Gun control and vaccines – the deniers use the same twisted logic
Because of the lack of willpower to implement serious gun control, thirty-one children, brothers, sisters, grandparents, mothers, and fathers died this past weekend. But another week will pass, and there will probably be another week of horrible killings by hate-filled mostly white, mostly men.
- Dayton, 10
- El Paso, 20
- Gilroy, CA, 4
- Virginia Beach, 12
- Aurora, IL, 5
- Thousand Oaks, CA 12
- Pittsburgh, 11
- Annapolis, 5
- Santa Fe, TX, 10
- Parkland, FL, 17
- Sutherland Springs, TX, 26
- Las Vegas, 58
- Orlando, 5
- Ft. Lauderdale, 5
- Burlington, Wash., 5
- Sandy Hook, 26
The dates and locations change, but the will to make substantive changes to our gun control laws evaporates after each mass murder. The Republican Party, which effectively controls our government, knows that it really doesn’t have to do anything. After a few weeks pass, we’ll forget about it, and they don’t have to do anything. It’s cynical, but that’s what happens when a political party is beholden to racism and the gun lobby.
So you’re probably asking, “what the hell does this have to do with vaccines?”
Two days ago, I would have shrugged. Then, while getting coffee from my local venti Americano shop, I overheard two older (and lily-white) men discussing the shooting. Setting aside their overt racism, they thought that killing a few “illegals” is “heroic,” they said that “just because a handful of people died out of 300 million Americans, that’s not a reason to take our guns.”
In other words, they’re saying that the risk of dying from a gun is so small, it’s not a consideration for gun control. I’ve heard this logic before, and it’s from the anti-vaccine religion. They argue that because only a few children will die of measles (or any vaccine-preventable disease), vaccines should not be mandated.
Yes, the chances of dying from measles are rare (thanks to vaccines). Yes, the chances of one person dying in a mass murder are small. The problem with the logic of the anti-vaccine and anti-gun control nutjobs are the same – we have the power to prevent both. And we should prevent both.
The old racist white guys talking too loud in my local coffee establishment probably thought they were immune (sorry, had to go there) from being killed in a mass killing because only brown people were targeted (which wasn’t true about either El Paso or Dayton this past weekend). The murders were indiscriminate. And all of those murdered did not deserve to have their lives cut short.Read More »Gun control and vaccines – the deniers use the same twisted logic