Nov 3, 2021
In this week's episode, Sam and Dave discuss the positive impacts
of law-abiding citizens owning firearms. It’s no secret that
mainstream press coverage of gun ownership in the United States
tends to be in favor of gun control. Journalists focus on how many
people are killed by guns, how many children get their hands on
improperly stored firearms, and how many deranged individuals go on
shooting sprees.
This anti-gun news bias is widespread among urban elites who have
very little personal experience with guns and yet have no problem
opining about the subject for influential newspapers like
The New York Times
or
The Washington Post.
Despite this bias, gun ownership has significant positive impacts
on American society that often go unreported.
There is actually a sort of semi-official policy regarding
this:
“if
it bleeds, it leads.” This means, in short, that the more death and
destruction, the higher up on the news the story goes. Nothing
moves units quite like tales of gun violence, so the media complies
by wallpapering coverage of tragic events like mass shootings,
despite the fact that such events are rare and comprise a small
number of the total deaths in America.
What’s more, the media almost never reports on context when it
comes to mass shootings, such as the well-documented connection
between prescription antidepressants and shootings. Even when SSRIs
are involved, there is a serious problem with mental healthcare in
the United States, which has one of the lowest rates of involuntary
commitment in the world. In other words, it is incredibly difficult
to get someone who is clearly a danger to themselves and others
locked away
even for a short observation period.
Of course, other, more tangential causes like the breakdown of
civil society and the destruction of the family are never even
considered.
Before proceeding further, it is finally worth pointing out that
despite any talk of
“weapons
of war on our streets” by politicians and the media, it is
primarily the police who hold such
“weapons
of war.” The possession of heavy weapons by local, state and
federal law enforcement is not an abstract or philosophical
question: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms alone offers
a number of examples of the deadly consequences of a heavily armed
police force.
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