The Ballot Is the Bullet

According to one study, America is ranked 64th in mass shoutings, but even if we were to adjust the variables to count America as 1st the chance of dying in a mass shooting in any given year is extremely rare — 0.0000003%.

The media uses mass shoutings as more of a jumping-off point to condemn gun violence in general, which America is arguably 1st among the developed world where you have about a 0.00006% chance of being murdered via a firearm or roughly 20,000 people per year, but what matters more than the method of murder is murder itself.

So if we effectively banned all guns would murder decrease?

The key word is effectively because that’s a big “if” given that it’d be unconstitutional so we’d have to amend the constitution or at least appoint justices who would reinterpret the constitution as nothing more than the will of the living.

Once that’s done the government could do a mandatory buyback program to whittle down our 400 million guns, but many Americans would refuse to surrender theirs so the government would have to forcibly confiscate some while harshly penalizing anyone caught with one later. In the UK, illegal possession is a minimum sentence of 5 years up to a maximum of 14 years.

In addition, the only way to effectively ban all guns would be to crack down on the southern border, which is a wall too far for many of my friends on the Left.

But putting reality aside, if the U.S. did effectively ban all guns would murder decrease?

Some studies say yes and some say no. It’s hard to imagine gangs, rapists, and thieves wouldn’t just turn to other means to achieve their nefarious ends like idk get elected to office. In fact, it seems like it’d be easier for criminals to impose their will, especially in lightly populated areas, which means however much money we’d have to spend on gun confiscation we’d have to spend 1000X more on law enforcement overall. If you thought Prohibition and the War on Drugs was ineffective then prepare to lock and load for the War on Guns.

But perhaps we could make it work if we just cram everyone into highly secured facilities with cameras on every street corner, but then this would just make us easy targets for the greatest killer of them all: government.
North Korea officially has zero mass shoutings, but we all know they’re effectively #1.

The 2nd Amendment is about self-defense against individuals, organizations, and governments. The 2nd Amendment is ultimately what protects our 1st Amendment. Anyone who brings up hunting in relation to the 2nd Amendment knows less than the deer I shot and anyone who thinks well-armed Americans couldn’t defeat our federal government would shoo away a bear because they had mistook it for a deer. After our federal government spent an enormous amount of blood and treasure it still lost to poor people in North Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan so just imagine how much harder it’d be for our federal government to defy the very people it derives its power from. And as I point out to my UK friends, if there is any country for which the benefit of the right to bear arms outweighs the cost it is the United States because through our freedom we’ve pressured the world to be freer whereas if we were to fall into despotism we’d pull the whole world down with us.

With that said, Democrats ostensibly don’t want to ban all guns, although I wonder if that’s true since they love to cite Canada, Europe, and Australia who had used similar rhetoric to disarm their populations, but they just want to ban “assault rifles,” high capacity magazines, and give the FBI more resources to do background checks on all firearm buyers.
(gun control debate both sides)

“Assault rifles” are automatic rifles, which are already banned, but the media has broadened its definition for political purposes, and when you couple this ban with banning high-capacity magazines it’d greatly reduce our ability to defend ourselves against governments and gangs. (gun control debate both sides)

Federal background checks also undercut the 2nd Amendment by giving the final say-so to the very people it’s intended to say no.

In the end, the share of prisoners who obtained guns through a retail store was 2% and from a gun show 0.8% so all the energy the Left expends on this issue at the opportunity cost of other issues ultimately wouldn’t even make a dent in gun violence, which makes me wonder is it because they don’t know better or is because they simply don’t care?

So does this mean we should abolish all gun control?

Should a toddler be able to crawl into a gun shop and demand the big shiny one?

The way I see it: the ballot is the bullet and the bullet is the ballot. Force is force. And so both should be treated with similar reverence and used with similar restraint.

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