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This weekend, I visited my friendly local gun store, idly browsing for shotguns and learning about interstate purchases. Then I drove to my parents and spent the evening playing board games. It was a nice night with good food, drink and company.
Meanwhile, five minutes up the highway, some lunatic was murdering random strangers at a local shopping mall.
No one I know was killed. No one I know personally was present—though a friend of a friend was. I didn’t hear about it until the next morning. Big nothingburger, right? And yet I’ve been to that mall. I’ve been to the bar across the street with my coworkers. If I’d had an errand or three to run, instead of visiting my family, I might have been cowering in a storeroom or staring at a splatter of brains on the sidewalk.
I’m not linking to any articles. Partly for the thinnest veneer of opsec, partly because media coverage is predictably terrible. All sympathetic pictures and, as we’d say here, recruiting for a cause. Nothing good will come of this. Either we’ll force through a knee-jerk bill with symbolic limits on firearms, or we’ll (correctly) dismiss that as posturing and (incorrectly) do abso-fucking-lutely nothing.
It’s not like I can do anything about it. I don’t know what I would actually expect to work, and if I did, how could it be brought about? State, even local politics is as tribal as it gets. Enjoy your a la carte selection of two options, and one of them is out of stock.
Meanwhile, I guess the best I can do is pick up some CCW training and a good holster. Fuck.
I mean, recognize that it's still an absolutely miniscule portion of the deaths that occur in the United States on a yearly basis. <100 mass shooting victims (for the strictest definition of 'mass shooting') per year in a country of 350+ million... it requires a microscope to detect that blip.
It looks slightly scarier if you consider all firearm homicides, disregard deaths from 'old age' and consider that it's the sort of thing that can randomly end your life even if you're young and healthy.
And yet, the biggest threat in the "death from random happenstance" category is still car accidents. And considering that you can also get grievously injured and survive it strikes me as far more reasonable to be worried about getting T-boned in an intersection than gunned down at the mall.
The single change I made that most reduces my risk of untimely demise was shortening my commute every day so I minimize my time on the road, especially my time driving at speed.
So genuinely ask yourself, if you don't go around constantly anxious about a car accident, on what possible grounds do you go around anxiously worrying about a mass shooter?
Note, of course, it's still probably sensible to wear your seatbelt.
Ultimately, being truly afraid of mass shootings requires buying into the authoritarian narrative that you're at massive risk of victimization unless you surrender your means of defense. It's pure availability bias, not an ACTUAL threat you should prioritize.
But yes, pick up some CCW training and a good holster because responsible carry can save you or others from many other threats aside from mass shooters, and allows you to take a more 'active' role in your community's defense if you wish.
As far as policies go, we need to strike a balance between safety and individual autonomy.
I've offered a compromise position for a long time now: Ban registered Democrats from owning guns.
I don't see anything wrong with restricting the gun ownership rights of those who don't believe in gun ownership rights, and they should leap at the chance to get ~30% of the population to give up firearms. By their very own logic this is a step in the right direction.
I somehow doubt they'd take up the offer.
I think this isn't quite charitable enough. Mass shootings are pushed into our faces multiple times a year, with extremely emotional language and the full might of the leftist media apparatus.
My rational brain can understand and regurgitate the undeniable fact that they're a statistical anomaly not worthy of consideration when looking at national policy. But my animal brain, if only for a second, is absolutely filled with horror at the thought of my kids bleeding out on a tile floor at school because of a subhuman monster. Nobody who spends any time on the internet or in front of a TV can avoid being shown these images, and there's enough statistically illiterate fools to bring it to you in face-to-face conversations as well.
I can state with certainty that the folks pushing for gun control from the top are pieces of shit. But I can also empathize with how horrible being even remotely close to a mass shooting would suck.
My main issue is that such an event that occurs ANYWHERE in the country is used to push fear everywhere in the country.
It makes no sense for someone residing in Oregon or Idaho to really feel unsafe because a shooting happened in Texas. It makes less than zero sense for an event that occurs in New York City (yes, even one that knocks buildings down) to strike fear into the hearts of people in Florida and California.
The homogenization of the national 'crimescape' is just absurd given the scale of this country and the diversity of cultural and socioeconomic demographics.
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