Pocket Realities

In Britain, it took just one school shooting to pass major gun control | MPR News:

But that’s where the similarities end. In the aftermath of the shooting, parents in Dunblane were able to mobilize with the kind of effectiveness that has eluded American gun control activists. By the following year, Parliament had banned private ownership of most handguns, as well as semi-automatic weapons, and required mandatory registration for shotgun owners. There have been no school shootings in the U.K since then.

When Ted Cruz slunk away from UK reporters asking why It Only Happens Here, this is the reality he was trying to avoid talking about. If the US had enacted the same controls when Columbine happened, there would be millions, if not billions, of less guns in the wild… But starting today would still make a difference, and making a culture of gun being reviled instead of worshiped, of sucking the “cool” out of them, too.

This is what I talk to my kids about, how effective a near-total-ban was elsewhere in the world… Because their generation, the one that’s been doing lockdown and active shooter drills their entire lives, is going to be the one that has Zero Sh*ts to give about gun tradition or the 2nd amendment.