I came across this on Facebook earlier today, and I felt like I needed to address it. The reason, of course, is that it's absolutely stupid, and someone posted this with the intention of it being read as profound or something.
Let's break this down for a moment.
"You're afraid we will take your guns away."
Yes, we are. We are because too many of your fellow travelers have tried it or advocated for it from the start. Just this year, Rhode Island tried to take the modern sporting rifles of residents, the very guns it grandfathered in just last year.
Gabby Giffords famously said, "No more guns," while talking to a reporter for Time.
Hell, my friend, science fiction and fantasy writer David Burkhead, has a whole list of anti-gunners saying they want to take our guns away.
So yes, we're afraid you will take our guns away.
"We're afraid your guns will take our children away."
The actual risk to your children is relatively minor. You've been lied to by academia and the media, which uses a definition in studies that excludes children under one but includes legal adults aged 18 and 19. This is designed to make it look like the risk is greater than it actually is. In reality, up until age 12, there are damn near no so-called gun homicides of children, statistically. It's less than one per 100,000 people.
The cohort aged 12 to 17 sees a lot more, and most of those are from the upper end of that category, but it's not because guns are available. It's because this age cohort is more likely to engage in criminal activity, including being part of gang culture. Gang culture is a kind of honor culture where insults must be responded to, or else the insulted person loses face. While other honor cultures in the United States don't engage in homicide, the gang variety requires a violent response meant to kill.
So, unless your child is involved with gang culture, even if they're not in a gang themselves, then you have little to fear.
"We haven't taken any of your guns."
Tell that to the people who have been disarmed under red flag laws.
But you're right, for the most part. You haven't taken our guns. It hasn't been for lack of trying, mind you. I already mentioned Rhode Island, and it's far from the first example I've seen. Burkhead's post of examples shouldn't be ignored, either, because many of those statements revolved around a time when lawmakers were actively trying to follow through with those threats.
Further, anti-gunners almost never call out their own side for wanting some kind of ban. Sure, a few took issue with New Mexico's governor when she unilaterally banned lawful carry in Albuquerque, but not because of the principle. They just figured she'd gone too far, too fast.
So while anti-gunners haven't taken our guns, they have taken some, and it's clear they want the rest, even if they've been unsuccessful so far.
"Your guns have taken too many of our children."
No, they haven't.
My guns haven't taken anyone. Even the two that I'm sure have been used to kill--both SKS rifles, one a Vietnam bring-back and the other a Yugoslavian example with the Serbian crest carved in the stock-- didn't take anyone on their own. They were used by people to kill, at most, and the reality is that none of them were used to take American lives, much less anyone's children's.
Now, I won't get pedantic and repeat myself in totality about what the child homicide rate actually looks like all over again. The reality is that any child being killed is too many. The only acceptable number there is zero.
But I will point out that even those numbers are largely committed not with the guns of law-abiding Americans, but with guns that were illegally obtained by the killers, either through theft or deception at the point of sale. Those are already illegal, and thus not something you can put on the lawful gun owner.
"Whose fears are unfounded?"
Fears? Ours.
Concerns? You've got a right to be concerned, if for no other reason than the fact that there are too many broken people walking around in our world for anyone to be truly safe from them.
But those individuals are ridiculously rare. Despite the doom and gloom reported with the help of places like the Gun Violence Archive, most people go through their lives without really being touched by so-called gun violence. Especially if you're not living in an inner city, low-income and high-crime neighborhood, which most people aren't.
On the flip side, we've got everyone who hasn't just talked about taking our guns, but who has actively worked to make it happen. The fact that they've failed isn't a point in favor of the argument that no one has, either.
So yeah, every bit of this attempt at a meme is absolute BS. We can all see it, and the reality is that whoever made this is either willfully ignorant of what their own side wants, is actively lying about it, or both.
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