Saturday, June 18, 2016

Does "domestic gun violence" cause "domestic gun violence?"

When nonsense becomes the party line | Power Line
Surfing past Fox News this morning, I heard someone report on a poll about what caused the massacre in Orlando. Apparently, most Republicans believe it was caused by Islamic extremism, whereas most Democrats believe it was caused by “domestic gun violence.”

But the massacre was domestic gun violence. Democrats might just as well say that murder caused of murders.
I dunno. It occurs to me that it might be more like saying that the flu virus causes the flu. In such case, I guess, you could say "the flu causes the flu" and people would laugh at you, but you wouldn't be wrong.

We have a culture unique in its access to and (I'd say) worship of guns, a founding that depends on righteous violence to achieve, and a political culture that to a large degree believes might makes right. And we have an awful lot of gun violence that, in some cases, leads to copycat gun violence. I'm not so sure that domestic gun violence isn't the cause of domestic gun violence.

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