Saturday, December 15, 2012

Guns don't kill people. Stupidity kills people.

So by now everyone has heard of the CT shooting, I'm sure. The aftermath of this one on the internet and media has been similar to what happened for the last few previous ones. (How fucked up is it that we use a plural of "school shooting.") As before, the anti-gun people start shouting "THIS IS WHY NOBODY SHOULD HAVE GUNS" and the pro-gun people start shouting "THIS IS WHY EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE GUNS" and a bunch of internet slacktivists start using the event to earn internet points with shallow posts like "RT/like/share/reblog if you support the victims!"

Fucking stop it, guys. Stop focusing on guns. This is not about guns, or gun control, or gun ownership. Yes, he had a gun. Yes, he used it to kill people. Yes, guns make it easy to kill people. No, guns are not the only way to kill people. If the shooter didn't have a gun, he could use knives, blunt objects, a car, a bomb, fire, poison or any of numerous other ways to inflict harm on someone. If a person wants to harm another person they will find a way, guns or not.

So stop making this about guns. Don't stop talking about them entirely, because certainly they *are* a part of it. I mean people use fucking assault rifles to shoot other people. What the fuck? However, let's not get so caught up in talk about guns that we let it eclipse the real issue here: Why the fuck would a human being want to inflict that degree of harm on other human beings? THAT is what we should be talking about.

tl;dr this isn't a gun control issue, it's a mental health issue