Writer Salman Rushdie is no stranger to death threats. He survived an attempt on his life in 2022, but that was after years of facing a fatwa calling for his death over his book, The Satanic Verses.
Because of that history, one might imagine that Rushdie would see the importance of people being able to protect themselves. After all, most of us are authors known the world over for our controversial work, thus not having the means to hire protection as needed.
However, it seems that if someone did, they imagined wrongly, as he was pretty quick to blame American gun culture for Charlie Kirk's assassination.
Sir Salman Rushdie has publicly condemned the assassination of Charlie Kirk, emphasizing its ties to the pervasive gun culture in the United States. In a recent interview with Sky News, he described Kirk’s murder as an “appalling act of violence” that underscores the serious consequences of America’s relationship with firearms.
US Gun Culture and Its Consequences
Rushdie expressed concern over the alarming prevalence of guns in American society. He pointed out that there are more firearms owned privately than there are people in the country. This situation, he argues, fosters an environment where violent gun-related incidents occur almost daily.
- Excessive gun ownership: More guns than people in the U.S.
- Children learning to use firearms at home
- Unlocked guns posing risks to families
According to Rushdie, these factors contribute to a culture where tragic events, like the murder of Kirk, are more likely to happen. He described the situation as “one of the most brutal examples” of this ongoing crisis.
Guns aren't the problem. We know this because our non-gun homicide rate is higher than many developed nations' total homicide rates. If guns were the origin of the problem, we wouldn't see such a high rate of non-gun homicides.
Further, children learning to use firearms at home are rarely the ones engaging in violence on our city streets, or most other places, for that matter.
Instead, they're hunting, shooting, and learning how to be responsible gun owners who aren't part of the homicide statistics. Not only are they not shooting people for no reason, but they're generally not becoming victims later in life either. Funny how that shakes out, ain't it?
Unsecured guns might be an issue, sure, but let's be real here. Most of those guns are never misused despite being unsecured. I don't support people leaving guns lying around, mind you, but I'm not about to overstate the issue. What's more, that had absolutely nothing to do with Kirk's assassination.
Rushdie is under a death sentence throughout the Islamic world. Someone who lives with that over their heads, where someone has actually given it a stab--yes, that pun was intentional and I don't regret a single bit of it--should at least understand that the threats of this world are real. Not everyone is under a fatwa, sure, but I've had enough close encounters with crazy over the years to recognize that bad things can happen. I've seen enough violent crime happen to know it doesn't just go away because you try to believe really hard.
And I know it can show up at anyone's doorstep at any time.
Most of us aren't Salman Rushdie, with the means to outsource our security. However, more of us regular folks are killed throughout the world each year than well-known authors are, even those under a death sentence by religious extremists.
Frankly, Rushdie can go pound sand.
As a novelist, he lives in a world of fiction. We live in the real world, where we can't just imagine our way out of problems.
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