Gun Violence: Illness and Incompetency

There have been three mass shootings recently – one each in New York, California, and Texas – and the familiar swirling, impotent talking points of the left regarding “gun control” are once again being parroted by all the talking heads, the gist being that these things wouldn’t happen if only we could get rid of the guns. This is neither feasible nor desirable, and the causes are different than the left would have you believe, but before I explain that, let me turn aside to point out a few things.

First, two of the recent shootings will be memory-holed because they do not fit the left’s narrative. The shooting in New York State was perpetrated by a white man in a supermarket frequented by blacks and had an accompanying manifesto (apparently quite copy-pasted from past “manifestos” and containing a laundry list of things the ATF would like banned or controlled). White men did not commit the other two. The shooting in California occurred at a Taiwanese church and was perpetrated by a Chinese national, presumably as part of some ethnic beef. That one, of course, is already ignored by the media, with yesterday’s headlines only calling back to the shooting in New York (I’ve talked about in the past how “callbacks” are part of the fake news formula). The shooting yesterday was perpetrated by an 18-year-old Hispanic male who engaged in cross-dressing, and the initial narrative on twitter that the motive involved “replacement theory” quickly fell apart. Expect the 19 deaths there to be little discussed in the near future. It’s already missing from Twitter’s trending list.

Second, most mass shootings are never reported on by the mainstream media. This is so because they occur in inner cities and are perpetrated by minorities upon minorities. Thus, they don’t fit the narrative and, being more common than those that the typical news-watcher hears about, are considered normal and worthy of little more than a passing mention (if any) on the LA news. There were 400 killings in Los Angeles alone in 2021. The rap-metal band Bodycount was named after this grim reality: when a black person is killed, it’s just part of the body count. Occasionally, the talking heads will talk about inner-city crime in connection with gun control, but it’s usually a self-defeating argument, as we will see. The point is they ignore the violent deaths of blacks and hispanics because they cannot use them to tell stories about their political enemies.

The caricature the left wants you to be afraid of is the gun-toting white male trump voter, a present danger because of his access to weaponry and of course, his lack of mental stability (he’s crazy because he owns guns and believes in God, as evidenced by his support of Orange Man). Paradoxically, the white republican is the one most likely to comply with gun control laws. Gun control arguments in connection with gang violence are self-defeating because everyone knows that the gangster isn’t turning in his gun, which he didn’t buy legally, which he uses to protect his illicit drug business.

Gun control, at least to the degree envisioned by the left (which is total prohibition of private ownership), is not feasible. Those who use guns illegally are certainly not turning them in voluntarily, and there are so many privately owned guns attempting to collect them all would be impossible, even if the “psycho” white men complied (which most would, being still in the “high trust society” mindset). Even a tiny amount of resistance would result in a war-like bloodbath with law enforcement, who being practical and not suicidal men, might elect not to enforce a confiscation order fully. Millions upon millions of guns would remain circulating illicitly, as they have. Violence, particularly the kind that plagues the cities, would likely increase as deterrents and law enforcement weakened. Or, if the state were able to effectively “control” guns, they would gain such power over the people that a totalitarian state would arise almost by default, needing little more than a small “crisis” to turn society into a replicant of the Soviet Union or a reflection of dystopian literature. These are not desirable outcomes. Just look at what the Australian people have endured due to a flu virus.

To return to the thesis of this piece, the causes of gun violence, and particularly the mass shootings that make headlines, are the illness of our society and government incompetency.

It’s easy to look at yesterday’s shooter, who was clearly suffering emotional disturbance, and think “mental illness” is the problem. In my opinion, the rise in mental illness and deaths of despair are symptoms of a much deeper malaise affecting the mega-organism that is our society. Americans are spiritually deprived while materially sated. Our society is too diverse, not just ethnically, as we have imported ethnic conflicts from abroad, but more importantly, ideologically and culturally. A society that cannot agree on the fundamental and self-evident truth of male and female sex is dysfunctional, and Tuesday’s shooter is a symptom of that mental virus, one that normally only kills 40% of those it infects (to indifference from those who spread it). Incoherent thought is a symptom of madness, both on the individual and macro level, and conflict is bound to arise between cultures that cannot understand each other.

Keep in mind that machine guns were fully legal in the past, many people owned them, and yet school shootings weren’t considered the present danger they are now. People are different now; society is different.

Acknowledgment of this sickness should not make us forget that government is also incompetent. Mass shooters, at least of the variety we find on the news, hit soft targets. That is, they do not attack police stations full of armed men. Schools are full of children physically incapable of fighting back, and they are left, for the most part, unguarded. The government could correct this. Most parents wouldn’t mind a budget for on-site law enforcement or other security measures. As an aside, the bigger danger to school children is not random shooters but the other children, those teachers who choose to abuse children directly, and the system as a whole that grooms and misteaches them. Mass shootings are just another reason among many to homeschool your children.

There was even a mass shooting on a military base (Ft. Hood) in 2009. It turns out that the soldiers weren’t armed; they were a soft target.

The incompetency of the government is the best argument for individual gun ownership. The people slain in LA last year didn’t have the government around to protect them, or they’d be alive. They didn’t die because LEOs are incompetent on an individual level; they are not numerous or present enough to protect everyone all the time. It’s the state itself that is incompetent. Consider that the New York shooter was already on the FBI’s radar, and they did nothing. I enjoy conspiracy theories as much as the next internet resident, but more likely than the FBI doing the crime is them trying to cover their asses because the bureaucracy is incapable of performing its functions. We tend to have a Hollywood propaganda view of the feds as invincible hyper-competent spooks, but the evidence of reality doesn’t line up with the agency that ignores credible murder plans and instead investigates parents who show up to school board meetings.

The individual needs guns to protect himself and his family from psychotics because psychos exist, and the incompetent government is incapable of doing anything to prevent their existence, catch them, or disarm them. And they aren’t guarding your house or playground.

So yes, you should own at least one gun. I’ll leave recommendations for another article. Make yourself a hard target.

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4 Comments

  1. Think we’re going to find out the extent of “government incompetence” in the next few weeks. According to the latest reports, the shooter was confronted by the on duty school resource officer, who “failed” to stop him. Also the gunman was killed by a off duty border patrol agent that decided to go Rambo to stop the shooter, and not by any of the responding LEOs.

  2. While I try not to, it’s getting harder to not question the competence and character of individual LEOs. I am amazed at how none of them gave in to their masculine urge to protect the innocent and instead just detained parents while helpless children were mowed down.

    • The lynch pin of most gun control propaganda is the idea that cops will protect you. Which cops, though? I know personally very competent LEOs but you might get stuck with the worst kind of company men.

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