After yet another horrendous mass shooting in Amerrica, gun-loving conservatives, as they always do, looked to every other possible reason for the massacre, aside from guns. Such as:
Pathetic conservative excuse 1: ‘No matter the laws, a psycho will always get a gun.’ Well, a drunk driver will try to drink drive but the fact that it’s illegal gives us a better chance of stopping him.
Pathetic conservative excuse 2: ‘You’re just anti gun’. Really? Does it mean I’m anti-sex because I’m anti rape?
Pathetic conservative excuse 3: ‘Guns don’t kill people, people kill people’. OK, let’s put that excuse into another sentence shall we ― who cares if N.Korea gets a nuke, don’t punish all nuke owners, nukes don’t kill people, people kill people.
Pathetic conservative excuse 4: ‘Hotel needs better security.’ Oh, this one’s new, but it sounds awfully familiar to the ‘schools need more guns/nightclubs need more guns’ argument used in the past, and that didn’t seem to work.
Pathetic conservative excuse 5: ‘It’s just the price of freedom.’ Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner. O’Reilly, yet again takes home first place for worst excuse imaginable.
Firstly, where does this myth come from that freedom means being able to amass your own personal arsenal of automatic weapons? I would think that if someone felt so free, they wouldn’t feel the need to arm themselves to the teeth, fearful of the world. But ― newsflash Americans ― there are hundreds of other free countries out there, and get this, their citizens don’t need to own guns to reaffirm the fact that they are free.
Australia had lax gun laws, but after experiencing the pain of a mass shooting in modern history, they said to themselves ‘fack this’ and took action. After their worst massacre in 1996, Australia banned automatic and semiautomatic firearms, adopted new licensing requirements, established a national firearms registry, and instituted a 28-day waiting period for gun purchases. They also bought and destroyed more than 600,000 civilian-owned firearms, in a scheme that cost half a billion dollars and was funded by raising taxes. As a result, gun-related homicides and suicides in the country dropped by 59 percent and 65 percent. But you know what remained? Freedom. That’s right - they were still able to vote, still able to walk freely, still able to shop, drink, play, laugh, love, all without a gun. Crazy, right? And their crime rate is a speck compared to here in the ever-so-free United States.
But next thing, Bill, by using the word “price,” you suggest that there is a cost to pay. That these latest 59 dead civilians are just collateral damage, sacrificed for the bigger goal. So tell me, what is the bigger picture? What is the massive upside to owning a weapon aside from it lookin’ all cool n shit? Because if something is going to cost the lives of thousands of innocent people every year, I want to know what i’m paying for.
Oh, that’s right ― we are paying for the NRA to continue to dominate American politics, to keep the blood-stained pockets of the GOP filled to the brim. Are the 59 bodies merely the cost of Mitch McConnell doing business to to the tune of $1,262,189 in campaign cash from the NRA?
Are the bodies of the children lost in Newtown the price to pay so Colorado senator Cory Gardner can take $3,939,199 in blood money from the NRA?
What about the $2,867,074 Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy took?
Or the $4,418,833 Senator Thom Tillis takes?
Or is it all just the price we have to pay so that Donald Trump can receive 21 million dollars in donations from the NRA? Is that what you mean, Bill, and the rest of the delusional right wing? Is this the cost we have to pay for freedom, the cost the families ruined have to pay so that the GOP can continue to flourish while the blood money pours in from the NRA?
Because if there is some other upside that I’m missing, tell me. We have tried it the conservative way, and guess what, it’s not working. Since 1968 there have been more American lives lost to gun violence than were lost in all the wars the US has fought combined. So where is the upside to this cost? All I see are innocent lives lost and filthy politicians’ pockets filled. It’s a damn disgrace and any right wing commentator who shared their thoughts and prayers for the victims in Las Vegas while supporting the NRA can go fuck themselves. And that goes double for the Republican politicians who offer thoughts and prayers while pocketing all the NRA’s blood money. Damn hypocrites.
