While the gun debate continues throughout the nation, there are still a lot of people who remain at least somewhat ignorant of the issue. They might know what the media tells them, but they’re not really aware of the details.
So, you get people who write “explainers” that supposedly try to break the issue down. Almost invariably, these explainers really just delve into part of the issue.
A prime example is one that I came across that seeks to “unpack” the “complex web of America’s gun culture and its violent manifestations.”
Let’s take a look and you’ll see what I mean.
In the shadow of America’s rugged individualism, a narrative emerges of a populace perpetually on edge, where the ethos of “ready to shoot at any given moment” is not only a personal creed but a marketing mantra that fuels sales in an industry where fear and protection are inextricably linked. Gun rights advocates, like Dave Workman of the Second Amendment Foundation, speak of a “culture of preparedness,” emphasizing the role of firearms in self-defense against perceived threats. Conversely, this view is challenged by the harsh reality that often those threats are misinterpreted, leading to tragic outcomes.
Note the complete lack of acknowledging defensive gun uses.
Depending on who you choose to listen to, defensive gun uses number in the hundreds of thousands to millions each year. These are people who have a gun because of concerns about violent crime or some other kind of attack, then use that gun to defend themselves from some kind of attack.
These drastically outstrip the number of homicides each year, which at least suggests that maybe those of us who favor that “culture of preparedness” may well be on to something yet this paragraph alone makes it very clear that the author of this screed has no interest in acknowledging that fact.
And it doesn’t get any better from here.
The incidents of Ralph Yarl, Kaylin Gillis, and two cheerleaders mistaken for intruders and subsequently shot, illustrate a dark facet of America’s gun culture that gun control advocates argue has been spurred on by permissive self-defense laws. Such legislation, like “stand your ground” laws present in roughly 30 states, provide legal protection for individuals who use deadly force without the obligation to retreat, under the belief that they are facing a threat. This legal foundation has been scrutinized, as it arguably emboldens individuals to act with lethal force in moments of uncertainty and fear.
It should be noted that the shooters in each of those cases was prosecuted. Why? Because Stand Your Ground laws don’t apply when there’s nothing that looks like an actual threat.
Ralph Yarl and Kaylin Gillis were “guilty” of approaching the wrong home. No state in the nation has ever found that constitutes a threat. Yarl rang the doorbell, something that doesn’t remotely look threatening, even if it’s the wrong door. Gillis was in a car that pulled into the wrong driveway. Again, not a threat.
The two cheerleaders tried to enter the wrong car, but they also had gotten out and were clearly not a threat either.
All three cases made a lot of headlines, yet the shooter in all three instances was charged, which tells you that Stand Your Ground laws weren’t at play.
“But they make people think they can shoot first.”
If that’s true, it’s only because of blatant media misrepresentation of what the laws in question really mean. Somehow, that didn’t make the cut in this media misrepresentation.
The consequences of such authorizations extend beyond these high-profile cases; an average of 43,375 people die from gun-related causes in the United States each year. Nearly six in 10 gun deaths are suicides. And the U.S. gun homicide rate is 26 times higher than that of other high-income countries, contributing to statistics showing that the U.S. gun homicide rate is 26 times higher than that of other high-income countries. The calls for reform echo from various corners of the nation, from epidemiologists like Gary Slutkin, who describes America’s penchant for gun ownership as a “dangerous epidemic,” to sociology professor Jonathan Metzl, who notes the natural outcome of ‘stand your ground’ laws is people misinterpreting everyday situations as threats.
Now, I’ll give them credit for acknowledging that most of those “gun deaths” are suicides.
That’s all they get credit for.
For example, while the gun homicide rate is so much higher than in other high-income countries, they don’t look at our non-gun homicide rate, which is higher than other high-income nations’ total homicide rates.
Only a fool would assume that absent guns, absolutely none of those gun homicides would have still been committed, which means without them, the non-gun homicide rate would be even higher.
This is an important point because while people like this try to churn out pieces “unpacking” the gun culture and blaming us for all of the nation’s ills, the reality is that we’re a violent nation. Remove guns from the equation and we’d still have more homicides than other developed nations. We already do despite guns supposedly being so plentiful.
See, what we have here is an attempt to unpack something by reaching into the wrong luggage. This is really just a reiteration of anti-gun talking points designed to look like a deep dive. In fact, this whole mess is so surface-level and poorly written I had to check to see if this was written by AI. (Shockingly, it wasn’t.)
So many facts were ignored, as most media outlets tend to do, that it wouldn’t look any different if there were a note attached saying it was paid for by Brady or Giffords.
And that’s a big problem as so many people try to understand the issue but run into these “explainers” that explain nothing.
