A Chicago man has been charged with first-degree murder after witnesses say an 8-year-old girl riding a scooter was fatally shot by someone upset over noise.
Your first instinct is protect your kid with more guns? Americans literally can’t imagine the simple solution of just not having guns everywhere, which has been proven effective in pretty much every other country in the world.
Their question was clearly rhetorical, though. Also, while a lot of Americans are clearly very frustrated with the state of gun violence/gun control in the United States, many of them feel powerless to do anything to remedy the situation outside of the standard bureaucratic processes, so the “just get rid of guns” comment is just preaching to the choir. I can throw away my hypothetical weapons and tell everyone I know to do the same, and at the end of the day I’m just as likely to be shot to death outside of my own home. Nobody loves the situation and plenty of Americans agree with you, but this is the water we swim in.
You thought that was my first instinct? I felt like my first instinct was clearly to keep my kid home forever.
It was a rhetorical question, meant to highlight the insanity of the situation and the lack of options parents face just trying to let their kids be kids in safety. Bringing a gun to playtime would clearly be absurd, as would keeping my daughter inside, but you didn’t feel the need to call out Americans for constantly wanting to lock up their daughters. For that one you understood irony.
My country is a fucking mess, I’m clearly already upset about it. We could even have agreed about it! But you had to read what I wrote in the weirdest, American hating way possible.
I don’t think my reading of your comment was as problematic as you make it out. You formatted your question to have a section in the middle where you list hypothetical solution followed by what you think is the primary issue with those solutions: trauma.
Based on your comments in this thread, you hate America more than I. And you probably have more reason to.
In the context of protecting my kid from trauma (gun violence), my primary issue with a solution would yes, be the likelihood of the solution just causing a different kind of trauma.
You, however, seem to think it’s my only objection to the idea of standing over my kid with a gun. It’s not. I wasn’t trying to write a treatise on guns or gun violence, I was reaching out for human connection in a moment of fear and tears. And your response was to accuse me and all Americans of not being able to fathom a solution to problem without bringing a gun into it. Thanks, I found your reply super helpful in that moment. I’m all better now.
