First published many years ago. I’ll just keep doing so.
Tom Tomorrow, one of my favorite cartoonists, summarizes gun control and killings quite well. Click through to read.
“Barring some seismic realignment in this country, the gun control debate is all but settled–and your side won. The occasional horrific civilian massacre is just the price the rest of us have to pay.”
“But relax,” as the penguin says, “Your paranoid political fantasies notwithstanding, no one’s going to take your guns away!”
Here’s a more recent one. Tom Tomorrow hasn’t lost it.
Interestingly however, the Heller and McDonald decisions were 5-4 decisions and with Scalia dead the idea of a personal right to bear arms under the second amendment actually COULD go away depending on the outcome of this election. I dislike all the rhetoric on both sides, but there is a kernel of truth in all of it. The NRA's contention that 2A rights *as we know them* are one supreme court decision away from extinction is true to some extent. So is the contention that if we confiscated all the guns we would have many less shootings. The issue becomes very much an all-or-nothing screaming match within one or two sentences when it is discussed.
The conservatives thought that their side 'won" after Reagan…judging by the rabid almost violently pro-Bernie people I see on my Social Media, most of whom are under 40, I'd say the conservatives' celebration was premature. Likewise any suggestion to pro-gun people that their side "won." That certainly isn't what the media and many politicians say; the presumptive democrat nominee is pro-gun control, the majority of the democratic party in the house and senate are pro-gun control, and the Supreme Court is at a 4-4 tie on the Constitutionality of total gun prohibition on the DC or Chicago Pre-Heller and pre-McDonald scale, while upholding Maryland-style bans on most "assault weapons" even before the death of Scalia. So gun prohibition is not exactly the dead issue in politics and the courts that it might have seemed a few years ago.
If guns aren't going to be taken away, what's the point?
Both CA and CT have seen gun confiscations as a result of legislation in recent decades, however. CT even had a bit of a kerfuffle about it recently.
"no one's going to take your guns away!"
As someone who has lived in NY I might have something to say about that. That little "no one's going to take your guns away" is about on par with "I support the Second Amendment but…" followed by a complete repudiation of the 2nd Amendment.