Those of us who carry firearms regularly aren’t convinced there will be a time when we’ll have no choice but to use our firearms to protect ourselves. We simply acknowledge that according to the law of probability, someone is going to be a target. There’s no hysteria there, though anti-gunners often like to claim otherwise.
Which is interesting considering how much hysteria we see on the anti-gun side.
But maybe I’m being unkind. Let’s take a look at a piece by an anti-gunner who talks about why she works toward gun control now. I’m sure we’ll see that I’m wrong, right.
Let’s start with the headline that reads, “You Are ‘Killing my Generation’: A Gun Violence Survivor Takes On the Industry”
Nope. No hysteria there, now is there?
This is a common talking point among younger anti-gun activists, and the “killing my generation” shows up in the body of the piece, for the record, yet statistically, this generation has seen lower homicide rates through their youth than my generation coming of age in the 1990s did. In fact, the worst year for them, 2020, was still lower than the average homicide rate during my high school years.
If a generation was being killed, it would have been mine, and yet we’re still here.
But maybe the rest doesn’t engage in this as much. After all, the author starts off talking about how she grew up around guns, was taught how to respect them, and even thought you needed one to insure your safety.
Well, she gets into that after talking about being jumpy about a balloon popping.
Yes, really.
I used to love balloons.
Now, the sound of balloons popping takes me back to three years ago when gunshots rang out in the mall where I was shopping. I will never forget the haunting echo of those pops or my mom telling me to run and keep running, no matter what.
She bring up the gunshots at the mall thing a lot. It’s given as her guiding principle, why she’s a gun control activist today. She frames this like its a mass shooting and her life was gravely in danger.
I have no doubt she was terrified–that’s normal, I’m afraid–and I see no reason to doubt her parents told her to run and keep running.
However, she neglects to mention the exact mall shooting in this piece, the shooting that fundamentally changed her life. It doesn’t show up there at all, though it is thankfully in her bio.
The shooting in question is the Opry Mills Mall shooting in 2020.
What? You’ve never heard of that one?
Well, that’s because it wasn’t a mass shooting. It was a situation where a 19-year-old pulled a gun and shot someone else after a brief encounter. He was convicted of it last year.
In other words, while I have no doubt her fear was real, the truth was that not only was she not in danger, but the gun laws already in place failed to keep a firearm out of the hand of someone too young to buy one.
And yet, the author has demands that ignore this reality.
The gun industry must be held accountable for the nation of gun violence survivors they have created.
That’s why I, along with my fellow Students Demand Action volunteers across the country, are demanding that gun manufacturers take sensible steps to stop producing AR-15s and similar assault weapons with high-capacity magazines, prioritize safety over lethality in their products, and avoid partnering with untrustworthy dealers.
Of course, the gun industry doesn’t knowingly partner with untrustworthy dealers. In fact, those “untrustworthy” dealers are a minute fraction of a single percent of the total number of FFLs. Most violations the ATF finds are paperwork errors, not willful efforts to commit illegal actions.
But again, this is presented with more than a hint of hysteria.
The shooting that sent her over the edge, for the record, didn’t involve an AR-15 and would have still happened without the possibility of a higher capacity magazine.
Further, this idea that gun manufacturers should ignore lethality is bat-guano insane. Guns are inherently lethal. It’s why we buy them, for the most part. If companies start prioritizing “safety” over “lethality”–and there’s no mention of what the hell that’s supposed to mean–then we’ll simply start buying from companies that don’t.
Now, because this is a young woman writing in a feminist publication, some will think my focus on the innate hysteria is misogynistic. It’s not. I happen to think all anti-gunners are inherently hysterical. The author here just illustrates it pretty well with her nonsense.
