Vince Vaughn
Happy Place
Vince Vaughn wants you to exercise your right as an American to own and operate firearms. He told British GQ, "Banning guns is like banning forks in an attempt to stop making people fat. Taking away guns, taking away drugs, the booze, it won't rid the world of criminality." The star of the upcoming season of True Detective might be right. Punishing the many for the misdeeds of a few is not how to do things in America. Except taxpayers bailing out the banks after the banks robbed homeowners, but that's a different government overreach discussion.
Vaughn continues, however, extrapolating that America's reluctance to be armed and ready is what allows mass gun violence to escalate in the first place:
“Take mass shootings. They've only happened in places that don't allow guns. These people are sick in the head and are going to kill innocent people. They are looking to slaughter defenseless human beings... In all of our schools it is illegal to have guns on campus, so again and again these guys go and shoot up these ... schools because they know there are no guns there. They are monsters killing six-year-olds."Vaughn, however, seems to forget that keeping guns out of places like elementary schools is for practical safety and emotional safety. Forget the fact that having a loaded weapon in a place of learning is completely unnecessary (unless the place of learning is a gun range. Then some guns will be helpful.) Imagine the atmosphere loaded firearms create for children who are trying to learn the building blocks of life.
"shoot up these ... schools because they know there are no guns there"
If this guy had half a brain, or if he'd had the opportunity to read some of our many discussions on this subject, he would never have made such a ridiculous remark as that. Mass shooters do not go to schools BECAUSE there are no guns there. As the genius actor himself said, these are "sick in the head" people. They act, at least in most cases, out of explosions of rage and frustration and do not consider the gun status of the place.
I hate to even humor this tired and foolish argument, but if gun free zones were really to blame for mass shootings and not the incredible proliferation of guns, why is this a particularly American phenomenon? English and Australian schools are generally gun free zones too, aren't they? Where are all their mass shootings?