heart, you know deep down it won’t.

What we can agree on is fixing the other stuff at the root of this tragedy. Let’s all try to be a small piece of a big change. This is 🇺🇸.