Republicans and gun enthusiasts would like us to believe their romance with guns is overstated, overblown, and just plain wrong. After all, they tell us we would be safer with more guns. What no one ever asks is how many guns are enough. Experts estimate over 400 million guns are in circulation in America for a population of 330 million. Of the top five countries with the highest civilian gun ownership, Falkland Islands, Yemen, New Caledonia, Serbia, and the United States—America has the bragging rights at number one with 120.5 guns per 100 people. Recently, Georgia state Senator Colton Moore—upset Fani Willis is prosecuting former President Trump, said he does not want a civil war, saying, “I do not want to draw my rifle.” Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida drew on an old saw from former Miami police chief Walter Hedley, who said in 1967, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
Amid the disastrous damage from Hurricane Idalia, Gov. DeSantis took to the podium Wednesday, not to explain why he will not accept the 350 million from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act for upgrades to prepare for natural disasters with energy efficient incentives but to warn robbers, “You loot, we shoot.” That phrase has a long history for bigots and conservatives. Former Alabama Governor George Wallace repeated the exact words at his presidential campaign rally in 1968, telling a Pittsburgh Civic Center crowd, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Donald Trump dragged out his version of the phrase in May 2020 in the heat of that year’s presidential campaign, issuing a thinly veiled threat against Minneapolis protesters.
Guns and Republicans have become synonymous.
Gun rights advocates have said over and over, the sacrifice of our kids is the price of freedom. In a House hearing on gun safety and kids in June of 2022, Congressman Greg Steube pulled out his Sig Sauer P365 XL proudly, stating it had a 15-round magazine and Democrats seeking to curb magazine size with the ‘Protecting Our Kids Act’ was a precursor to taking away guns. “Don’t let them fool you that they’re not attempting to take away your ability to purchase handguns,” Steube said. “They are using the magazine ban to do it,” he concluded. It is not just children who are expendable in our rampant gun culture. After the murders of 60 people at a Las Vegas music festival, former Fox News talking head Bill O’Reilly wrote this was “the price of freedom.”
What about the freedom to attend church or shop for Sunday’s dinner roast? How about not having a shudder traverse your spine every time your TV is interrupted with news of a school shooting, and you wait to see where? And you breathe a sigh of guilty relief when it is not your kid’s school. According to this country’s right-wing, the antidote is to arm teachers and turn our institutions into fortresses. I am reminded of a classic episode of All in the Family and Archie Bunker’s solution to end skyjackings:
I have kids, nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends with school-age children. I used to think which of them might be the next President; now I think how many will survive.
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