Monday, May 21, 2018

The Truth About Guns

Now that we have reached the point where more children in mass shootings have been killed than active military fighting at least two wars, it's time to put down some of the fallacies about what causes gun violence. I will give you a hint, it's not abortion or video games or Ritalin The only 100% link between school and other mass shootings is guns. We can't even any longer blame them all on white men, bullying or Trump voters. The only thing they all have in common is easy access to guns and in most cases, assault weapons. You can't link link video games, ritalin or Islam or mental illness to all mass shootings. The only link is guns.

Since the Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004, 7 of the top 10 deadliest mass shootings have happened in that time frame from, 2004-2018.  

6 out of those 7 involved the use of assault rifles as did one of the other top 10 mass shootings that happened before the Assault Weapons Ban was put into place. 

 Not only that, 0 of the top 10 mass shootings in US history happened during the time span of the Assault Weapons Ban from 1994-2004.

 Columbine happened during that time but since only 15 were killed, that pales in comparison to the 59 that died in Las Vegas or Pulse in Orlando.

So what does this say? Well I doubt the Vegas shooter was being bullied and I doubt Tashfeen Malik played a lot of video games yet likely prayed a lot in school so a lot of good that did her, or that Omar Mateen and Dylan Roof was on too much Ritalin. The point is, there's only one correlation between mass shootings and their perpetrators and that is their access to guns. And since we know that the states with the most guns such as LA, AK, SC, TN, MO, OK, AR, MS, AL all have a higher than average murder rate and also have some of the highest rates of gun ownership and that from 2007-2011 while domestic long gun sales increased at an annual rate of 3%, modern "sporting rifle"/ assault rifle sales grew at a rate of 27% and it is estimated that since 1994-2018 that the rate of Assault rifles in the US has increased more than 500%, and that several famous mass shooting incidents from Tuscon, Aurora, CO and Sutherland Springs either ended or were thwarted when the offender stopped to reload, we can clearly see a pattern that:

A. More guns produce more gun deaths and we certainly have more assault weapons in the US than we did in 1980
B. The deadlier the gun, the faster it can fire and the amount of rounds it can hold also increase the gun death rate and casualty rates in the event of a mass shooting
C. Thus, if we had fewer guns, that fired slower, and held fewer rounds, there will be a reduction in mass shooting casualties and gun deaths in general.

The solution is simple and it's not Marilyn Manson, Ritalin, Abortion, prayer in schools it's guns and with regards to mass shootings, rapid fire guns that hold a lot of high powered ammunition.

Sorry but the founding fathers never intended for your 1st Amendment rights to be able to allow you to slander, smoke weed or practice polygamy because of your religion or yell fire in a crowded theater. All those freedoms had limits as is the one they specifically tell you should be regulated that they laid out in the 2nd Amendment. No rights were ever absolute and they never have been.

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