The Meerkat Responds: As Sure as Night Follows Day…
… we received a response to our previous post from Derrick Thomas Thiessen, aka Mr David Tee of Theology Archaeology. As usual, Mr Thiessen was hugely selective in how he quoted my words, and he naturally lacked the faith in his stance to link to my post, which also signals dishonesty through omission.
Whilst Mr Thiessen may have an aversion to evidence, I do not. Among Derrick’s more lavish claims in his post was the notion that Democrat-run states and cities fare worse for gun crime:
If you watch the news, Chicago and Illinois, among other blue states and cities, have the strictest gun control laws, yet gun violence abounds within their borders. Gun control advocates need to wake up and see that their ideology does not work.
State vs State
To refer to some material I wrote a few years ago, which remains relevant:
Let’s start from the top. Urban areas, are they safer with or without guns? Among US cities, St. Louis has more murders per 100,000 people (64.54) than any other US city. Baltimore is next on 58.64 murders per 100,000 people. In third place is San Juan, with 54.01 murders per 100,000 people. Missouri, the State in which St. Louis resides, has some of the weakest gun control laws of any US State. Maryland (where Baltimore resides) is better, and Puerto Rico (host to San Juan) is quite slack. Detroit, fourth among US cities for murders, has a rate of 40.74 murders per 100,000 people, and Michigan, the State upon which Detroit sits in, has inconsistent gun laws. All figures are based on 2019.
It’s worth noting that Missouri is very-much a red state. In 2019, it hosted the most violent US city.
What about more recent data?
According to this article, in 2023 the five most dangerous US states were Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, New Mexico and Tennessee. Of the five most violent states, all but New Mexico have consistently voted Republican at Presidental Elections. None of these five states have particularly robust gun laws.
Will the safety of these states, and their problems with violence, be entirely down to guns? Of course not, but it would be insanely naieve to pretend the five most dangerous states in the USA, with some of the weakest gun laws in the country, are somehow better for lacking such weak gun control measures, and it’s most fascinating that four of these five states are Republican. This would seem to rubbish Derrick’s claims that we can blame Democrat states for the USA’s crime figures, and what’s more, in every state except New Mexico, more than 70% of adults identify as Christians. It seems these Christian conservative Republicans are quite dangerous. Hmm, perhaps Derrick is right, perhaps the problem is spiritual? Perhaps we should be asking how Christianity inspires violence?
Tongue-in-cheek moment aside, the evidence is clear. Republican states are the most dangerous, and it’s not a coincidence that their gun regulations are so slack.
A lot of this is beside the point. What Derrick, and other determined gun defenders fail to realise is that trying to pretend gun control doesn’t work, in favour of blaming spirituality, mental health etc, overlooks the considerable success of gun control measures elsewhere in the world. Britain, France, Germany, Japan… these countries all have issues pertaining to crime, and in some cases similar issues to the USA. Indeed, I made this point in my last post, and Derrick ignored it. I suspect he will ignore it again. What these countries have done is to employ methods designed to protect people, and they work. They’ve all taken different approaches, and the net sum of those approaches is visible in the table in my previous post, which Derrick ignored.
We can expand upon this. The Czech Republic is an irreligious country. By Derrick’s standards, he might deem it a nation of godless heathens. It’s also a country with a low murder rate, and gun control measures that are more robust than the USA’s, and more consistent. Derrick might think that the Czech Republic has a spiritual problem; what they do have is a safe country, one far safer than the USA.
The False Choice
They are too limited in their thinking and think that punishing everyone solves everything. As we know, gun control does not solve gun violence. Even in South Korea, where gun owners are required to have their guns locked up in the police station, gun murders still take place.
Here, Derrick employs a logical fallacy. He argues that for gun control to be considered effective, it must be 100% effective. By that reasoning, we should do away with seatbelts. They do not 100% prevent all injuries or deaths, so why bother? This is Derrick’s attitude, and it demonstrates a complete failure of logic and reason, though I look forward to his pretzel logic in an effort to explain himself.
The effectiveness of gun control need not be perfect for it to be valid, and despite Derrick’s constant whinging that I am referring to taking guns away, it is worth noting that effective gun control can be as simple as robust background checks. There are plenty of guns in circulation in Germany, and a sizable number of guns in the Czech Republic. They have not banned guns, and nor for that matter are they banned in the UK. There are strict rules around the types of firearms that are available, and a rigid process to ensure owners are responsible and competent, but if I wanted a gun here, I could have one.
So, Derrick’s false choices are two-fold. He dishonestly suggests that we must choose between 100% or zero. He misleads his readers with the idea that I advocate for gun bans. You do not need to ban guns to have gun control, and gun control does not need to be perfect for it to be considered effective. If a uniform, consistent approach to gun laws reduced gun crime by a third, would that not be worthwhile? Apparently in Derrick’s eyes this wouldn’t be worth it, though I await his clarification.
The Weapon vs the Tool
Yes, guns are designed as a weapon that can take a life, but guns are only deadly in the wrong hands. No matter how often sane minds remind gun control enthusiasts that guns are the tool, the latter continue to refuse to listen, as they want to force their way on those who disagree with them.
Guns are deadly, full-stop. It is ignorant to pretend otherwise, and Derrick’s whinge that pointing out the obvious is somehow forcing my way is as ignorant as it is ironic as it is stupid. They kill, it is what they are designed for, so pretending they only kill in the wrong hands is plain ridiculous. What does Derrick think guns are in the hands of police or the military? Shovels? Wrenches? No, they are weapons, not tools, and they kill.
This is such a tired argument, yet one that people cling to dogmatically. ‘Guns don’t kill people! Guns are merely tools!’ Well, they are the only ‘tool’ designed specifically to take life, and they are exceptionally efficient at this function. There is a reason guns are involved in the vast majority of mass killings. It is very hard to accomplish the same dire outcome with a hammer. People may kill people, but give them something built to kill, and they will find it a lot easier to kill more people. Put in place virtually no restrictions to purchasing these deadly weapons, and then bury your head in the sand as to what’s going on, and nothing will change. Pretend the problem is somehow spiritual, and nothing will change.
In the end, the facts speak for themselves. Derrick Thomas Thiessen may have a deep aversion to evidence and facts, but they won’t change to suit his whining. Guns are designed to kill, they are exceeding effective at this, and there is a reason that the nation with more guns than people also has the worst gun murder rate of any first-world country.
If Derrick is serious about a serious discussion around gun violence and gun control, then he has the option (and I must stress the word option, lest he spin this into his usual unreasonable claim that I am demanding things from him) to look at the following questions:
- What makes Japan the safest country on earth?
- Why is the UK substantially safer than the USA?
- Why is Canada a lot safer than the USA?
Let us see if he responds, and if he can respond using evidence.
After reading your post, I said to myself, “Thiessen will respond to this one.” And sure enough he did, once again revealing he doesn’t know sh*t about firearms, gun laws, and the direct correlation between gun availability and gun violence. You don’t have to be a genius to see the connection between the two. A first year statistics student can easily see that the connection between the number of guns owned by citizens and gun violence. Technically, it is actually bullets that cause gun violence, but I’m sure you understand what I mean. It’s beyond me to know how to reach people such as Thiessen. I’ve met many a Thiessen, and no amount of facts will convince them that they are wrong on a matter — even when the evidence is overwhelming (and, like you, I have been up and down those gun violence statistics and the difference between the US, and other countries).
Seems simple to me: no guns, no gun violence; lots of guns (and uber weak gun laws), lots of gun violence.
Unfortunately, we know Derrick is not inclined to address facts, or logic, or reason, preferring to frame the gun issue as something else entirely. I await his response to the small matter of conservative, Christian-majority red states being among the most violent, but I suspect he will indulge in his usual pretzel logic to avoid confronting reality.
I spent years arguing with a MGTOW on this topic. He too never, ever accepted facts. He sometimes seemed vaguely amiable to reason, but he would always fall back on ‘freedom!’, as though guns are the only reason anyone is free. Thiessen dropped a similar hint with his misleading Islamification jibe about Britain. I have all the same freedoms as you, and my daughter doesn’t risk her life going to school, my wife doesn’t risk her life to go to a shopping centre. I know which set of gun laws I prefer, for I know where I am significantly safer.