It’s the Women, Stupid!

You might think I’m on a retro-Clinton kick. Not so.

In Western Europe, people follow two wars on the news.

The first is on the eastern front, where the tragedy of the Ukraine continues to unfold—increasingly a proxy war between Russia and China, on one side, and the US and NATO, on the other.

Informed citizens bear witness to the atrocities, the Wagner Group, the internal Russian—it’s tempting to write ‘Soviet’—dynamics between Putin, Navalny (“that person”), the Siloviki, the Oligarchs, and the suffering of Ukrainians. Close your eyes and spare a thought for the little children, the elderly, the infirm… Spare another for Navalny, poisoned again, but this time in custody, for the horrors of the Russian prison system, and for those who leapt to their deaths from tenth-story prison basements.

I know this phony war is protracted—it will last as long as Putin, but perhaps Putin won’t last as long as it—and I don’t know much else.

In 1832, Carl von Clausewitz wrote that ‘Everything in war is simple, but the simple things are difficult.’

Perhaps, the most difficult will be making peace—among other things, luck will be needed—but luck itself is difficult, that’s why it’s called luck.

The second war is fought on the western front, and it is equally a war against the weak—the women, the children, the defenseless. In Europe, people watch in amazement as every week—sometimes every day—someone in the US fulfills their divine destiny by shooting a bunch of innocents in a school, a club, a mall, or a bank. The story ends predictably—either the shooter commits suicide, or the police oblige.

There’s hardly a day, it seems, that the second amendment—the right to arm bears—is not applied to massacre the helpless. In Western Europe, it has become habitual news, along with the obligatory political scandals, social upheavals, and economic crises.

And because it is rote, as well as the fact that gun ownership is so uncommon in Europe, these atrocities are seen as some form of American disease—and almost exclusively they are committed by mentally diseased people.

This is part of the argument against gun control—it’s not guns that kill people, it’s people that kill people. “A ban on assault rifles wouldn’t solve anything, anyone familiar with firearms could reload in a couple of seconds,” an employee at a hunting and fishing store in Nashville told me. His ambition was to become a state trooper.

So, what does the second amendment of The US constitution actually say?

A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The capitalization is deliberate: Militia, State, Arms.

It seems obvious that if a militia is no longer necessary for the security of the free state—and might in fact be prejudicial— then the conditions for allowing people to keep and bear arms are no longer met. I would argue the right cannot be infringed if the need exists, ergo if the need does not exist, neither can the right.

That, of course, is not the view of the US Supreme Court.

All legislation adapts—often slowly—to new circumstances. That was the case for automobiles, digital media, and pretty much any part of life where there’s a paradigm shift. Given the human penchant for evil, the law must exist—if we didn’t rape, rob, and murder, lawyers would have a lot less business.

The second amendment was ratified by congress in 1791—the state-of-the-art in the firearms industry was flintlocks and muskets, and the delivery rate was four rounds per minute. A semi-automatic fires hundreds of RPM: an AK-47 does 700, and the AR-15, latest fashion for psychopathic mall murderers, can go to 1200.

If that is not a paradigm shift, what is?

But let’s take this ad absurdum: if a Starwars-style vaporizing weapon came on the market tomorrow—and I can assure you the military-industrial complex is working on a prototype right now—would that be covered by the second amendment?

Data from Statista on gender distribution of mass shooters; the events are defined as ‘a single attack in a public place in which four or more victims were killed.’ Since 1982, there have been 142 such events.

In the last forty years, men—more than fifty percent of whom were white—committed the vast majority of these atrocities. If we give the two male & female shootings one each, the numbers are 137 against 5. The stats are damning: over ninety-six percent of the killings were perpetrated by men, the majority of whom are white men.

Well, that’s easily explained—men are far more prone to mental illness than women.

Er… no.

Data from SAMHSA for 2021 suggests women have a higher rate for Any Mental Illness (AMI) than men. Young adults have the highest AMI rate.

So it’s the white guys, huh? Who knew.

Well, ladies, your path is clear. The population of the USA is divided by gender into 50.5% women and 49.5% men—it’s time to impose classic restrictions.

There’s an old saying that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Maybe, but it’s also through his dick.

American moms, college girls, and all others who qualify:

Banning assault weapons is simple, but the simple things are difficult.

You know what to do.

The India Road, Atmos Fear, Clear Eyes, and Folk Tales For Future Dreamers. QR links for smartphones