seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Netherlands
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seen from Switzerland
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Switzerland
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Chances that are low but never zero:
Bisexual Taylor Swift
Murder Drones Season 2
The American Government not being dicks
British people stop making fun of us for school shootings (which most Americans have no control over)
I do not headcanon my favorite character as a lesbian (manifesting Sam x Genesis)
Gracie Abrams comes out
I finish this godsforsaken fanfiction (Murder Meth and Kissing Angels)
Every time I hear about a shooting in Texas I suffer a moment of fear for all of my family members down there.
Over the last two weekends there have been two mass murders in Texas.
Which city was it this time? What town? How far is that from my family in Austin, Dallas, and Houston?
Could my sister be out shopping at that mall? Could the gunman at large be hiding in my other sister’s neighborhood?
Every time I hear about another mass shooting, I have to immediately Google the location to figure out how close my family members are. With my heart choking my throat, I text and call to be sure they’re okay. My family in Texas must be sick of getting my frantic messages by now.
Not all mass murders are committed in Texas. Just more than any other state, and—shocker—their gun laws are debatably the most lax of any state.
And yet my family in Texas all continue to vote for the corrupt politicians, owned by the NRA, who support the proliferation of guns in Texas and throughout our country.
God forbid my sisters and other Texan relatives vote for a Democrat—because a liberal might not share all of their beliefs. My family members down there would never vote for the “other team,” even though their lives—and the lives of their children—are put at risk by voting for the jackals they think are on “their side.” Party loyalty has become more important than getting fair and moderate legislation accomplished.
Part of it is denial. My family members refuse to believe there is any correlation between the way they vote and the increasing threat of being randomly murdered where they live. They’ll claim that they’re safer in Texas (with their guns to protect them), than I am, where I live up north. They might even find some warped statistics drawn from misapplied data to back up their claims—this is how they rationalize against the obvious.
My family somehow believes the worst Republican in office is better than the best Democrat. To them, the corrupt Republican is still the lesser of two evils. It’s a compromise, you see. Yes, they want their Republican leaders to vote for reasonable gun laws—but they know that’s unlikely. Too bad. You just can’t trust any politicians.
That’s another part of the mythology that keeps this insanity going. Rather than switching their vote (a prospect too disloyal to even consider!), my family members assure themselves that the other side is just as bad, so there’s no point—even though the voting record in Texas and throughout the country plainly shows that if you vote enough Democrats into office, you will get reasonable gun laws, and the worldwide data overwhelmingly shows that more guns = more mass murders.
So, they keep voting for the old white men who proudly wear a pin shaped like an automatic rifle on the floor of the U.S. House and Senate, representing their support of the NRA and gun “freedom,” while those exact weapons are used to slaughter Americans.
Pro tip: Not all Republicans are corrupt and not all Democrats are good. It’s really hard to trust, or to know the difference. But you couldn’t ask for a bigger red flag than those disgusting automatic rifle pins.
My family members are not stupid. They’re not ignorant either, except in that they only listen to the “news” organizations that are selling hateful and biased propaganda. Those are the mainstream “news” providers in Texas. My family members are not extremists. Some own guns, others don’t. But they’re all buying into the mythology that gun violence just can’t be helped.
This is the core of the problem. Normal, decent folks down there believe the garbage they’re being told by the biased and untruthful politicians and so-called “conservative” media who are profiting from gun proliferation. I say so-called “conservative” because it is not, in fact, conservative to block the return of the more reasonable gun laws that we had 20-30 years ago.
Ronal Reagan himself, the icon of modern conservatives, promoted reasonable gun restrictions such as the Brady Law. (You can read Reagan’s 1991 op-ed in the New York Times at the link below.) Those gun laws have been quietly gutted and torn down over the last twenty-odd years—during the same period in which the rate of gun violence has escalated in the U.S.
As long as reasonable, intelligent people continue to passively accept the increasing number of mass murders, as if they are inevitable, we are all at risk.
As long as we place our tribalistic loyalty to political parties above a return to sensible legislation, things will not get better.
As long as we deny the real statistics that irrefutably show the correlation between gun violence and gun proliferation in America, innocent people will die for it.
As long as we pretend it won’t happen to us or to those we love, we are risking their lives.
I can see why this is happening. I see how the propaganda machine of the rich and powerful works with undue influence on the average person to make them passively accept the unacceptable as if it is unavoidable. I can see how the human brain is triggered by fear to give power to the biggest bullies in their tribe, rather than allowing the enemy tribe to take control. Oh, I can see all that and more of what complicates this problem because I have a front-row seat.
Yet, I don’t see how to overcome this. I can’t convince my own family members to change their minds. Believe me, I’ve tried.
But I’ll keep trying.
Opinion | Why I'm for the Brady Bill (Published 1991)
At least two members of Congress wore the lapel pins, and a third had taken credit for their distribution.
When a disturbed teenager in Uvalde sought a high-powered rifle that could fire numerous rounds, he didn’t have far to go. Texas has more li
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