Among the river of stupid that came out of GOP mouths this weekend was the popular suggestion that an armed Parisian populace would’ve saved lives. For example, there was Donald Trump:
“Had there been some guys with a gun, there would have been a shootout and probably the primary people that would have got whacked would have been the killers," Trump said on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "You can’t get any tougher than Paris, and you can’t get any tougher than France” on gun control, he continued. “They just said, come here, boom, come here, boom…shot these people at will."
So just a day before Paris, ISIS-aligned terrorists killed at least 43 people in Beirut, Lebanon, a country that is swimming in weaponry.
“In Lebanon, if you buy 1 million guns, you sell 1 million guns. There is no security, and people want to be able to defend themselves,” he told NOW. “All parties, Christian or Muslim, have weapons now. They are all buying again,” he said.
ISIS has staged major attacks in places like Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yemen—all countries awash in private gun ownership. How many of those attacks were thwarted by gun carriers? Not a trick question.
I mean, this is what wedding parties look like in places like Saudi Arabia:
Yemen is the second most heavily-armed country in the world (after the United States):
"In Yemen, no matter if you're rich or poor, you must have guns. Even if it's just one piece," insists Abdul Wahab al-Ammari, a tribal sheikh from Yemen's Ibb province who resides in Sana'a, citing self-protection as the primary driver of gun ownership. "I have maybe 14 high powered weapons, and 3 handguns [at home]."
And as we all know, Somalia is a libertarian paradise.
So if those countries, awash in weaponry, couldn’t stop those terrorist attacks, then what kind of moron thinks that it would’ve made a difference in Paris?
The reality is that Paris-style attacks are surprisingly simple to carry out. It’s a blessing that they’re not more common in the West. So rather than try to create an oppressive surveillance state or pretend that more guns are a solution to anything except a lack of death and mayhem, perhaps we could focus on addressing root causes?
And maybe, just maybe, we can even try not being the root cause in the future? Crazy shit, I know.