There is no evidence that the hundreds of millions of covid-19 vaccinations delivered around the world have killed anyone. The vaccines are preventing deaths, and as a matter of fact, the death rate among folks getting vaccinated is lower than expected. Yet anti-vaxxers are willing to defend their selfishness by claiming Dr. Fauci and Pfizer are out to boost their profits with fake vaccines. (Big Pharma are still profiteering bastards, but the coronavirus vaccines are still an essential part of quelling the pandemic, saving lives, and returning to normal.)
Yet a lot of the same folks who freak out about shots don’t blink at mass shootings, which have killed more Americans this year than have covid-19 vaccines, and ignore the far clearer cycle of corporate greed and government inaction that props up our deadly culture of violence:
I think culture is the wrong word here, though. Sure, a lot of Americans are nuts about guns, Westerners included, and they will go ballistic if they catch even a whiff of heightened regulations on firearms. But fanaticism and fetishism, fueled by some sort of cowboy myth, do not a culture make. They do, however, feed into the the money machine that the gun industry has created, which looks like this:
Mass shooting —> “thoughts and prayers” —> consider minor gun control measures —> “They’re coming for our guns!” —> surge in gun sales —> massive profits for gun manufacturers and industry groups like the NRA —> bigger donations from gun industry to politicians to ensure that they block gun control —> mass shooting … and, well, you get the picture.
That’s not culture, it’s greed [Jonathan Thompson, “Mass Shootings Are a Product of America’s Violent Culture,” High Country News, 2021.03.25].
Even if Pfizer is making money on coronavirus vaccines, at least they are delivering value for the dollar. The gun makers dreaming up trick pistol-rifles to skirt regulations aren’t making anyone’s lives better; they’re just making Americans’ lives shorter.
The du jour argument of the rabid right rails against a vaccination travel document.
The rabid right are uneducated and untraveled.
For generations governments often required an immunization record along with a passport at border crossings and entry points.
“Barry Bennett, a former Trump adviser, said the paranoia is probably overblown, and instead likened the passport idea to the yellow fever vaccination card he shows when traveling to countries in Africa.
“For someone who travels international a great deal, I want to be able to prove in a secure format that I’ve been vaccinated so I can go see my clients,” Bennett said. “If you’re talking about having to show papers to get into 7-Eleven to get a Slurpee, I think that’s paranoia. I think people are talking past each other, which is typical Washington.””
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-vaccine-passports-desantis/2021/03/30/eeb41124-9171-11eb-9668-89be11273c09_story.html
Indeed, John: that vaccine-passport fuss is another example of Trumpists making noise instead of dealing with practical reality.
Same with guns: vaccines save more lives and kill fewer people than guns, but Republicans tolerate anti-science anti-vaxxers more than they will tolerate citizens who suggests we should restrict certain firearms and use background checks and waiting periods to keep guns out of the hands of hotheads and mentally ill neighbors.
I write this doubting it will change any minds, but still feel compelled to use facts to provide a counter perspective.
Regarding the vaccine passports, the vast majority of stink I see raised is regarding the perceived hypocrisy of wanting an official document to prove one has been vaccinated to travel, and the resistance among those on the left against voter ID laws. I agree, though, that those of us who have traveled abroad understand the importance of vaccination documents.
Regarding Cory’s comments about background checks and waiting periods, I posit he is towing a party line without critically thinking about the problem and real solutions to address them.
1) “common sense” gun control legislation proposed such as universal background checks will do nothing to substantially curb violence committed with firearms.
1a) There is no gun show loophole (0.8% of criminals reported getting their guns from gun shows)
1b) Rifles (including the AR and AK platforms) accounted for less than 2% of firearms used in crimes. Now, as Cory mentions, there are some pistols built off the AR platform that muddies that water, but the evidence is clear that criminals by and large don’t use rifles (probably due to concealability issues).
1c) Lending firearms is not a significant contributor to crime – 6.5% of criminals reported borrowing a firearm to use in a crime.
1d) The best thing we can do to limit the supply of firearms is crack down on the street trade / underground market (which accounted for 43% of firearms used in crimes); that means cracking down on straw purchasers. It’s already illegal to be a straw purchaser, so it’s really a resources issue to track down those who do the deed and throw the book at them. That’s a funding issue, not something that needs new laws.
2) It’s incredibly problematic to malign people suffering from mental illness and conflate that with gun violence. Yes, there are people with mental illness who commit violence against others, but the field of psychology is clear that people suffering from mental illness are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.
2a) We have a suicide problem in the US. While firearms makes suicide attempts much more likely to succeed, there is no conclusive evidence that waiting periods help reduce suicide rates. We need to work on the root cause of why people are contemplating suicide in the first place.
3) There are more guns per capita in the US than at any point in history; nearly doubled since 1968. Yet despite that increased availability, our deaths from firearms has declined as a per 100k rate since a record high of the 70’s. We’ve had a troubling uptick in the past few years, and a greater focus on mass shootings, but the trendline is still much better than we’ve ever been historically.
Create policies that are based on facts and not fear, and folks will be more likely to listen.
References:
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/suficspi16.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1525086/
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths/
https://www.socialworkers.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=HlcEGsb8cy0%3D&portalid=0
Come on Cory, the pubs have to go with the white supremacists, anti-vaxxers, proud boys, three percenters, above all the Qs, gosh I left out the oath keepers. In other words all the raving lunatics in America are now firmly established in the Republican base. Grudznicks pary doesn’t exist, William F. Buckley is spinning in his grave.
Wayne’s analysis is worth considering seriously. A couple of the many questions that it raises in my mind include:
– Can statistics alone justify not addressing a problem because they provide evidence that the problem will not be completely solved, or that only a small fraction of the problem can be solved with the proposed solution? In other words is the argument that only a small percentage of mass murders are committed with AR and AK weapons a valid reason to reject efforts to try to stop or reduce that small percentage of horrendous murders? Or is this just another variation of the cliche: “the perfect is the enemy of the good.”
– When considering banning AR and AK weapons, should the utility or benefits to private owners of such weapons be taken into account as a factor to weigh against the percentage of mass murders committed with such weapons? In other words, what is the benefit to humanity and individuals of making AR and AK weapons available to the public versus the costs in term of human lives?
The possible benefits seem to include: the apparent thrill of shooting a ton of bullets in a short time at some paper, or other inanimate target; touching and displaying such weapons without shooting; and making money by manufacturing and selling these weapons to such thrill seekers. Otherwise, such weapons appear relatively useless: for self defense in other than a mad max world (in which cases laws don’t matter anyway); for hunting big or small game (as best I can tell hunters don’t generally quickly fire a mass amount of bullets at their prey); nor for other purposes in civilized society.
Although I certainly may have missed some factual benefit (or cost for that matter), it would seem that a cost benefit analysis would be much more useful than a reliance of statistical evidence that shows a proposed solution to be only partially effective rather than perfect.
In the final analysis, the over riding argument against any control of any magat will be religious freedumb as decided by magat Scotus and to hell with the constitution.
267 mass shootings as of Saturday in the US. …. https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/12/us/us-mass-shootings/index.html
Where are all those good magat ammosexuals with guns that pretty much promised to end the violence? Did they lie to us to protect their assault weapons, again. When dio we stop listening to the liars and act accordingly?