The Chinese government is not our friend.

I’m pretty sure that most of our regular readers will not be shocked by that statement, and for good reason. They’re not.

Yet they’re not stupid, either. They don’t dare saber-rattle too hard with us. China isn’t ready to try and take on the United States, especially not so soon after us having 20 years of warfighting experience.

But they aren’t afraid to use state-run media to try and decry so-called gun violence here in the US.

Gun violence has killed 123 people per day in the United States this year, including 1,079 teenagers and 216 children, figures from the Gun Violence Archive showed.

President Joe Biden renewed his calls for Congress to pass more gun control in July after a spate of mass shootings. But, in contrast, conservative politicians have pushed for more gun rights nationwide.

In Kentucky, Ohio, Nebraska, Texas and Virginia this year, Republicans have advocated for removing background checks, getting rid of red-flag laws and minimizing gun-free zones that limit where people can carry a firearm around others in public.

There were 30,235 deaths involving a gun as of Sept 1. At least 13,405 were homicides, murders or unintentional. The majority, at 16,830 or 69 per day, were suicides by gun, the archive found.

Some states had far more suicides by gun than others, including Texas, California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Illinois and Louisiana.

In two of these states — Texas and Georgia — Republican lawmakers have sought to have gun rights expanded while considering some gun control.

Of course, this basically blasted every pro-gun law passed and celebrated every gun control measure enacted.

Yet I find it oddly hypocritical.

See, the Chinese media has run countless opinion pieces trying to push for gun control in the United States, yet Chinese companies have been doing their best to make the violence here worse.

The Chinese economy isn’t like ours. The media is primarily state-run as are most of the leading companies in the country. The government has significant control over what businesses there do, control that we would never tolerate here.

As such, I can’t really take the media’s concerns seriously when this same country is routinely shipping full-auto switches here.

If they were that worried, why isn’t the Chinese government taking some action to at least remove their potential part in our supposed violence epidemic? I mean, it’s clear they believe guns in civilian hands are bad, so why are they trying to do what they can to increase the rate of fire on the most popular handguns sold in the US?

It boggles the mind. More accurately, it would if I thought they actually gave a damn.

Let’s be real, it would be pretty easy for them to put an end to these switches being shipped to the US. It wouldn’t make any potential problems go away–after all, they can be 3D printed–but at least the Chinese system wouldn’t be trying to contribute to the problem they’re saying needs to be addressed.

The fact that they’re not doing that is very telling.

My personal belief is that they’ve been engaging in battlespace prep. If they can push for gun control via their media, hopefully to add to the push by the American media, and simultaneously make violent crime even worse here, then Congress might just start restricting things like semi-automatic rifles and handguns.

You know, the exact same guns we’d want to have on hand if the Chinese somehow managed to make it to the US mainland and invade.

I’m no saying that full-auto switches really are that big of an issue or anything, but this whole thing only seems to make sense under this kind of scenario. Just something to put out there.