(This started life as a twitter thread; also putting it here for easier reading)

You would think that if the gun lobby were arguing in good faith, the fact that recent mass shootings have resulted in the murder of one armed security guard and the injury of two officers in Texas, the "good man with a gun" talking point would be put to rest.

But they're not arguing in good faith. They're just willing to accept the deaths of children as the cost of doing business, and gaslight us about it.

Arming teachers to the teeth and sending our kids to school in body armor with bulletproof backpacks won't change things.

And anyway, who's gonna find the time and money to make sure that underpaid professionals with already rigorous education requirements who work 60 hour weeks are putting in their range time? Gonna make your 70-year-old civics teacher wear armor under her pink chiffon blouse?

It is a ridiculous. Monty-Python-satire level response that would not save one single life and would most probably cost more lives.

The United States is a large, rural nation with a certain amount of aggressive megafauna and endemic rabies: this is true.

But you don't need an AR-15 for a rabid raccoon or bobcat; you need a shotgun. You don't need an AR-15 to hunt moose or a habituated, aggressive bear; you need a rifle.

Maybe you don't need an AR-15.

Look, I love my hobbies too, but if fountain pens or electric guitars killed almost 20,000 Americans a year I would hand them in to a buyback program tomorrow. And unless you, a civilian, plan to shoot up a school or a grocery store or a nightclub, your AR-15 is a hobby.

It's not "protection." It's a hazard. The states with the lowest rates of gun ownership also tend to have the lowest rates of violent crime--and the lowest rates of crime overall.

I've lived in Las Vegas and I've lived in Hartford, and I can tell you where I felt safer... and it wasn't where all my neighbors shot off their guns on New Year's Eve and everybody had bars on the windows and a locking security door.

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