The Rembis Report and Other Fascinating Topics - Volume XCVI

I do not live a high risk lifestyle. Of all the things that can kill me I bet that it will probably be raw cookie dough. They tell you not to eat raw cookie dough, but when I make cookies, this is what happens. This is why I always make extra dough. So I can eat it. Before it is baked into a cookie. Which you are not supposed to do.

But, I am human.

The list of things that can do me in is long, too long to list, but cookie dough is made of eggs. It would only take one bad egg to hit my gut the wrong way and give me botulism or something. Or maybe the butter will be spoiled and have traces of some other bacteria. Or the flour could have tiny mites that somehow make it from my small intestine to my brain. I don’t know. I’m no doctor. Somebody could spike the sugar with anthrax. Who knows?

No matter what, the odds of dying by stupidity are high. Not necessarily my own stupidity, but somebody else’s. All I have to do is be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It could happen to any of us.

There have been more shootings than ever before in all of human history these days. At least it seems that way. A lot of people who get shot at are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They didn’t do anything to get shot at. It was somebody else’s stupidity that made it happen.

Notice that I say “shot at,” not necessarily hit, because sometimes shooters miss. I was shot at when I lived in Detroit. As a teenager I routinely cut through alleys (because that was just something I did) a lot. One day I heard a shot and the wooden wall of the garage next to where I was walking blew apart. There was a bullet hole. It took a second to register. “Is that a bullet hole?” I wondered. I stared at it. Then the wood popped again and another hole appeared. I ran like hell. I did not hear any more pops and I never knew who shot at me, or if it was just to scare me, or if they just missed. But whoever shot at me was being stupid.

And that is exactly what happened when these people with guns shot at people at their doorsteps and driveways.

They were being stupid. Are they bad people? Probably not. Just stupid. Or to be clear, what they did was stupid.

A lot more people than you think get shot every day. Take a look at what happened in the last 72 hours alone. The Gun Violence Archive takes you to a page where shootings are expeditiously catalogued in as real time as they can get. Here is the latest interactive map of where shootings took place over the past three days.

How do you determine that stupidity is to blame, Mike?

While there are a lot of opinions about why there are so many guns out there and tons of statistics pointing at ways to shape policy and explain what people are thinking when they buy a gun, there is one simple fact that many people overlook. You can not reason with a stupid person with a gun.

You can’t ask them to be reasonable. The best solution possible is to call the police and hope for the best. Maybe they end up getting shot by the cops, but then, they would have only their own stupidity to blame.

Then, there is another important factor; the origin of the gun. I don’t mean the manufacturer, I mean the person who put the gun into the hand of the person who did not have the expertise to handle the gun. While there are background checks, waiting periods, weapons permits, and extensive training available, many who feel the need to have a gun forego these steps.

Some people who sell guns are too stupid to be selling them. But they do because they can. Even if they are unlicensed, that will not stop a dealer who feels that they have a right to sell guns, consequences be damned. They can freely exchange weaponry for money in private. In the USA, anybody who wants a weapon can get one. Not everyone who supplies them cares what happens with that weapon. It is just business.

So, you can examine the statistics and argue all you want, but you can’t fix stupid.

As long as there are guns people are going to keep using them whether they have been properly trained to handle firearms, and are mentally prepared to behave rationally, or not.

I recall a poignant scene in the film Lord Of War where an arms dealer, played by Nicholas Cage, gives an impassioned answer about why he sells guns. “Because people have the right to defend themself!”

So true. This is why we won’t be getting rid of guns any time soon. They are America’s cookie dough. Harmless enough until they wind up in the wrong hands in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Thanks for reading.

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