I call BS...
Gov Bevin, of Kentucky, has given interviews recently in the wake of the Parkland murders whereby he tries to shift the narrative away from guns and onto other societal causes (specifically video games!)for the plethora of multiple homicides by gunshots in the USA.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/16/17020768/video-games-violence-shootings-kentucky-governor-matt-bevin
Gov Bevin, of Kentucky, has given interviews recently in the wake of the Parkland murders whereby he tries to shift the narrative away from guns and onto other societal causes (specifically video games!)for the plethora of multiple homicides by gunshots in the USA.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/16/17020768/video-games-violence-shootings-kentucky-governor-matt-bevin
During one informal interview I
watched, (sorry, still looking for the link) Gov. Bevin took an apocryphal
jaunt down a false memory lane relating happy stories about kids bringing
Christmas guns to school to show them off to friends. This is disingenuous twaddle at the very least and a red herring.
Moreover, he cites a false 'fact' that
Americans had more guns in some by-gone age. This, again, is ludicrous. According to the Congressional
Research Service, there are roughly twice as many guns per capita in the United
States as there were in 1968: more than 300 million guns in all.
https://www.npr.org/2016/01/05/462017461/guns-in-america-by-the-numbers
https://www.npr.org/2016/01/05/462017461/guns-in-america-by-the-numbers
Since 1972, there has been no
appreciable change in the number of households which have guns in America. However,
3% of Americans own the vast majority of guns. And the preponderance of those gun owners live
in Red States which went overwhelmingly for the Drumpfen-shite.
http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/a-minority-of-americans-owns-most-of-the-guns-and-drives-gun-agenda-studies-show
http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/a-minority-of-americans-owns-most-of-the-guns-and-drives-gun-agenda-studies-show
Gov. Bevin, who is endorsed by the NRA and has spoken at the NRA-IRA Leadership Forum, is a yet another NRA-purchased moron; ignoring the multitude of nations where access to guns is limited, highly regulated and where there is a vastly smaller incident of mass-shootings and murder. After the Las Vegas mass-shooting last year that left 58 people dead and 851 injured, Bevin publicly shot down calls for gun control legislation, saying: "You can't regulate evil."
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/16/violent_video_games_guns_florida/
Thankfully, he's already facing a serious back-lash for his obtuse stance on guns in the wake of the Parkland murders.
http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/article200251909.html
There are plenty of statistics to
parse regarding gun ownership, types of weapons owned and their relationship
and relevance to gun deaths. Lots of cherry-picking is done by the NRA
spokes-people and self-styled 2nd Amendment fanatics who try to deflect away
from guns being the cause of gun-death(!) by citing deaths by other means; disease,
opioids, hammers, poisons, etc, (ad nauseum, ad absurdum). A prevalent one is
the brutal murders in China perpetrated by knife-wielding mad-men. Somehow, in
the minds of these cherry-pickers, the fact that people die of other causes
than gun-shot wounds removes the onus from the weapons themselves. They recite
the NRA talking-point; "Guns don't kill people; people kill people."
Legislation restricting availability
of semi-auto firearms is not a panacea. There is no 'magic bullet' to solving
this horrific situation but there are clear steps to be taken; other nations
have provided examples. The USA should follow those examples.