Liberals and Guns

My blog is verging on becoming a political blog! Oh, no! I'll write about something different soon, I promise, hehe. But I'm using this journal to vent some frustration, and, hey, it's not like anyone actually reads it, except for a few Europeans. ;)

One of the reasons I can't identify as a liberal is that, well, they're not very liberal. Take this "liberal" posting about why gun restrictions are bad. In my experience, this is pretty much the standard American liberal line about firearms - that, y'know, because most gun owners never blow anyone's head off, it's OK to ignore it when other gun owners do blow someone's head off. Because, okay, the quote is too good: "Guns are a tool, like anything, can be used to harm….or they can be used for fun, like most gun-users do."

For fun.

Around 10,000 people a year in the USA are murdered with firearms. That's 68% of all murders, not to mention 42% of all robberies and 22% of the assaults in the US involved guns. About 16,000 people a year kill themselves with guns. There are around 40,000 firearms injuries per year where hospitalization was sought. There are over half a million crimes a year committed with guns. A gun is eleven times more likely to be used in a suicide or suicide attempt than home defense!

But the justification is that guns are fun. And on the strength that people like guns, we are justified in turning our eye away from the 26,000 people a year who die because of guns, the forty-thousand who are seriously injured with guns, and the hundreds of thousands of gun-related crimes committed each year.

I have difficulty expressing how morally vacant I find that argument. I prefer the conservative argument, for even tho' I don't agree with it, and I think it is ignorant, it is not wholly morally vacant. To say that we need guns to kick the government's ass if it becomes tyrannical is a little crazy, but not morally vacant given that governments do become tyrannical. But the argument that guns are fun, or cool, or whatever, is so blindingly empty, so vile and backwards and stupid that I have trouble imagining how an intelligent person could hold to such an evil idea. It baffles me.

Additional Comment: One of the "guns are cool" group on the post that spurred my post has gone on to say how we should boycott bananas because of how awful and destructive United Fruit (aka Chiquita) is.

So, we should stop eating bananas because United Fruit is a horrible corporation but it's okay to supports the arms industry. Because "guns are cool". At least bananas are healthy. Oh, I think she's got a point about United Fruit - it is a horrible company, without doubt, but at least the product that United Fruit produces, bananas, are actually good for people.

I mean, how can you support firearms, the fucking arms industry, the death merchants and then criticize any other corporate entity for being horrible? And do support the most murderous - overtly, literally murderous and literally war mongers - group of corporations on earth and then get your knickers in a twist over bananas?

The piece de la resistance is, of course, that United Fruit's horrible policies would be impossible without the arms industry - the arms industry makes oppression possible. So, y'know, don't eat the banana, but support the company that makes the oppression of the farmers who grow the bananas possible.

It's insane.