care2.com claims “38,495,178 members” and touts itself as “the world’s largest community for good.” I don’t think it’s very caring for a website appealing to touchy-feely do-gooders to run the scary pic above over a list of gun rights advocates who were shot in 2016. It looks a lot like gloating. A charge the author tackles in the second paragraph:
Below are four examples of major gun rights proponents who were either killed or seriously wounded by firearms this year. To be clear, this list is certainly not meant to make light of these tragedies or suggest that the victims in any way deserved to be shot. Rather, the intention is to underscore the dangerous nature of firearms by showing that even people who love and own guns can fall prey to accidents or even deliberate violence as well.
What was it Hamlet’s mom said? The lady doth protest too much, methinks. OK, the author of the care2.com hit piece is a Kevin. Whatever.
Kevin Matthews’s bullet-riddled rundown tries to temper its anti-gun animus in the profiles of Michael Harmon, Jamie Gilt, Christy Sheats and George Koumbis. It’s peppered with words like “unfortunately” and “in even more tragic news” and “our hearts go out.”
Matthews is fooling precisely no one. In fact, I reckon his summation is aimed more at salving his guilty conscience than putting the list into perspective.
Remember: people who own guns are more likely to be harmed by a gun than manage to protect themselves with their firearms. There are still plenty of reasonable gun control steps that this country can adopt to improve public safety without infringing on a citizen’s Second Amendment rights. If more gun proponents are willing to acknowledge the inherent danger, perhaps a satisfactory compromise can be reached.
Fun fact: more people harm themselves replacing smoke alarm batteries than have their life saved by a smoke alarm. Not that owning and using smoke alarms is a natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right . . .
I know it sounds weird, but the more calm and rational gun control advocates sound, the more frightening they are (to me). They remind me of movie villains like Dr. Hannibal Lecter – all calm and rational and charming until they take your guns and eat your liver. Or something like that.