In Guns We Trust

This episode investigates the 22 years since the Columbine tragedy and what America has (not) done to make our citizens safer.  

Transcript

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Hey, y'all, I'm Gretchen purser. And this is the messes mind, the podcast where we talk about religion and politics and all the other stuff that you're not supposed to talk about at the table. Thanks for stopping by. Hey, everybody, thanks for tuning in. I had several things on the agenda today. And the news has bumped them all off the page. So today we are going to talk about the gun situation in our country and the numb the numbing down and the dumbing down that surrounds that, I'm also going to have a couple of push backs for you. And I promise to end on a positive note, so you don't feel like flinging your phone into the sea. Alright, let's get started. I didn't know for years that that song was actually about Columbine about the shooting, give it a listen when you get a chance. Also, one more recommendation for you on this topic. There's a book called 19 minutes by Jodi picoult. It was recommended to me by a teacher friend of mine, it's a really, really good read. It's fascinating. It's hard read, but it's a good read. So I've said before that I'm gonna try to use this podcast to sort of own some of my own nonsense, call myself out on some of the absurdities that have passed, passed along over the years as fact. The more I think it seems like the more I tend to change my mind, maybe it's age. So let's talk about guns. So while I grew up in what you can call gun country, I didn't really grow up around guns I rarely touched again. But I did like to say, you know, a lot of snappy cliches like, you know, an armed society is a polite society or a good guy with against the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun, stuff like that. But the thing is, the good guys weren't stopping the bad guys with the guns, and 22 years after Columbine, we've had something around 200 mass shootings in those years, our society's anything but polite. Our politicians have given us a lot of speeches, and they've done a lot of hand wringing. They've given us their thoughts and prayers, but they haven't given us any concrete movement, anything toward keeping us safer. When I came to town, the NRA was mostly for sportsmen and people used to want to protect their homes. But in those 30 years, the gun lobby has gotten stronger and stronger and the gun laws have gotten weaker and weaker. And unfortunately, we have the bloodshed to prove it. In those almost 200 mass shootings, you would recognize some of them Virginia Tech, Las Vegas, pulse, nightclub, Parkland, Florida, of course, the one that changed all of us forever, Sandy Hook, the fact that we didn't do anything after Sandy Hook, I think that that somehow scarred us as a nation. And I feel like maybe now most of us just feel like it's a lost cause, like nothing's ever going to change. I think the only things we believe really with certainty is that they will continue that the shootings will continue, and that Congress will continue to ignore it. So imagine for a moment that you're one of those people in Colorado, we just went through a year long pandemic, maybe you just got your job back, maybe you lost a parent, and you go to the grocery store in your mind or your own business, and you get mowed down by a madman in the produce aisle. I'm not really sure why we used to address this issue. It's almost like we want to step back from it and pretend like there was nothing we can do like it's the weather, or it's just something beyond our control or something that has nothing to do with us. Right. And this crisis is larger than the guns themselves. This is kind of a crisis of humanity, we've got a culture that somehow now prizes, individual rights, over the well being of our citizens, you know, maybe the founders had it wrong, maybe the Bill of Rights should have been the bill of responsibilities. So we understand as citizens that it's our responsibility to take collective care of one another, and to try to remove dangerous elements from society. There are so many statistics I could throw at you all, and I'll put some on my website. But I don't really think you all need to be convinced everybody knows this is a problem. The interesting number to me, though, was that 94% of Americans are in favor of universal background checks, which I'm shocked at that number is that high. And that tells me that law abiding gun people gun rights people even believe that background checks are essential. And we were looking at today's situation that we have with mental health and the crisis that we're in there, the fact that it's you can get again in 15 minutes, but might take you a month or two to get a get a therapist appointment. If you're struggling. That's just a perfect storm. America sees this as a huge problem. So does Congress. But the situation is such that those members of Congress who are in rural districts, you know, they are held to a pretty high standard, they have to pass a purity test of sorts with the NRA. They're given a grade A through F based upon the votes that they cast and anyone who doesn't get a good grade with the NRA will be decimated at the polls in some of these rural places. It affects republicans more because more republicans are elected in rural America. It's just sort of how it works. I think if you get these people privately i think everyone's privately concerned but i think no one is you know true to form nobody's willing to put their career on the line to do the right thing anymore and it's interesting the most interesting thing to me is that there's such a nexus between christians and gun owners and gun rights people and you're not when i worked for the christian coalition our voter guides and theirs were almost identical the same people that were pro life and anti gay were pro gun it was all sort of in the same vein and i got to figure it's probably because i mean we all know that jesus packed hate right yes if a man strikes you on the right cheek turn to him and shoot him that is the law gop jesus again so here's the deal the gun people are in that same ultra conservative wing of the party that believes that the government and the democrats are somehow in cahoots to end their way of life but the dirty little secret here is that government doesn't want to take your guns that's just one more thing we used to say on the right to get you to write checks and to vote republican it was never true that was never really going to happen and look i'm pro gun i mean we have a couple of shotguns and i grew up in a place where there were more guns and cows than there were people but do we really think it's a good idea to make all guns accessible to all people i mean i don't mean to say anything but the next time you're out in public take a look around like that mouth breather next to you should should he have a gun like he probably shouldn't have a squirt gun maybe what are you doing hey baby you're pretty hot hey hey anyway i think another problem that we've got is that we've gotten into this binary argument cycle where everything is right or wrong left or right up or down yes or no christians are really really bad about that were some of the worst about that the gun lobby has successfully convinced us as americans that we have two choices either let every person have however many guns whatever kind of guns they want for any reason with no background checks or the big liberal government's gonna burst in your house in the middle of the night and take every gun you have you're gonna have this when you pry it from my cold dead hands and even then good luck because i will have glued it to my cold dead hands like with most every other issue the reasonable common sense answer lies someplace in the middle and then no we're not going to solve every problem with background checks you're always going to have somebody on television saying well this person already had a permit or this person passed a background check i'm sure that's going to happen but we could start somewhere because there's not one answer that's going to solve all the problems we've allowed the perfect to become the enemy of the good and in 30 years we haven't done a single thing to make our public safer those precious babies at sandy hook were murdered by a 19 year old kid and in this country the government doesn't trust a 19 year old kid enough to let them buy a can of coors light but he's old enough to buy a semi automatic weapon and if he's got a couple extra bucks he can buy a bump stock and turn it into an automatic weapon like that guy did in las vegas but no no no we're not gonna require permitting or licensing or anything like that that's an infringement i mean but we will make you get a permit or a license to drive a boat or detsky and of course for cars and trucks you got to have a permit to build a shed you have to have a permit or license to go fishing you have to have one to cut hair but you don't have to have one to buy a gun or to buy several guns that are powerful enough to mow down hundreds of people in a matter of minutes and furthermore nobody's going to look into your background nobody's going to look in your mental health records nobody's going to make sure you're not a criminal you know the whole idea of is an atheroma and a slap in the face of the constitution into the second amendment that we will put any restrictions on gun owners is ridiculous okay they call these things assault weapons for a reason and it's not because you're going to assault a deer and you're not going to assault a water buffalo these are tactical weapons intended to use for mass destruction to kill lots of people that's why they were designed so it's maximum destruction minimum effort just like the fact that we can't go out and buy a missile or maybe a giant bomb i mean that would be fun to blow up wouldn't it the closest we can really get to that are setting off like south carolina fireworks but you know what those are illegal ironically it's a perfect time for congress to act because the nra is mired in scandal and bankruptcy but ultimately what we'll get from congress is what we always get which is their thoughts and prayers and a bunch of other cliches that smacks of indifference if we end up with any action at all it's most likely going to be by executive order so let me put a pin in this and explain this and a couple other things to you number one executive order is when a president makes a law that's not voted in by congress it's a great way to get something done quickly but it's not permanent and it's easily overturned by the next president a couple of other things i want to explain to you all semi automatic weapons versus automatic weapons they're both under the category of assault rifles or assault weapons semi automatic however when you pull the trigger you pull it you have to pull the trigger each time you shoot so it's bam bam bam and you're pulling the trigger for an automatic weapon you pull it one time pull and then it goes bye bye babe i've ever been like that like my impression of that the thing about it is semi automatic weapons are legal automatic weapons are illegal however for a very very low price you can buy an adapter that makes a semi into an automatic weapon isn't that nice in that cute and it's legal the nra was able to get all these laws passed and or not passed but the thing is it's really hard to argue that any of them are sportsmen like you're not going to use these to shoot pheasants you use them to shoot people there is irrefutable evidence that fewer guns equals fewer deaths by gun whether you look at other countries in their statistics or you just compare statistics among states in our own nation the fewer the guns there are the fewer gun deaths there are this isn't difficult math people i mean i'm an english person this isn't even hard math for me one last statistic that's really important to bring up just especially given our mental health crisis as of late with the pandemic is the fact that of all of the gun deaths in america i was shocked to get this number 260 1% of those gun deaths are suicide you know a lot of the people that are using these guns aren't using them on other people they're using them on their set on themselves and any therapist will tell you that suicide is an unfortunate intersection of opportunity and despair where you know lots of times when someone feels the urge to take their own life as long as there's not an opportunity to do so that feeling passes and then they survive the problem with guns is if you have a gun you've always got that opportunity number one and number two if you choose to try suicide with a gun you're going to be 85% successful so yeah that's some heavy stuff but the truth is we're not helpless so my push back to you number one is reach out to your members of congress your house and your senate members let them know that you're with that 94% that demands a background check and that's the very very least they can do number two if you've got one of those members of congress who thinks it's cute to pose with assault rifles because it makes them look cooler or maybe more macho what am i you don't appreciate it and in a culture that already glamorizes violence and terrorism maybe we shouldn't be setting that example for our kids third pushback if joe biden actually does something by executive order support it support it with your friends support it with your family and even though i don't really love the idea of executive order there's been 22 years since columbine there's been seven mass shootings in the last seven days somebody's got to do something we got to start somewhere and like my granddad used to say a little bit of something's better than a whole lot of nothing all right that's all i got for today i hope you all have a great day hope the sun shining and i'll talk to you next time