Victim Shaming Dead Kids on a Bumper Sticker? Really?

Encountering a bumper sticker can sometimes lead to more than a fleeting moment of annoyance—it can spur a deep dive into the implications of its message, as it did for me, Jesse White. When faced with the simplistic dichotomy of "gun owner or victim," I couldn't help but respond with a full-blown critique of the narrative that suggests a lack of firearm equates to choosing victimhood. This episode peels back the layers of this topic, examining the oversimplified political slogans that cloud the gun control debate and the stark realities of gun violence in Pennsylvania, especially as they affect our youth.

As we traverse the controversial terrain of the Second Amendment, I share my vexations with the widespread misinterpretations and the "shall not be infringed" versus "well-regulated militia" debate that's often swallowed by catchy, yet misleading, political soundbites. But it's not all about airing frustrations; I shift gears to emphasize the power of constructive community engagement, using the personal example of being a mystery reader for my son. This approach serves as a beacon, illuminating the path toward informed discourse and meaningful action in the ongoing national conversation about gun rights and regulation.

Learn more about the Keystone Reckoning Project at www.keystonereckoning.com

Chapters

• 0:30 Gun Ownership and Victim Blaming
• 13:15 Second Amendment Misinterpretation Frustrations

Transcript

Jesse White: 0:30

Sometimes a bumper sticker tells you all you need to know, and I don't mean that in a good way. You were listening to the Keystone Reckoning Podcast. I'm your host, jesse White. It is Wednesday, march 20th 2024, and I am not a happy camper. So I had a great show planned for today. I had actually done some research, had some notes and had some fun political things we could talk about in relation to the upcoming election. Then I made the mistake of being proactive. I decided to get up early this morning because I had a busy day. I thought I'm going to go get my workout done early, so I went to the gym right after the kids got on the bus at around 7. And I had a great workout, was feeling really good about the day. I was about 30 seconds from my house. There's a stoplight there and in front of me at the light was a beat-up Chevy Suburban and it had a bumper sticker on it. And before I say what the sticker said, I've always maintained to my political clients and other candidates that one of the things Republicans are really good at is messaging in terms of what I call bumper sticker messaging taking complex ideas, boiling them down to something that will fit on a bumper sticker.

Jesse White: 1:45

Part of that, quite frankly, is because the people that are receiving that messaging are inclined to go for the more simplistic version, which I guess wasn't intended to be a dig, but I guess it kind of is. And the other reason is that Democrats, we just can't get out of our own way. Sometimes we go out of our way to use 30 words when six words may suffice. Ask a Democratic candidate about their position on an issue and see how often you'd be able to fit the answer on a bumper sticker. The answer is not very often. Not to say that we should be simplistic in our messaging, but every now and again you need to boil it down to something that is easy to understand and can be conveyed in just a few words, especially with voters having such short attention spans.

Jesse White: 2:34

Having said all that, the sticker on the car in front of me said I choose. And then there were two lines with check boxes and one said a gun owner and the other one said a victim. You want to guess which one was checked off? That's right. I choose to be a gun owner and not a victim. It took everything I had not to just hit the gas and plow into this guy's car from behind because, like honestly, what the hell? What kind of message is that sending? Oh, I know exactly what kind of message it's sending. It is saying that if you do not choose to be a gun owner and worship the second amendment argument that many gun owners put out there politically, then you are choosing to be a victim.

Jesse White: 3:23

Now let's just take for a minute the fact that it is, by definition, victim-shaming or victim-blaming. I don't think anybody that's willing to put a sticker on their car gives a damn about any of that. These guys and I'm saying guys, I don't know if it was a man or a woman driving the car, but I'm just going to say these guys, as kind of the royal we, these guys are, it's funny. They are the first to make themselves out to be the victims of everything, but any actual victims of something like gun violence or somehow snowflakes, and how dare they? And somehow their fault, right? So that's what you're dealing with right off the bat. But the fact that it's gun violence is the thing that makes this just so absolutely insane. And that's the word I'm using because I'm trying desperately not to swear, which is more than I can say, for when I was in my car this morning.

Jesse White: 4:19

So, and one of the main reasons that the idea that if you choose not to be a gun owner, that you are choosing to be a victim, is actually a legal impossibility. Because and I'm looking, I was. So I went and looked at some statistics and this is just Pennsylvania, right? So we're going to focus just on PA. In an average year, 1,713 people die and 1,992 are wounded by guns in Pennsylvania. In PA, the rate of gun deaths increased 32% from 2012 to 2021. The rate of gun suicide increased 20% and gun homicides increased 56% over that period of time. So we know that. You know, obviously, gun violence real problem. That's not being denied by anybody. But well, I take that back. It's not being denied by anybody that doesn't have that moronic bumper sticker on their car, but anybody that looks at the numbers, we see that this is a real problem, obviously.

Jesse White: 5:17

So as to why the argument that that guy's bumper sticker made was so ridiculous and so offensive is that his logic is fundamentally flawed. Forget his politics, forget his reasoning. His logic is fundamentally flawed because of the people that can own guns versus the people that are impacted and victims of gun violence. They're not the same number. Because children, teenagers and children are huge victims of gun violence in Pennsylvania. Well, guess what? By legal definition, they may not own a firearm. They're legally prohibited from owning a firearm. So they can't be either of the two boxes and you're in that guy's logic. They are, by definition, victims. They have to be because there's nothing they can do to prevent this violence.

Jesse White: 6:10

Good guy with a gun doesn't work here, because you never hear good kid with a gun. Because kids shouldn't have guns for all the reasons. And I'm not talking about children that learn how to hunt and shoot responsibly, and there are programs out there that do that. That's not what we're talking about here. Right, let's just get that right out of the way. To anybody that says, oh well, why can't? Kids should learn how to shoot, I'm not saying it's not a valid skill, but that's not what we're talking about here. So you have kids that cannot, by definition, have guns to quote, defend themselves. Not that you would ever want that in 10 million years.

Jesse White: 6:41

The other thing is that these kids, one of the big statistics is suicide. So let me give you the numbers. First, guns are the leading cause of death among children and teenagers in Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, an average of 142 children and teens die by gun every year, of which 27% of those deaths are suicide. 70% are homicides. So 27% of those teen deaths are suicides. Let's focus on that number for a minute. So you're looking at about 50, give or take. An average of 50 kids a year die by shooting suicide in Pennsylvania. Now think about that for a minute. Where did they get the damn gun? Because to hear guys like the guy with the sticker every gun owner is super responsible and no one would ever be irresponsible and leave their gun lying around. Now, to be fair, the overwhelming majority of gun owners are responsible gun owners, right, let's.

Jesse White: 7:44

I wanna be very clear, to not paint everybody with a broad brush, and I know a lot of this because in my previous life as a legislator I represented an area in Southwestern Pennsylvania, washington County, mainly very pro-gun and very per second amendment, and I was actually a big second amendment proponent during my time in the house. I served in the House Judiciary Committee. I worked with groups like the NRA and worked on pro-gun legislation. Now I will say that that's not where I am today. I wouldn't be making those same votes and same decisions today, for a couple of reasons.

Jesse White: 8:26

One, the definition of being pro-second amendment, like so many things in our politics, has gone so far radically to the right that back in the day you could talk about things like background checks and things like that and it didn't. They weren't non-starters with those folks politically. Now of course they are. So the tone and tenor and the content that we could talk about on the issue were far different back then. That's a big piece of it. The other piece is this was really before school shootings became a daily occurrence, right, and the numbers also bear out the increase, the sharp increase in gun violence, especially with children and teenagers being the victims. You know those numbers were much lower back then. Doesn't make it okay, I'm not trying to explain that away, but it was different. Third, and I'll be perfectly honest, this is maybe the most definitive factor for me I wasn't a parent back then, right, those are my late 20s, early 30s. I have two kids now.

Jesse White: 9:27

I'm actually sitting outside my kids' school recording this because I'm going to be a mystery reader for my second grader here in a little while. So I had some time figured I'd sit and record the podcast. So if the quality is not great, I apologize, I'm doing it on my phone, but the point being I didn't see things the same way. I evolved, which I think is not necessarily. It's not a license of virtue.

Jesse White: 9:51

So, anyway, all of those things to say that not all gun owners are irresponsible gun owners, but some of them are. And do you know how? I know Is that an average of 50 kids a year managed to get their hands on a gun and commit suicide, not to mention the stories you hear about kids bringing guns to school and things like that. So we can't operate from this place of absolutes where, oh, all gun owners are absolutely have their locks and safes with gun locks on them and it's impossible for a child to get a hold of it. Obviously it is possible.

Jesse White: 10:24

And given if you heard the podcast yesterday, we talked about the negative impacts of social media on children in terms of mental health and things like that, you've got higher access to guns plus increased depression, anxiety and mental health concerns among young people. That is a recipe for disaster, as evidenced by the fact that we have an increasing number of teens committing suicide by gun every single year, and maybe those kids would commit suicide some other way. But, boy, if you pull it. Once you pull that trigger, it's a pretty definitive end, right At that point there aren't many suicide attempts by gun that allow for a second chance, and that's just the grim reality of it, right. So there's that part of it.

Jesse White: 11:13

The other thing is is that? I mean, the fact that we have to come at this with fact configured is almost asinine, right, it really goes to show where we're at with this debate in this country, because gun violence, mass violence, mass shootings have just become normalized, right, we have so many that there's like a threshold now before it even becomes news. We have become dulled to the reality of how horrific that is, and no matter every time there is a mass shooting, you know, for a while we were like oh, this is the one that's going to make everybody pay attention, this is the one that's going to bring about change, and it never happens to the point where we have become an international punchline about how it doesn't happen. So the problem is real and, unfortunately, the obstacle to any sort of progress and there is low hanging fruit. There are things we know can work, right, I don't even need to go through them all, but you know, universal background checks being one. They're the ton of them. We all know what they are. They will not infringe any law, abiding gun owners right to own a gun. They just won't. They can't argue otherwise.

Jesse White: 12:24

But the problem is so the main block to any sort of progress is politicians. You know, almost exclusively Republican right-wingers who are just pandering to their base, which is the guy with the bumper sticker right, like that too. That is all really back to that guy. So, yes, members of Congress and the state legislatures lack the political courage to do what's right, and I'm not letting them off the hook, but this is the MAGA overly simplistic. You know.

Jesse White: 12:54

His political knowledge doesn't begin with the bumper sticker, it ends with the bumper sticker Like. That is it. It is binary. They are absolutists. What is the stuff that really makes this impossible to get anything done on? Because to them they don't see it. They have it in their mind that they know what the Second Amendment means and they know what it means to them and that's the end of it.

Jesse White: 13:16

But if you get into an argument or debate with any of these people, you know you ask them what the Second Amendment says. All they're going to come back with is shall not be infringed. They can really leave out the well regulated militia part, which is kind of a big deal, and we're not going to get into the semantics of it. But it's not as black and white as they would like to think. It is Just like the thing. The statement on the back of the guy's truck is not as black and white as he would like to make it out to be.

Jesse White: 13:45

And as somebody who does try to read behind the bumper sticker, read beyond the bumper sticker and actually think it offends me, it upsets me, it infuriates me that this is where we're at in this country on this issue, that this jag off could drive around with a sticker like that and not only feel no shame, feels pride in being so willfully ignorant. And if that doesn't tell you what we're up against in this fight, then I don't know what will. Thank you for listening. I'm going to be a mystery reader for my son now, because that's a better use of my time than ranting about this idiot. This has been the Keystone Reckoning Podcast. I'm Jesse White. Do it again tomorrow.