So, a gun nut was arrested in New York. His intention was to take revenge on a heroin dealer, presumably by shooting the dealer with one of the many guns he was carrying, and with ammunition labeled “Shoot your local heroin dealer”.
This to me illustrates the massive disconnect between gun nuts and reality. First, let me stipulate that most believe addiction is something that a person cannot control, so when a person overdoses they did make a choice to kill themselves. It was an accident. While this may be the rationalization of a Christian culture tha frowns on suicide, what is true is that it is unlikely the intent of any drug user, street or prescribed, to die as a result of the drug use. They want the high, they want the relief, they want the party. I have know enough highly functioning crack and pot users to observe this as true.
It is certainly not the intent of the doctor prescribing the drugs to kill the patient, and the street drug dealer certainly gains nothing when the user dies.
Here is where the disconnect occurs. There are about 30,000 deaths a year due to gun violence, about 20,000 of them suicide. White men overwhelming off themselves with guns, which is why Sanders can say Vermont is the safest state in the country when it comes to guns, even though it is ranked average in terms of gun deaths. Most of the gun deaths in his state, because it is very white, is from suicide.
On the other hand, there are less than 20,000 deaths every year from drug overdose, predominately from heroin. If we assume that the drug user does not intend to kill themselves, we can also assume that the gun owner also did not intend to buy the gun to kill themselves. We can stipulte that that drug dealer or the arms dealer did not sell the item with the intent that it would be used to by the buyer to commit suicide
Yet we do not see signs saying ‘kill you local gun dealer’ even though doing so would save more lives than killing your local heroin dealer. Furthermore, while drug dealers can be arrested and doctors and manufacturers sued, the same cannot be said for gun dealers and gin manufacturers.
Guns and drugs are both sold as a way to keep piece of mind and save lives. Neither guns nor drugs are responsible for someone taking their own lives, it is the persons own state of mind and random chance. However, in both cases someone did sell the means of their death knowing that death is a significant possibility. In the case of guns, more people are going to die than from heroin use. If one believes that lives can be saved by killing a drug dealer, then one must believe the same about gun dealers.
Edited, damn homophones. The fare to the fair isn’t fair.