Let me just start off by saying yes, I was one of the people making jokes about the shooting. Honestly, it’s a way of dealing with the worse reality that something this tragic could actually happen, regardless of how ill-timed it was. The remainder of this blog is going to be a long rant about the state of our country, and how we continue to let events like this happen despite it being super preventable.
I was never a big fan of Christina Grimmie, I’ll admit that. Her death however comes as a shock to everyone here and on the rest of the Internet. For me, it’s not so much that it was a celebrity death. Those happen all the time. We’ve lived through Prince, Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson, Paul Walker, and even Billy Mays. Those don’t even come close to comparing to the events that transpired Friday night into Saturday morning for me. Each of those celebrities I’ve listed had a hand in their own death. That’s not to make light of any of their passing in the least bit, but it prevented it from being as heartbreaking. Christina had no role in her own death whatsoever – it was a freak accident that was in no way preventable. On top of that, she is the first notable celebrity to die in my lifetime that is the same age as me. That in itself is the scarier part. Being that this was a random act of violence by a likely deranged fan, it makes it all the worse because we are left without any explanation whatsoever. There was no lead up to this, a star’s career was cut short without warning. We’ll move on, and soon she will be forgotten and her talent will go to waste. That’s the bigger issue that continues to be a problem in the United States.
The worst part about events like this is that people in our country continue to stand behind the fact that guns aren’t the real issue. Bad people will get their hands on guns no matter what, so there is no use banning them if they’ll be used anyways. It is with extreme irony that these people are the same ones who criticize the Brock Turner ruling. We punish people for rape, make laws to prevent these people from getting away from it, and we rightfully should, but when it comes to gun laws they are adamantly against them. The extreme hypocrisy from the Republican Party in the United States is a travesty, because there is bigger concern about sex offenders in restrooms than the Turner ruling in California. Moving back towards the issue of guns, the solution that is often proposed is that if we had MORE guns then people would be able to defend themselves from shooters. Please enlighten me how more guns could have prevented the death of Christina Grimmie, or the children at Sandy Hook Elementary School. No amount of guns in the world is going to prevent a madman from taking the life of another human being. The only way to prevent gun violence is to get rid of guns altogether.
Of course, there are people who will say that if no one has guns then the only people with guns will be the bad people. On top of that, they argue that they will just find another way to kill. If the shooter on Friday night had been armed with solely a knife, I don’t think we would have another dead celebrity. The solution is quite simply to ban these weapons across the entire country, and move on with our lives. No other country on the planet has this many mass shootings. Australia banned guns around 1995, and hasn’t had a mass shooting since. I am so disgusted with the place our country is in right now where people are still trying to defend their right to own an assault rifle and fighting against the rights of the LGBT community. Every time they lose a fight, they have to find a new minority target to pick on. There is a reason nothing will ever change with gun violence, and it’s because the rich white elite that hold political power want to continue to bury their heads in the sand, and won’t accept that all of the mass shooting violence in this country is committed by their own kind.
It is the finest of double standards when the response to a shooting from a Muslim couple is to ban all Muslims from our country instead of banning the weapons themselves. This is perhaps the biggest reason I am disgusted to be an American in this day and age. People refuse to legitimize the #BlackLivesMatter movement, diminishing it with #AllLivesMatter. It’s easier to pass the buck and not admit that the biggest problem of avoidable violence in this country is by white male shooters. Even if black on black violence is an issue, the bigger issue of mass shootings comes from lawmakers’ own kind, and that is a tough pill to swallow.
It is absolutely disgusting that our country continues to let people die in our own homeland. We pretend that we are the freedom fighters of the world wanting to bring peace to every other country on Earth when we can’t even solve problems within our own borders. We place blame on every scapegoat we possibly can to avoid dealing with the real issues. Until firearms are outright banned from our entire country with the exception of law enforcement, nothing will change. This “right to bear arms” is so disgustingly ingrained into our society that it will be near impossible to change anything, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Incentivizing gun disposal or return would be a step in the right direction to rid our country of these avoidable tragedies. Nothing will ever stop criminals from getting their hands on weapons, but we have more guns than any other country on Earth and it isn’t even close. The fact that people refuse to recognize the correlation between that and shootings is borderline psychotic, and if something doesn’t change soon our country will find itself in a hole that it can never dig itself out of.
Rant Over. Thanks for reading if you did.
TL;DR: Guns are bad, we should ban them all. Tragedy is avoidable and Republicans are hypocrites.
Tragedy is not avoidable
if someone wants to kill multiple people they will do it
if it's with a gun, knife, or with their bare hands
I agree there should be stricter laws against guns but a right to bare arms is in the constitution and we should not change that.
You can't take away guns and expect everyone to be nice to one another and there never be violence
Swell You cannot kill as many people with a knife or your fucking hands before you are stopped.
The fact that people say we can't take away guns and expect no violence is ridiculous. That's like saying we shouldn't ban rape because we can't expect it not to happen anyways.
Aquamarine we can't ban guns LMAO
It's in the Constitution, no President would ever pass that bill, not everyone with a gun is gonna murder people.
That's like saying cars kill people so we should ban cars
If something causes something bad to happen you don't just ban it, you try to fix it. In this case by making stricter gun control
Saying that the banning of guns will prevent tragedies is an overstatement. It might reduce violence a little, sure, but it would probably be a repeat with the prohibition act that was placed in the roaring twenties.
Swell the intent of cars isn't to kill things, it's to get you from point A to point B.
The intent of a gun is to kill something or someone. There is no other purpose.
titanium162, why is anyone coming into your house to murder your family in the first place? As Mark Cuban once said on Shark Tank, the only thing that will protect you in that case is a guard dog if someone really wants to get you they will.
Akora, yeah, because a dozen elementary school students WOULDNT have been killed if we had a ban on guns a long time ago.
Aquamarine everyone who owns a gun WANTS to kill someone?? Most people who own guns own them to defend themselves from people. Well you could sat they own them to go hunting as well but other than that, it's a small percentage of people who buy guns for massacres. People who use guns for evil will get their hands on them, banned or not. Do you think if they ban something they knock on everyone's door and ask them fit their gun? If they really want a gun they will get it.
No President in their right mind would pass a bill to ban guns, that is outrageous thing to do, it is in the Constitution ffs.
Your argument is if something causes negatives things to happen, we shouldn't try to fix it we should just ban it altogether. Kinda sounds like what Trump is doing about terrorism. Instead of intensifying background checks, he is banning anyone from the Middle East or has ever been to the Middle East instead of fixing the problem.
Also my example for cars is: If they kill people, should they just give up on cars and ban them? Or do you think they would find a way to make it safer?
aquamarine, but you don't know that for sure. If guns were illegal then it could have definitely prevented Sandy Hook... I won't argue with you there. But who is to say that the shooter would not at all be able to get ahold of a gun? Like, drugs are illegal, but if I really wanted some, I could get ahold of them in like 2 minutes.
You can't just make bold statements like that. It could have prevented Sandy Hook, or it could have still happened.
turney1805, true. Thank god most people won't ever dare to kill someone, right?
Aquamarine What does that even mean, should people just let themselves get potentially hurt or killed? Are people not allowed to defend themselves because the bad guy will get them "if they really want to"? The best tool to defend yourself with from a violent criminal is a gun.
I think there should be a military confiscation of guns in the US a door to door search forcing people to give them up. Murder would drop by 80% in this country with no more guns.
You do realize that guns are illegal in Illinois yet the crime rate in Chicago is much higher than other large cities with legalized guns. Outlawing guns isn't going to change anything, people will still find a way. The moral compass of this country is depleted, that's the problem, not a gun law.
Sure, people will still get guns but there'd be a lot less of them. Like there's been so many shootings like this in America, and it rarely happens in countries where they're illegal.
Aquamarine banning guns wouldn't do shit. All it would do is make law-abiding citizens angry that their guns that they use to defend themselves were taken away. If they wanted to do a mass shooting, I bet 100% people could get their hands on a gun. I could probably get a gun that isn't registered in an hour of searching online. Do you wanna punish law-abiding citizens? Banning drugs didn't do shit, why would banning guns to any different?
Aquamarine The gun that the terrorist used in the Orlando shooting is BANNED in the US. So how would a complete ban on guns have prevented this shooting?
The fact that you're using a tragedy to advocate a political position is pathetic in the first place.
