Part 1/3
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: “Gun control laws are pointless because bad actors will always find ways to obtain guns and commit acts of harm.”
Part 2/3
You’re the Governor of a state where the following two gun control laws exist:
- People under the age of 18 cannot own or carry fully automatic rifles.
- Weapons cannot be brought into public schools unless they’re carried by a police officer or designated security guard.
The far-right members of your community start mobilizing in an effort to dismantle any gun control laws in place.They make the following proclamation: “Gun control laws are pointless because bad actors will always find ways to obtain guns and commit acts of harm.”
They petition their respective representatives day-in and day-out and threaten to vote them out of office if they don’t repeal the existing gun control laws.
Before long, you find yourself looking at a bill that would repeal the previous 2 gun control laws in its entirety, effectively allowing any teenager in the state to arm themselves with a fully-loaded automatic rifle and walk into algebra class within their publicly-funded school.
As Governor, would you repeal the 2 gun control laws or veto the bill?
Part 3/3
You decided to repeal the 2 gun control laws.
Though completely legal, the overwhelming majority of parents, who are responsible, refused and forbid their children from bringing any firearms to their public schools. In their opinion, it wasn’t necessary to arm their children for school.
A handful of irresponsible parents, on the other hand, saw no problem in arming their children with fully-loaded, automatic rifles.
As the weeks passed by, more and more students started bringing firearms to their public schools. The bullies of each school possessed a disproportionate number of fully automatic rifles. They successfully added a new intimidation tactic to their daily arsenal of tormenting their peers.
A sizable portion of the students are constantly in a state of unrest and anxiety, owing to their tormenters now walking around with deadly weapons, making jokes about ‘accidentally’ shooting them and whatnot.
2 weeks after the repeals, Brad the bully decided to pick on a brand new transfer student, Walter. After enduring homophobic insults, Walter calmly generated a retort so witty that it resulted in the entire cafeteria erupting in laughter, all at the expense of Brad.
Feeling utterly humiliated and emasculated and unable to match Walter in terms of verbal wit, the highly emotional Brad pulls up his AR15 and starts gunning down any students who he saw laughing.
This school shooting led to 14 deaths and 37 injuries.
Far-right activists argued that this was an isolated incident. However, after looking at the data, since the repeals, there was an average of 4 gun-related incidents/week. Some of them were simply firearms accidentally going off in class due to poor handling of the weapon, while others involved both fatal and non-fatal shootings.
Overall, within 1 month of the repeals, students in your state experienced 16 gun-related incidents, 129 deaths, and 255 non-fatal gun wounds.
Only 1/16 of the incidents involved a student who was already bringing a firearm to school daily prior to any laws being repealed. In addition to the above numbers, ~35% of the responsible parents refuse to send their children to school until gun control measure are enacted. This number continues to grow by the day.
You soon find yourself looking at a bill that would reinstitute the two previously-repealed gun control laws (i.e. No automatic rifles for those under 18 and no brining firearms into public schools, unless you’re an officer or guard).
As Governor, would you sign the bill into law or veto the bill?
The above are the results from the poll that I administered in my political group – Civil Political Discourse 🇺🇸
Facebook interviewed me personally back in October, 2020, and commended me for being able to host healthy, political conversations. My group is sorely lacking a robust Democratic/Progressive presence, so if you fall on the left side of the isle, I doubly encourage you to join. That being said, we welcome members of any political affiliation.
If you’re interested in seeing the rest of the commentary or participating in future thought experiments, I invite you to join my group.
