Leah McLaren

What I learned from arguing about gun control with my Texan uncle

Whenever there’s another mass shooting in America, like the one in Florida yesterday, I think immediately of my Uncle Bill in Texas, a retired military man, practising Catholic, Republican, NRA member, community volunteer and civil libertarian who lives in a gated community with my Aunt Bev (a retired nurse) on the outskirts of Houston. Uncle Bill likes to email me redneck jokes in the hope of getting my progressive Canadian dander up. Here’s a recent one:

The premier of Ontario is jogging with her dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out and attacks the premier’s dog, then bites the premier. She calls animal control. Animal control captures the coyote and bills the province $200 testing it for diseases and $500 for relocating it. She calls a veterinarian. The vet collects the dead dog and bills the province $200 testing it for diseases. The Liberal party spends $2 million to study how to better treat rabies… etc., etc.

Meanwhile, the governor of Texas is jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out and attacks his dog. The governor shoots it with his state-issued pistol and keeps jogging. The governor has spent 50 cents on a .45 ACP hollow-point cartridge. The buzzards eat the dead coyote.

And that, my friends, is why Ontario is broke and Texas is not.

Or it could be oil, I think.

But what about this scenario, I recently wrote back to Uncle Bill: a young mentally ill teenager is having fantasies about killing himself and his entire class. In Canada (or the UK, or anywhere in western Europe) he’d receive state-funded healthcare and get better. In America he could simply go to Walmart and buy a semi-automatic weapon and enact his fantasy. And that is why the school-children of Canada (or the UK, etc.)

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