Baldilocks:
As a result of the Las Vegas Massacre, 58 or 59 are dead as of this writing – some totals include the perp — and 500+ are injured. The death toll is sure to grow.
As always happens after a white person shoots others in cold blood, proponents of Gun Control begin to advocate for just that. And, as always happens, opponents of Gun Control counter with myriad examples of when, where, and why gun control leads to more death.
My advice to fellow opponents of Gun Control: give it up. Okay, don’t totally give up, but be aware of the true ideology that you’re opposing. It’s not the idea that fewer guns will save lives, nor is it the idea white men are more likely to be mass murderers.
It’s the idea that humankind can be made better through human effort if something about them changes. That something almost always involves labeling a segment of humanity as irredeemable – or deplorable – and, ultimately, finding a way to change that segment, which usually involves eradication. It’s an old ideology and an old strategy. Thomas Sowell calls this the Unconstrained Vision of human nature.
In other cultures, this Unconstrained Vision can be implemented much more easily than has been so in the USA; most other cultures have an ingrained tradition of obedience to monarchical and governmental authority. America, of course, was born of rebellion, which has made it necessary to draw out the process so that most of us can’t see it. At present, we are in the midst of that process.
Massacres like the one that happened yesterday seem to buoy the notion that white men of European ancestry are more murderous than other men. In the emotion of the present, it’s easy to forget John Muhammad, Lee Boyd Malvo, Nidal Hassan, Aaron Alexis, Christopher Dorner, Omar Mateen, Syed Farouk, Elliot Rodger, Christopher Harper-Mercer, Micah Johnson, Gavin Long and Seung-Hui Cho – well, it’s easy to ignore their existence.
It’s easy to forget Rwanda-Burundi, the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Imperial Japan, Khmer Rouge, Darfur, Armenian Genocide (too many Ottoman Empire-perpetrated Genocides to list) …
If guns were to become illegal today, humankind would still find ways to kill each other in large numbers, leaving aside the fact that criminals would still have guns. (That last conclusion makes the case of Gun Control opponents, and, while I agree with it, it’s separate from my point.) Both white supremacists and hardcore leftists contend that certain groups are more murderous than others. Mass shootings by white males always flare up this type of rhetoric on the Leftist side; black criminality — of which there are far more examples to choose from — spurs the same type of rhetoric from white supremacists. But, the most significant factor is this: the Organized Left has a near stranglehold on the traditional forms of media. They set the rhetorical tone; white supremacists simmer in nontraditional media. (I think that the Organized Left is a form of white supremacy. That’s another rabbit hole which I’ve gone down in other posts, so I won’t do it here.)