Guns and Nuance or Lack Thereof

I’m not American, and not a gun owner. I probably shouldn’t even be commenting on this. But it’s bugging me and I feel like venting.

Holding gun manufacturers liable for gun deaths is untenable. Not that I’m a gun guy. Far from it. I’ve never owned one. Never wanted to own one. Don’t understand the need to carry one with me. And practically speaking, I think having one uber-handy is just asking for bigger consequences to rash decisions. So yes, I’m a-okay with gun control. Mostly because in my life, where I live, it doesn’t affect me.

But the idea of holding manufacturers responsible for the future sanity/stupidity of the people using their product is ridiculous. I won’t even get into the whole conversation about the destructiveness of cars, kitchen utensils or power tools in the hands of a suitably stupid or insane person. I’m sure you and Stephen King can be creative enough with those ingredients.

But more importantly, it does nothing to actually find out what the underlying problems actually are. As I see it, the question that needs asking is why are people shooting people? It’s not an easy question to answer. And generally we all hate things that aren’t easy to answer. There are probably multiple reasons why it happened. Many of them probably interlinked to various degrees. Upbringing, society, income inequality, mental illness, depression.. the list goes on. And there are nuances to each. History to each. Way too complex for the evening news or the front page of Reddit.

Black and white is so much more dramatic and satisfying than battling in all the grey. It just seems to make zero progress to actually finding a real solution.