During an interview with NBC News, the current Republican
presidential frontrunner made the claim that trying to stop mass killers was
impossible because the average killer is just too smart.
Speaking
to NBC, Trump urged America
to not bother trying to solve gun violence, because he thought it was a waste
of time:
“No matter what you do, you’re gonna have problems,” Trump told NBC News in an interview that aired Sunday. “Because you have sick people. They happen to be intelligent. And, you know, they can be sick as hell and they’re geniuses in a certain way. They are going to be able to break the system.”
Perhaps
dimly recognizing that saying a white supremacist gun fetishist who killed nine
people in Oregon with a weapons cache he had legally procured for that purpose
was a genius wasn’t exactly a winning strategy, Trump pretended that he was
just telling it like it is and not being “PC.”
“It’s a horrible thing to say,” he added. “And it’s not even politically correct. But it’s common sense. You’re going to have problems no matter how good, no matter what kind of checks you do, you know, what kind of laws.”
In
fact, we know a great deal about the kinds of people who commit mass murder,
“intelligence” isn’t a word that often comes to mind.
These are less “Lex
Luthor” criminal masterminds and more bitter loners harboring violent grudges
and quietly arming themselves with
weapons sold on nearly every street corner. We also know quite a bit about the
effects of gun control. Far from ineffectual, data trends suggest they work
extremely well.
As Slate recently graphed out, states with higher ratings of gun legislation tend to suffer less
gun violence. Go figure.
Trump’s
own solution is equal parts stupid and horrific.
Bearing in mind his belief
that mass shooters are geniuses, his plan is
to arm the rest of us dumber folks, so we can engage in a sort of neverending
firefight in the streets of America.
Us regular joes vs. the criminal
masterminds in a literal fight to the death.
“I can make the case that if there were guns in that room other than [the shooter’s], fewer people would have died. Fewer people would have been so horribly injured,” Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Despite
its popularity among dues paying NRA members, the “if only there were more
guns” argument has been shown to be off-base for several reasons.
For one
thing, in the case of Oregon, the killer was one of the “good guys with a gun”
who attended classes at the college up until the moment he decided to turn it
on his classmates. Secondly, other gun owners were on campus and very articulately explained why
it would have been a terrible idea for them to pull out their guns and start
firing away in the heat of the moment.
Watching
Trump try to think out solutions to some of the most pressing problems in
America and failing so spectacularly should be a wakeup call to his supporters
and detractors alike. If he finds himself so intellectually out-matched by
deranged killers, how does he expect to lead?
Author Jameson Parker covers US politics, social justice issues, and
other current events which aren't getting the attention they deserve. Feel free
to follow or drop me a line on twitter.
