By Kevin Wilson
Refutation is a big word. I like it.
For all those who graduated from Reidsville High School, here’s what it means: the act or process of refuting, something that refutes; disproof.
The goal here today is to take some of the more onerous statements from both sides of the debate and show that they’re, well, pretty shitty.
Take, for instance, President Obama’s claim that the states with the strictest gun control have the fewest gun deaths. This was based off information provided by National Journal in August of this year. What the journal leaves out, according to the Washington Post, is that the situation is far more complicated than it seems on the surface. Once you remove firearm deaths by suicide, which most studies show to have little correlation to gun ownership, the results become decidedly more muddled, especially when you consider that Japan, perhaps the strictest country when it comes to firearm ownership, has one of the highest suicide rates in the world.
As Mark Twain was fond of saying, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Another popular argument from the anti-gun lobby is that we need to go to the sorts of gun control used in Great Britain or Australia. In both countries, handguns are near impossible to obtain, and rifles and shotguns are heavily restricted. Surely that would solve the problem, right?
Yeah, no. Go fuck yourself.
It’s kind of a big deal.
There are a few massive differences between the good old U.S. of A. and both Australia and Great Britain. For starters, Australia has about 23.13 million people, and Great Britain has 64.1. The US, on the other hand, has over 300 million, and that number isn’t expected to fall any time soon. We are, by a significant margin, the third most populous country in the world.
The US also has, per capita, the highest rates of gun ownership in the world, at 112.6 per 100 people. That means that every man, woman, and child can be armed, and we’d still have enough left over for 10% of the population to carry a backup.
That is, by any reasonable measure, a shit load of guns in the hands of the public.
We also have this little thing called the Second Amendment:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
That’s one of the most hotly debated pieces of law in American history, but it is also almost unique in that it establishes the ability to keep and bear arms as a right of the people, rather than a privilege granted by the government. That might seem like a minor quibble at a glance, but it’s anything but when you look at it.
By establishing the right to own firearms in the Constitution, the Founding Fathers intended to ensure that the people had the ability to defend themselves from tyranny, both from outside invasion and especially from their own government.
You might argue that the Second Amendment is outdated. You might even successfully pass a constitutional amendment to repeal it. Unfortunately for you, (whoever the hell you are, you bastard) that doesn’t change the fact that there are a lot of people who take it deadly serious.
Many of those people are in law enforcement and the military, and will suddenly find themselves faced with the choice between enforcing a law they believe to be deeply immoral and an affront to everything they hold dear, or fighting back. That is not a situation they want to be in, and you’d do well not to place them in it, because you might not like the result.
Even if 100% of both law enforcement and military were completely on board with the plan, implementing Australian-style gun control faces another huge problem: how many regular citizens do you think will actually comply? Even if 80% turn in their guns, that still leaves 21 million citizens with guns, many of whom would be quite happy to march on Washington. That’s not a protest, or even a rebellion. That’s civil war.
When you consider the fact that many of those who refuse to comply will likely be veterans, the prospect is stomach churning.
It’s also worth noting that New Zealand, Australia’s island neighbor with these grasshopper looking things the size of mice, has experienced a drop in crime similar to Australia’s, but without implementing its own strict gun control measures. Kinda takes the sheen off the argument.
Of course, the anti-gun nuts aren’t the only ones spewing bullshit. I’ve seen some pretty decent stinkers from the pro-gun crowd as well.
One of the most popular memes going around these days is that the best way to prevent mass shootings is to arm veterans and place them in places like schools or shopping malls or what have you. A staggering number of them are unemployed, and would be more than happy to do their patriotic duty. 
Lemme ask you a question though: when was the last time you watched a rear echelon company go to the firing range?
If the answer is “I’ve never seen a bunch of REMFs try to make M-16s go bang in the general direction of the target,” then boy do I have some news for you. It’s ugly. It’s uglier than the sasquatch that can be found crawling out of the barracks on Sunday morning. It’s uglier than your average Sergeant Major’s wife. It’s uglier than that fight you had with your significant other the last time you got hammered and came back with a tattoo that you paid for with the money that should have gone to bills.
At my last drill, I watched a guy from my battalion’s support company shoot a 6. The 100 meter target was busted, so the range automatically scored it as a hit all 4 times it popped up. Think about that for a minute.
I don’t want those motherfuckers anywhere near my kids with a gun in their hand. Why in the hell would you think that was a good idea?
Yes, there are plenty of veterans who can shoot and who have been under pressure before, but how many of them have tried to discriminate targets in a freaking crowded hallway, when all you can see are a bunch of stampeding school kids? It’s a goddamn tragedy waiting to happen.
At the end of the day, the debate over gun control will still be burning hot. It’s a big issue, and one that’s not going to go away until we come up with a real, viable solution. But seriously folks, can you at least try to do a little bit of critical thinking before you run off at the mouth? Your nation will thank you.
