Germany has almost eight times more guns than Ireland, but Ireland has three and a half times more gun homicides than Germany, by rates. Why is that? Well, let’s be honest with ourselves for just this once on the internet. It’s because Germany is full of Germans, and Ireland is full of Irish. Culture.
Consider some off-graph data for a moment. If we combine the USA suicide rate and homicide rates into one rate, of all methods and not just guns, we get 4.9 + 13.4 = 18.3. South Korea’s suicide rate alone is 24.1 per 100k, and they’ve got almost no guns. Waive it away though, because oh, that’s cultural.
Now let’s look at Ye Olde Red White and Blue Outlier: The United States of America. Let’s compare our country to the other countries in the plot. We got the country kicked off by repeatedly coating tax collectors with searing hot tar and covering them with chicken feathers, moved on to shooting them, and then we won the war in no small part by applying the emerging concept of “interchangeable parts” to firearms. You’ve heard that AR-15s are basically build-a-bear rifles made of interchangeable parts, right? Since our storied and violent beginning, we’ve been at war 225 of our 242 years of existence. We nuked two cities. We have troops stationed in 150 different countries. When we want to eradicate poverty, or illicit drugs, or terrorism, what do we do? Declare “war” on them. At the beginning of every baseball game, we hoist a flag with a star for every territory taken by force from the natives and singing a song about rockets and bombs.
BJ Campbell
March 30, 2018
The Magic Gun Evaporation Fairy
[Interesting insights.
Campbell also made QOTD with his post from March 13th as well.—Joe]
Hmm. In the first two paragraphs he’s making a case, and everything is going along nicely.
The third paragraph goes off in a different direction, and it bothers me. It’s as though he’d adopted the leftist meme (an aspect of Critical Theory, or Critical Pedagogy as taught in our public institutions of “learning”) which says American culture is somehow uniquely violent (though he’d been working against that notion in the previous paragraph).
And if “we” (I don’t remember doing it, so it must have been the rest of y’all) started out tarring and feathering tax collectors as an expression of cultural tradition, then what’s happened to “us” since? How did “we” get from A to B, from rugged Protestants who understood the concept of property (the tenth commandment), to a bunch of cowed, collectivist weenies who brag about their compliance with anti-constitutional and anti-Biblical laws?
And let’s be very, very clear on this next point; there is a world of difference between a willingness to defend one’s self and one’s neighbors, to defend the bedrock principles of liberty (the “perfect law of liberty”) against clearly criminal aggression on one hand, and a general love of violence, of causing pain, and of braggadocio and arrogance on the other. The former is the Protestant world (the peaceful, productive and prosperous world) and the latter is the Romish system (the violent, brutal, poverty-stricken world, lorded over by arrogant pontiffs wishing to be regarded as gods).
The goal is to blend the two.
Therefore that distinction has been under attack for as long as any of us alive today can remember (and much longer besides). Thus a gun owner is a murderer-in-waiting (defense equals offense, and you’re a terrorist if you try to make any distinction), a businessman is a greedy monopolist (an enthusiastic producer is a slave-owner-in-waiting, seeking to take over the world), and anyone who upholds truly equal rights as defined in our constitution is a racist sexist bigoted homophobe who wants to starve children, kick old people onto the streets with no food or medicine, reinstate slavery and poison the planet.
In other words; the left, the Progressives, the Democrats and Republicans, the globalist movement, the UN, the EU and the ecumenical Romish/Jesuit/Masonic/Islamist/pagan system are all desperately accusing us of being just like them.
For if there are such clear distinctions, and if those distinctions become widely understood and discussed, they lose. They not only lose, they go down hard. Thus, America must be portrayed as, AND turned into, a uniquely violent culture, full of bragging bigots and hateful, greedy pigs.
Our national anthem is only tangentially related to rockets and bombs.
It’s actually about a jailed patriot trolling his oppressor with reminders that the tyrants always end up losing the war.
That’s right — our national anthem is a world-class trolling.
The problem…as ALWAYS is that to the vast majority of oxygen thieves on the left that provide the political clout to the commie demonrat leadership facts are IRRELEVANT. They do not think and for the most part are incapable of rational thought. They FEEL….they emote their way through life without regard to reality or the consequences of any actions they undertake. The tiny minority that control this steaming heaving mass of morons KNOWS the reality…that the problem with crime isn’t guns but criminals. The issue here is THEY DON’T CARE. The leaders on the left ( and many on the right apparently) simply do not give a damn how many innocent citizens suffer or die at the hands of criminal. The ONLY thing they care about is POWER. The ability to wield power and control society. And to wield that power most effectively REQUIRES a disarmed population. And THAT is the ONLY reason behind the incessant bleating for
“gun control”. We need to stop trying to convince the irrational with logic. Doing so is a waste of time and energy. We must instead find OTHER means to deal with the leadership of the mindless left. Decapitate the snake and the body wanders of and dies.