Victim Shaming Dead Kids on a Bumper Sticker? Really?

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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.

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Episode Transcript

Jesse White (00:01):
Sometimes a bumper sticker tells you all you need
to know, and I don't mean thatin a good way.
You were listening to theKeystone Reckoning Podcast.
I'm your host, jesse White.
It is Wednesday, march 20th2024, and I am not a happy
camper.
So I had a great show plannedfor today.
I had actually done someresearch, had some notes and had
some fun political things wecould talk about in relation to

(00:22):
the upcoming election.
Then I made the mistake ofbeing proactive.
I decided to get up early thismorning because I had a busy day
.
I thought I'm going to go getmy workout done early, so I went
to the gym right after the kidsgot on the bus at around 7.
And I had a great workout, wasfeeling really good about the

(00:42):
day.
I was about 30 seconds from myhouse.
There's a stoplight there andin front of me at the light was
a beat-up Chevy Suburban and ithad a bumper sticker on it.
And before I say what thesticker said, I've always
maintained to my politicalclients and other candidates

(01:03):
that one of the thingsRepublicans are really good at
is messaging in terms of what Icall bumper sticker messaging
taking complex ideas, boilingthem down to something that will
fit on a bumper sticker.
Part of that, quite frankly, isbecause the people that are
receiving that messaging areinclined to go for the more

(01:24):
simplistic version, which Iguess wasn't intended to be a
dig, but I guess it kind of is.
And the other reason is thatDemocrats, we just can't get out
of our own way.
Sometimes we go out of our wayto use 30 words when six words
may suffice.
Ask a Democratic candidateabout their position on an issue

(01:45):
and see how often you'd be ableto fit the answer on a bumper
sticker.
The answer is not very often.
Not to say that we should besimplistic in our messaging, but
every now and again you need toboil it down to something that
is easy to understand and can beconveyed in just a few words,
especially with voters havingsuch short attention spans.

(02:05):
Having said all that, thesticker on the car in front of
me said I choose.
And then there were two lineswith check boxes and one said a
gun owner and the other one saida victim.
You want to guess which one waschecked off?
That's right.
I choose to be a gun owner andnot a victim.

(02:28):
It took everything I had not tojust hit the gas and plow into
this guy's car from behindbecause, like honestly, what the
hell?
What kind of message is thatsending?
Oh, I know exactly what kind ofmessage it's sending.
It is saying that if you do notchoose to be a gun owner and
worship the second amendmentargument that many gun owners

(02:50):
put out there politically, thenyou are choosing to be a victim.
Now let's just take for a minutethe fact that it is, by
definition, victim-shaming orvictim-blaming.
I don't think anybody that'swilling to put a sticker on
their car gives a damn about anyof that.
These guys and I'm saying guys,I don't know if it was a man or
a woman driving the car, butI'm just going to say these guys

(03:11):
, as kind of the royal we, theseguys are, it's funny.
They are the first to makethemselves out to be the victims
of everything, but any actualvictims of something like gun
violence or somehow snowflakes,and how dare they?
And somehow their fault, right?

(03:31):
So that's what you're dealingwith right off the bat.
But the fact that it's gunviolence is the thing that makes
this just so absolutely insane.
And that's the word I'm usingbecause I'm trying desperately
not to swear, which is more thanI can say, for when I was in my
car this morning.
So, and one of the main reasonsthat the idea that if you choose

(03:54):
not to be a gun owner, that youare choosing to be a victim, is
actually a legal impossibility.
Because and I'm looking, I was.
So I went and looked at somestatistics and this is just
Pennsylvania, right?
So we're going to focus just onPA.
In an average year, 1,713people die and 1,992 are wounded

(04:16):
by guns in Pennsylvania.
In PA, the rate of gun deathsincreased 32% from 2012 to 2021.
The rate of gun suicideincreased 20% and gun homicides
increased 56% over that periodof time.
So we know that.
You know, obviously, gunviolence real problem.
That's not being denied byanybody.

(04:37):
But well, I take that back.
It's not being denied byanybody that doesn't have that
moronic bumper sticker on theircar, but anybody that looks at
the numbers, we see that this isa real problem, obviously.
So as to why the argument thatthat guy's bumper sticker made
was so ridiculous and sooffensive is that his logic is

(04:58):
fundamentally flawed.
Forget his politics, forget hisreasoning.
His logic is fundamentallyflawed because of the people
that can own guns versus thepeople that are impacted and
victims of gun violence.
They're not the same number.
Because children, teenagers andchildren are huge victims of

(05:19):
gun violence in Pennsylvania.
Well, guess what?
By legal definition, they maynot own a firearm.
They're legally prohibited fromowning a firearm.
So they can't be either of thetwo boxes and you're in that
guy's logic.
They are, by definition,victims.
They have to be because there'snothing they can do to prevent

(05:39):
this violence.
Good guy with a gun doesn't workhere, because you never hear
good kid with a gun.
Because kids shouldn't haveguns for all the reasons.
And I'm not talking aboutchildren that learn how to hunt
and shoot responsibly, and thereare programs out there that do
that.
That's not what we're talkingabout here.
Right, let's just get thatright 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

(06:01):
skill, but that's not whatwe're talking about here.
So you have kids that cannot,by definition, have guns to
quote, defend themselves.
Not that you would ever wantthat in 10 million years.
The other thing is that thesekids, one of the big statistics
is suicide.
So let me give you the numbers.
First, guns are the leadingcause of death among children

(06:23):
and teenagers in Pennsylvania.
In Pennsylvania, an average of142 children and teens die by
gun every year, of which 27% ofthose deaths are suicide.
70% are homicides.
So 27% of those teen deaths aresuicides.
Let's focus on that number fora minute.
So you're looking at about 50,give or take.

(06:47):
An average of 50 kids a yeardie by shooting suicide in
Pennsylvania.
Now think about that for aminute.
Where did they get the damn gun?
Because to hear guys like theguy with the sticker every gun
owner is super responsible andno one would ever be
irresponsible and leave theirgun lying around.
Now, to be fair, theoverwhelming majority of gun

(07:10):
owners are responsible gunowners, right, let's.
I wanna be very clear, to notpaint everybody with a broad
brush, and I know a lot of thisbecause in my previous life as a
legislator I represented anarea in Southwestern
Pennsylvania, washington County,mainly very pro-gun and very

(07:31):
per second amendment, and I wasactually a big second amendment
proponent during my time in thehouse.
I served in the House JudiciaryCommittee.
I worked with groups like theNRA and worked on pro-gun
legislation.
Now I will say that that's notwhere I am today.

(07:52):
I wouldn't be making those samevotes and same decisions today,
for a couple of reasons.
One, the definition of beingpro-second amendment, like so
many things in our politics, hasgone so far radically to the
right that back in the day youcould talk about things like
background checks and thingslike that and it didn't.
They weren't non-starters withthose folks politically.

(08:14):
Now of course they are.
So the tone and tenor and thecontent that we could talk about
on the issue were far differentback then.
That's a big piece of it.
The other piece is this wasreally before school shootings
became a daily occurrence, right, and the numbers also bear out
the increase, the sharp increasein gun violence, especially

(08:37):
with children and teenagersbeing the victims.
You know those numbers weremuch lower back then.
Doesn't make it okay, I'm nottrying to explain that away, but
it was different.
Third, and I'll be perfectlyhonest, this is maybe the most
definitive factor for me Iwasn't a parent back then, right
, those are my late 20s, early30s.
I have two kids now.

(08:58):
I'm actually sitting outside mykids' school recording this
because I'm going to be amystery reader for my second
grader here in a little while.
So I had some time figured I'dsit and record the podcast.
So if the quality is not great,I apologize, I'm doing it on my
phone, but the point being Ididn't see things the same way.
I evolved, which I think is notnecessarily.

(09:20):
It's not a license of virtue.
So, anyway, all of those thingsto 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 50kids a year managed to get
their hands on a gun and commitsuicide, not to mention the
stories you hear about kidsbringing guns to school and
things like that.

(09:40):
So we can't operate from thisplace of absolutes where, oh,
all gun owners are absolutelyhave their locks and safes with
gun locks on them and it'simpossible for a child to get a
hold of it.
Obviously it is possible.
And given if you heard thepodcast yesterday, we talked
about the negative impacts ofsocial media on children in

(10:02):
terms of mental health andthings like that, you've got
higher access to guns plusincreased depression, anxiety
and mental health concerns amongyoung people.
That is a recipe for disaster,as evidenced by the fact that we
have an increasing number ofteens committing suicide by gun
every single year, and maybethose kids would commit suicide

(10:24):
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'tmany 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.

(10:44):
The other thing is is that?
I mean, the fact that we haveto come at this with fact
configured is almost asinine,right, it really goes to show
where we're at with this debatein this country, because gun
violence, mass violence, massshootings have just become
normalized, right, we have somany that there's like a

(11:05):
threshold now before it evenbecomes news.
We have become dulled to thereality of how horrific that is,
and no matter every time thereis 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 neverhappens to the point where we
have become an internationalpunchline about how it doesn't

(11:28):
happen.
So the problem is real and,unfortunately, the obstacle to
any sort of progress and thereis low hanging fruit.
There are things we know canwork, right, I don't even need
to go through them all, but youknow, 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

(11:52):
a gun.
They just won't.
They can't argue otherwise.
But the problem is so the mainblock to any sort of progress is
politicians.
You know, almost exclusivelyRepublican 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 thatguy.
So, yes, members of Congressand the state legislatures lack

(12:14):
the political courage to dowhat's right, and I'm not
letting them off the hook, butthis is the MAGA overly
simplistic.
You know.
His political knowledge doesn'tbegin with the bumper sticker,
it ends with the bumper stickerLike.
That is it.
It is binary.
They are absolutists.
What is the stuff that reallymakes this impossible to get

(12:36):
anything done on?
Because to them they don't seeit.
They have it in their mind thatthey know what the Second
Amendment means and they knowwhat it means to them and that's
the end of it.
But if you get into an argumentor debate with any of these
people, you know you ask themwhat the Second Amendment says.
All they're going to come backwith is shall not be infringed.
They can really leave out thewell regulated militia part,

(12:59):
which is kind of a big deal, andwe're not going to get into the
semantics of it.
But it's not as black and whiteas they would like to think.
It is Just like the thing.
The statement on the back ofthe guy's truck is not as black
and white as he would like tomake it out to be.
And as somebody who does try toread behind the bumper sticker,
read beyond the bumper stickerand actually think it offends me

(13:22):
, it upsets me, it infuriates methat this is where we're at in
this country on this issue, thatthis jag off could drive around
with a sticker like that andnot only feel no shame, feels
pride in being so willfullyignorant.
And if that doesn't tell youwhat we're up against in this

(13:44):
fight, then I don't know whatwill.
Thank you for listening.
I'm going to be a mysteryreader for my son now, because
that's a better use of my timethan ranting about this idiot.
This has been the KeystoneReckoning Podcast.
I'm Jesse White.
Do it again tomorrow.