I'm feeling pretty despondent today. Every time we have a school shooting it's like watching the same fucking terrible movie all over again on this site and social media in general. You have a lot of upset people begging our horseshit "leadership" to do something, anything that would attempt to decrease the frequency of these events. Then you have the "it's a magazine, not a clip" crowd show up with their "we've tried absolutely nothing and we're all out of ideas" BS. Then the country sees something else shiny and moves on after a few weeks.
Gun culture in this country (along with a pile of other BS) makes me not want to live here any longer. I don't know how we put the pig back in the proverbial pen WRT to our country's sick fascination with guns. Living in a small town in East Texas you see it everywhere - bumper stickers, shirts, hats, etc. - people advertising their idolization of guns. You see it on literal signs in people's yards - God, Guns and Trump 2024.
The proposed solutions from the leaders in this state are never Less Guns, it's always MOAR Guns. These days even gun safety is seen as an attack on the right to own weapons of war. My wife led a local chapter of Moms Demand Action after the school shooting in Florida. She built a pretty active group in our town, had buy in/support from some of the local churches, and had a few well attended events every year. She had to stop doing it because she was getting threats from loonies on FB. Moms Demand Action isn't trying to take away guns - she would give away free handgun locks and whatnot at their events and their main goal is gun safety. That warranted threats from some assbags who probably have punisher stickers with ARs in a cross behind them on their trucks. How do we as a country turn that around? I don't think we can.
I'm a gun owner. I've been shooting guns since my grandfather gave me a single shot .410 and an old Winchester pump .22 when I was probably 8 years old. I don't hate ARs, I've been pig hunting with them and I know it's a better functional option than the bolt action rifles that I own. But, they absolutely need to be harder to get. Period. I have to have a license to sell insurance, to drive a car, to go fishing, to go hunting, etc. etc. But I don't need shit to go buy any gun I want and carry it wherever I want in this state any longer. How fucked is that?