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Alexander Hamilton was shot to death in a dumbass duel just more than a decade after the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791. The Reynolds Pamphlet might’ve ruined his political career, but it didn’t literally kill him. Yet, whenever there’s a mass shooting, the gun-obsessed immediately target the First Amendment, which protects free speech.
Last week, GOP Rep. Ronny Jackson, dialing in from 1999, blamed rap music and video games for all the latest gun massacres.
PREVIOUSLY: Same Clueless A-Holes Blaming Video Games For Racist Gun Violence Again
JACKSON: When I grew up, things were different. And I just think that kids are exposed to all kinds of horrible stuff nowadays too. I look back, and I think about the horrible stuff they hear when they listen to rap music, the video games that they watch from a really early age with all of this horrible violence and stuff, and I just think that they have this access to the Internet on a regular basis, which is just, you know, it’s not good for kids.
Jackson was born in 1967. He grew up in the 1970s, when high art was Clockwork Orange, Straw Dogs, The Godfather, Taxi Driver, and God help me Deliverance. Jackson was in high school when the first Rambo film dropped.
Look at Sylvester Stallone beat up those cops! Go Rambo, go Rambo, go! But I digress.
I get that conservatives’ blanket references to rap music is just racist code, but 1970s heavy metal did exist.
Reasonable people have concerns about violent video games, but studies haven’t shown any compelling connection between violent video games and violent behavior in real life. Mass shooters probably also like McDonald’s but we shouldn’t ban Big Macs instead of the damn guns.
Besides, Jackson is from Texas, where Republicans have actively loosened gun restrictions in recent years. Surely they were aware that kids were all hopped up on video games and rap music when they passed permitless carry laws. If they thought that was such a serious concern, they should’ve fixed it before arming the public with military-grade weapons.
Conservatives have started looking ahead to the next inevitable mass shooting and they’ve seemingly concluded that the best solution is just banning all media that confuses and scares them. The Second Amendment comes first.
Supposed man of God Franklin Graham went full ‘cancel culture’ on his Facebook page Wednesday:
President Biden and his administration want to ban certain caliber handguns. That won’t help the problem. What would make a difference is a ban on all of the movies, television shows, and video games graphically depicting gun violence, bloody gore, and death.
Mass shootings are only possible with guns. If some asshole points his fingers at you and shouts, “Pew! Pew!” you might find that annoying but you’re otherwise unharmed. The gun lovers insist that banning guns won’t keep potential killers from obtaining them. They’ll just go to some guy named “Easy Andy.”
The flaw in this logic is that it’s obviously much easier to buy and store weapons if they’re legal. Also, even if the government could ban all violent media, decades of it already exist in the cloud. The average computer literate kid will find a way to stream I Spit On Your Grave. That’s all academic, anyway, considering that the current Trumped-up Supreme Court is at least passingly aware of the First Amendment.
Graham went on to say that America is “addicted to violence—and they call it entertainment. Until we get a handle on this problem, we will see more and more of these kinds of tragic incidents across our nation.” Graham is from a generation that believed a swell game to play was cowboys and genocide victims.
We have taken God out of schools and most homes are leaving God out of the rearing of their children. He is the solution. The more we turn our backs on God and His Word, the more problems we have as individuals and as a nation.
The Bible itself is pretty damn violent. There’s flood, plague, and giant killing. However, nowhere does God suggest stockpiling AR-15s in case someone tries to steal your sheep.
Last year, at a conservative conference, Republican Senate candidate JD Vance from Ohio went so far as to propose banning pornography, which he reportedly claimed had “seep(ed) even into our youngest minds through the channels of the Internet.” That sounds like he’s writing (dull) pornography.
If I had to choose between granting a socially isolated teen easy access to guns or porn, the answer would be simple, but here we are. Vance has not recently commented on his anti-porn stance, but he’s warned of an “unholy alliance” coming for our guns. What’s “unholy” is the Right’s devotion to weapons of death.
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