Mass shootings are a concern in our modern political environment. As the news cycle slows and evidence mounts that we may have reached sufficient community immunity and COVID may be quickly becoming a problem of our past, the media will likely trot out some of the old themes to promote their authoritarian narrative.
Shootings will be placed front and center whenever they happen. As a few events happened within a short time frame over the last couple months, the talking points were in full swing.
Gun deaths are higher in America than anywhere else and our gun culture leads to a violence problem.
Fortunately, those on the side of liberty are not morons. Numbers are available to address those concerns and despite all of the evidence that shows inconclusive data or even minor improvements in violence rates with gun ownership, there were still some concerns.
The vast majority of even the most ardent 2nd Amendment supporters would likely have been willing to admit that we do have an issue with mass shootings. If someone had asked me who led the world in mass shootings, or deaths from mass shootings, I would have told you it was likely us. I still supported the 2nd Amendment because of principle and because taking guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens doesn’t fix the problem, but likely makes it worse.
Well, stand down, fellow lovers of liberty.
Turns out, we were even ceding too much ground to those cretins on that topic. As we normally do, we take some of their information on face value and argue on principle, when we need to question the very information they use.
Jon Miltimore, over with Foundation of Economic Education, assessed the numbers and made a very appropriate analysis. He started by identifying that a nation of 330 million people is likely going to have more of a lot of things than those smaller nations. We saw similar issues in overall numbers of dead or infected being reported as devastating relatively early in the pandemic. The point is that the US, with a population 15 times the size of another nation would simply be expected to have about 15 times the problems of those same nations.
Would you have guessed that, per capita, the United States is actually 11th in deaths from mass shootings and 12th in the number of mass shootings?
Now, those are certainly not numbers to be proud of, but if you were to average them in terms of deaths or frequency of mass shootings per weapon in the nation, we would likely fall to far nearer the bottom.
If guns are, in fact, the problem, then there is no way that the United States should be anywhere other than the very top of both lists by a long shot considering the number of guns per person are already owned by the American people.
There is something far more nefarious at play when the government makes these moves and when the media promotes the narrative. An armed populace is a difficult one to control. They seek control, and if they can neuter, declaw or pull the teeth from the American people, they will meet a very weak resistance when enacting their mandates.
In the wake of the pandemic giving them cover to implement draconian and unhelpful fixes which are causing far more problems than they ever hoped to avoid, it could never be more important for the people to tell them to shove it.
When it comes to the progressive goals to control the narrative by falsifying or misrepresenting information, and getting it out early to change the tone of the conversation, it is important to stress that we should never give them an inch. Never. They will exploit it and sneak through all sorts of measures based on falsified data.
Knowing they would do it with guns, do you believe they are above it in pandemic news, climate change information, poverty and discrimination statistics or anything else?
I read recently on Twitter from Charlie Kirk that it is time for the conservatives to play offense. He isn’t wrong, but the problem is that the conservatives can’t play offense. They have already removed their teeth and have nothing to fight with. It was President Reagan himself who noted, “If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism…The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”
I think Reagan was close, but missing something. Libertarianism was the heart and soul of conservatives, but they were also the weapon. Failing to wield that weapon of small government has caused the alleged conservatives to lose their very heart and soul, and they represent now, only a skeleton of resistance. Superficial rhetoric to play to their base while they only slow progressives down a tiny fraction.
They abandoned any sense of what made them relevant, and if they want to seek wins and to play offense, they either need to adopt the Libertarian Party platform, or abandon their own party for that of the Libertarians.
Playing offense is not an option left for them anymore.
If you don’t want to be like most of the conservatives, left only reacting to the agenda that the left and the progressives set for you, you’ll need a solid foundation. I suggest going back to the beginning, and trying to teach your kids as you go. The Tuttle Twin Series is phenomenal in setting the foundation from which to start setting the agenda for kids ages 5-11. Get it today!
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