A Quick Follow Up On Going for the Guns

In my last post, I felt like I made it pretty clear that I think it's time to pull the gun control conversation to the left.  It's long past time we stopped assuaging the easily hurt feelings of the gun lovers by qualifying support for gun control with assurances that we think guns are generally super cool and we are not trying to make guns illegal.  Because it doesn't matter - the folks who argue against any gun control will always think you're trying to make guns illegal.

So, fuck it, let's try to make guns illegal.

Over on Facebook, one commenter complained about my post because he thought I'd said that all people who care about the right to own a gun have been brainwashed by the corporatist interests of the NRA into a radically paranoid worldview.  I did not say that.  I said that the people who argue against any measure of gun control have a twisted, paranoid worldview which is advantageous to gun manufacturers who, therefore, do all they can to gin it up and exploit the twisted paranoid minority of gun owners.  Didja know that Freedom Group (the niftily named parent company of Remington) has profits up 52% since Sandy Hook?  Neat, right?

I do, of course, understand that there are responsible gun owners who are not addlepated tools of the NRA.

I just don't care.

There is a Facebook group called "Gun Control for Responsible Gun Owners."  It has 40 likes. Apparently lots of people don't care.  Look what happens when I type "gun control" into my Facebook search:

It is time we stopped letting gun owners control this conversation. They are the minority.  And they have let the inmates take over the asylum.  I know it is important to this minority of Americans that they have the right to own guns.

I don't care.

I care about not getting shot.  I care about dropping my daughter off to school and not worrying that someone is going to shoot her.

There were 290 gun deaths in the UK in 2013.  There are 63 million people there.  There were 415 murders in Chicago.  There are 8 million people here.

I know that there are responsible gun owners.

I do not care.

Let's go for the guns.