#the current market they're a main perpetrator

[niobiumao3]

The things is, it's not exactly surprising that capitalism and line go up has resulted in sequels and nostalgia bait rather than new, interesting ideas or at a minimum extensions into new territory of the existing franchises and worlds. Companies like Disney want a guaranteed money maker, they don't want to try something new and have it not make them tons of cash. They're addicted to it, in fact, to the point that any pushback from an audience who dislikes a new idea has them cancelling the project and ditching the idea entirely. It's ridiculous. We're lucky Star Trek Discovery--which I didn't like but had a good sized fan base who loved it, so was by all measures a success--went on as long as it did. That sort of 'largely new property' is rare these days.

This is the main down side of Lucas giving up SW; as much as Disney has done great things, Lucas would not give up on a project just because it had detractors. That's how we got as much of TCW and TBB; he kept at that thread and formed a fan base for it. No one wants to do that anymore. If something isn't an instant success and lauded it is dropped in favor of a new installment in a stale, long-spent IP because there's a ready made audience.

Which leaves us stuck with wall to wall Grogu merch and Toy Story 5 but the Acolyte cancelled. We wind up with awesome new characters like Phee shafted in their own show to bring back pre-existing characters which already had fans. We get, well, what we're getting.

Tired making.

[politics-and-philosophy]

Ok, so I know that I'm supposed to be weirded out by the fact that this person clearly created a random brand-new tumblr just to message me anonymously, but honestly, I'm honored.

Look, this tumblr is straight-up blank, aside from the header photo. Is that a homemade handgun btw? It looks like it. Honestly though, I just feel kinda honored. Because this person is either scared enough of me to want anonymity (I can't see why) or scared enough of the reprisal they would face on their main blog (this one makes more sense).

So, again, let's go point-by-point.

I don't think the government should have control over who owns a gun in the same way I don't think the government should have control over who lives and dies. I think that gun ownership should be restricted constitutionally, by removing and replacing the second amendment. In this new amendment, I want only three types of individuals to be allowed to own guns:

1. Those in remote areas who require guns for survival.

2. Collectors of historic guns who can only load and fire them on shooting ranges.

3. Active duty military personnel deployed in foreign soil, and domestic soil only during a foreign invasion.

This list notably excludes cops, active duty military on domestic soil, security details, sport hunters, and everyone else. I have said all this before though.

This would not give a monopoly on power to the government, in fact, it would significantly stymie the power the government already has over people by removing the threat of firearms.

Personally, I think this would stop almost all gun violence, not just mass shootings. The majority of gun killings are committed with guns which were once legally owned (the US is a net exporter of illegal firearms, mostly to Mexico, due to our lax gun laws). Furthermore, while 4 in 5 gun homicides are committed with a gun not owned by the perpetrator, that's not the end of the story. 30% of those guns are stolen, but of those 30%, over 4 in 10 are not reported stolen until after a crime is committed, and 44% of gun owners whose guns were stolen did not respond to attempts to be contacted by police. Of the other 70%, reported lost, in 62% of instances, the legal owner of the gun was unaware of where or when the gun was lost. That is a staggering number of people who are reckless with firearm safety.

A large part of this is due to shoestring purchases, where someone who passes a legal background check will go and buy a gun for someone who wouldn't, or to then go and sell it at an upcharge on the black market, only to claim it lost or stolen when it shows up at a crime scene. The legal gun market directly supports and enables both gun crime and the illegal gun market. Making it more difficult to legally get a gun will make it exponentially more difficult to illegally acquire a gun. More on this later.

Mass shootings are a small percentage of total deaths, but these deaths are unique in how horrible, violent, and early in a person's life they come. They are always the direct result of hate, and are a uniquely American problem within the developed world. Unlike robbery murders or even homicides motivated by passion, mass shootings don't target a specific individual. They seek to kill a group of people indiscriminately. Essentially, they're a violent hate crime, almost always motivated by a right-wing view of society and a belief that violence solves problems.

It's also laughable that the ownership of a gun somehow puts you on even footing with the government. Do you know how much firepower the government has? Even military grade weapons are useless against an actual military.

Ok, here's Oxford's definition of a civil right:

Please go read this. Civil rights are rights of society and politics. They are things such as voting rights, marriage rights, freedom from religious infringement in your life, right to exist in society and politics. Gun ownership is no more a civil right than is the right to smoke crack.

America has a gun violence epidemic, compared to the rest of the world, and even compared among the states.

Here's a fun graph comparing gun violence and gun ownership among first world countries.

Here's a graph comparing gun violence and gun regulation within the United States:

Ok, finally, on to fascism. So, let's start from the top and work our way to different outcomes. We have our first decision at "Is the current gun violence rate and mass shooting epidemic within the US worth fixing?" Personally, I think yes. If you think no, I invite you to tell that to anyone who lost a family member in a mass shooting and see if you don't get punched.

Having resolved yes, we move onto what to do. There are three real solutions.

1. Increase of law enforcement

2. Increase of surveillance

3. Regulation of firearms

Notably, mental health reforms is left off this list. I've addressed that several times in other posts. In summary, mass shooters don't seek mental services and the majority of perpetrators aren't mentally ill, they're disillusioned with society.

Now, as a liberal and specifically a social liberal, I hate fascism and think that among the political ideologies out there fascism and authoritarianism are a special kind of evil. In general, I see it as better to have a large government which serves the people instead of a small government which oppresses the people. A lot of conservatives, especially anarco-capitalists, think that a small government is necessarily less oppressive, but that is not true. Governments can be large, but if they are beholden to a citizenship, they'll obey said citizens. Small governments who are isolated from the populace easily turn towards oppression.

But I digress. Let's start with the first choice, and see where it takes us. For this exercise, we'll be assuming that when the government is given control over a certain aspect of our lives, they'll want to increase that control. So, we increase the law enforcement in all major metropolitan areas, meaning armed guards at malls, churches, movie theaters, schools, etc. And even though mass shootings still occur when armed guards are present (Parkland) or when police arrive on scene within the minute (El Paso), it's okay because we get to keep our guns, everybody has a gun so everyone is safe. This is basically a police state. The scary thing is conservatives have actually proposed this. Sean Hannity said on live TV that we need to place armed guards at every public area. And if you don't trust the government, how the hell could you trust the armed guards they have stationed outside the grocery store.

Next solution is increased surveillance. If access to guns is to remain unrestricted, then we need to be able to find the killers before they kill. What do all of the mass shooters have in common? An internet history rife with extremism and alt-right views. So, screen everyone. And go ahead and start censoring people who have those views too, just to be safe. But once we have a suspected shooter, how can we know when they're about to commit murder? You can't arrest someone for fitting a profile. So, you start tracking them, looking through their purchases, making sure they aren't trying to get someone to buy them a firearm, following them, watching them. Even if all they did is post on the internet with no intent, now the government knows their every move. And suddenly, the small minor infractions that everyone commits daily start to add up. So, one agent decides to hell with it, let's just bust him early for something, anything we can make stick. This isn't a hypothetical, either. There are countless stories of cops falsifying evidence just to make the arrest because they believe an innocent person is guilty.

Finally, firearm regulation. Now here you might think that if you lose your firearm, you lose your safety. Ignoring for a moment that I specifically advocated for law enforcement to not have firearms, if you genuinely think you are safer with a gun than without it, you are wrong. The mindset that, without your gun, there's nothing to stop the government from trampling your rights ignores the fact that even with your gun, there's nothing really stopping the government from trampling your rights, because the government has a lot more guns than you and they're a lot bigger. Now, perhaps you think that having an armed populace means a resistance or insurgency is possible. Ignoring that the government could squash any insurgency within the US, who even says the insurgents are on your side politically? What's stopping them from rising up right now? The same thing that's stopping the government from killing any dissidents: the fact that we live in a society and without it the government would collapse. Often times people speak as though the government is some separate entity when in reality in America every single person who us eligible to vote or pays taxes is a member of the government. We are the power base of the government, and to distinguish between the citizens of the US and the government if the US is a real gray area, because the government can't exist without the economic base that is our society. You called us sheep but we aren't sheep, we're the golden goose and you never ever kill the golden goose. The government won't come to put us all in camps because they'd wake up broke the next day. And even if they did, your gun wouldn't stop them, it just means they'd kill you.

When you arm everyone, you arm EVERYONE. Not just the lawful responsible owner, but the mass shooter, the murderer, the rapist, the insurgents on both the right and the left, the domestic terrorists, the gang bangers, the government sympathizers, the government itself, everyone. And while obviously it's not every gun owner, it could be any gun owner. And any realistic way to distinguish the difference between a responsible individual looking to own a gun and a mass shooter arming up is with a level of invasiveness that should make you incredibly uncomfortable. This is what I mean when I talk about surveillance.

Let's come to a conclusion here, because this post has gotten quite long.

The idea that you could amass enough firepower to resist the government is not reasonable. What protects you from the government is not weaponry but anonymity. Currently, our system has both, but having both allows criminals and murderers to readily access firearms and kill people. So, since the weaponry isn't protecting us anyway, might as well get rid of it and save some lives.

EDIT: The blog that sent these messages no longer exists, and I don't have access to them anymore, so I'm glad I screenshoted when I did. Kinda confirms my suspicion that they just wanted to anonymously harass me. Oh well, nothing as predictable as a coward.