A school shooting shook the United States this week, after a young adult killed 19 students and two teachers in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas on 24 May 2022 before getting killed by security forces. The country has an epidemic of mass shootings, with hundreds of incidents occurring every year; 10 days ago was another mass shooting, in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York; 10 blacks were killed. Lawmakers of rival parties fight against each other on solving this crisis-- Democrats campaign for tighter gun control measures, while many Republicans raise one certain argument: the Second Amendment to the American Constitution, which is the "right to bear arms".
This issue gave more reasons for critics of the American nation to remain in their stance. Generally, they do not buy the idea of gun rights because of the resulting gun crisis, seeing the country has a frenzy over guns and the victims of mass shootings are also American citizens. They find a reason to laugh at USA. But this belief of theirs disturbs me:
The United States is also dealing with a mountain of foreign policy issues; among which concern what it sees as adversaries-- the likes of the Iranian mullahs, DPR Korea, and the Lebanese Shi'a militant group Hezbollah. The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is designated by the USA as a terror group, and America vehemently opposes the WMDs programme of DPRK (thus it imposes sanctions against the rogue state). These same critics of America denounce its condemnation of such groups and actions; if Iran gets sanctioned, they cry "Iran has the right to defend itself"; if DPRK gets sanctioned, they cry "DPRK has the right to defend itself". So they are implying that, if Iran plans to arm itself with nuclear weapons, the clerical regime has the right to bear [nuclear] arms, and so has DPRK.
The spirit of gun control advocacy is to drastically reduce casualties and violence caused by firearms. And it is the same with that of mitigating the arming of oneself with weapons of mass destruction; anti-WMD activists adhere to the same principle. If America's critics would welcome gun control measures in the country, why should they insist on allowing regimes like in Iran and northern Korea to get nukes? Their defence of these systems and their disdain for the USA is based on mere hatred and clouded judgement.
As I have written before, they are one-sided and actually do not oppose the very acts of imperialism and crimes against humanity, because for them, only the West errs, and its enemies never. They are really not into peace nor justice; they just want the West gone and that's all.
If one really abhors the pervasive gun culture in the United States, the person would and should not call for equipment of any nation with WMDs. We should be working towards a more peaceful future, not act as hindrance thereto.
Article posted on 28 May 2022, 18:17 (UTC +08:00).
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