That rifle on the wall of the labourer’s cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.-George Orwell
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This is part of the reason I have mixed feelings about gun control.
From a public health standpoint, it is incontrovertable: more guns equals more gum deaths. Restricting access to guns unquestionably reduces gun deaths.
But the modern gun control movement has its roots in racism and would but unequally enforced more against PoC and other marginalized groups.
And I don’t know how to reconcile these truths.
More guns does not mean more gun deaths, it doesn’t correlate. States with high rates of gun ownership don’t nesisarally have high violence rates. Accident rates have been demonstrated to go way down with actual gun safety instruction (gun control groups have been trying to coopt ‘gun safety’ because gun control has high negative ratings in polling). Suicides don’t correlate with gun ownership internationally, we have a general suicide problem. It doesn’t matter if someone takes their life with a gun or overdosing with pills, we need to better help for people in crisis & to end the ableism against people who suffer from metal illness. And where violence does correlate is communities that have been marginalized for generations socially, economically, in the educational, & ‘justice’ system.
Gun control is really just a way for the power elites in society to avoid having to actually deal with the actual underlying causes of violence. Also the prison industrial complex needs more laws to fill prisons as support for pot legalization builds.