The climate surrounding meaningful action on America’s unique gun problem is so heated that elected representatives are staging protests right out of the Civil Rights Era playbook. David Byrne echoed that spirit by saying we shouldn’t let the roadblocks to change discourage us. In a new essay titled “Guns Are About Freedom: Our Freedom To Live” the Talking Heads frontman wants gun control advocates to know that the situation is not as hopeless as it looks.
“No matter what some of my friends seem to imply, I firmly believe we can have gun control and reduce gun violence in this country. Allow me to be optimistic. At this point, any cause for hope is worth considering,” he wrote, before laying out statistics on gun violence in the United States.
“We are at war here. Just look at those numbers. How could you conclude anything other than that we Americans are living in a war zone? More people die of violent gun related deaths in Chicago than American soldiers in Afghanistan, a sad fact that has given the Second City an unfortunate nickname—one that inspired Spike Lee’s latest film. And just days after the rampage in Orlando, a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News bought an assault weapon in 7 minutes.“
But Byrne isn’t all doom and gloom. As he said at the beginning of his piece, this is an essay about hope. So, what is his solution? Byrne thinks we need to reframe the discussion around guns into a matter of public health. He also feels that gun control advocates need to underline the fact that other Americans’ right to bear arms does not trump their right to carry on living in peace.
“I think reframing the gun issue as a public health issue — as well as an issue of our right, and our freedom, to live without a constant threat of violence — is the way to go in convincing our lawmakers, and more crucially our neighbors and our nation, to act on this issue,” he said. “The public feeling is already there: Everyone should not have the right to risk everyone else’s life and take away the freedom of others. We have countered these arguments before, from slavery to seat belts to smoking, and we can do it again. We’re better than this.”
Check out the whole essay here.
(Via Billboard)
