A racist with an assault weapon slaughtered 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, on May 14, but, in the days since, there has been little serious talk about gun control, except from the president and the governor of New York who, because it is their job, are expected to say something.
One reason for this is that the scourge of right-wing terrorism directed at non-white citizens is so appalling that it is hard to focus on anything else. But another reason is that everyone knows the gun debate is effectively over – and the guns have won. …
The only way to effectively end gun deaths and gun violence in the United States is to emulate civilized nations, such as Japan, New Zealand, Germany and Great Britain, where national laws severely restrict gun ownership.
In a country that fetishizes the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms, that will never happen. Besides, as any super-patriotic militia member with no passport and a barely achieved high school diploma will tell you for a fact, those funny-talking foreigners have zero freedom and low testosterone. …
Semi-automatic handguns and AR-15 type rifles are the big sellers, which means folks are arming themselves, not to pick off rabbits and deer, but to ward off perceived threats from swarthy-skinned thieves or jack-booted federal agents or, perhaps, aliens from a planet run by transgender communists.
Yes, this gun fever is lunacy. Yes, it is a clear and present danger to have so many weapons of war in the hands of people seething with unjustified fears and unhinged anger. Yet, that is where we are as a nation. Unless anti-gun folks are finally ready to move to Canada – as every liberal in America has threatened at least a dozen times – we will just have to live with the ubiquitous guns and learn to duck and run.
— David Horsey in More Than 400 Million Guns, From Sea To Shining Sea