Double standards

I was just reading some Facebook chatter about someone slapping Beyonce's bottom. Almost everyone in the discussion blamed Beyonce for not dressing appropriately, that it was giving the wrong message to kids, etc. Only as an afterthought did someone, say, "Oh yes, and it goes without saying that, no matter what she was wearing the man shouldn't have touched her."

I chose to stay out of that discussion, because I knew what I had to say would be inflammatory, considering the political views of the participants. While most of them were male, all of them were white and Republican. (I would have said conservative, but conservative means preferring the status quo, and not tinkering with a system that works, or almost works. Republicans want to go back to a system that never worked - we are talking about free-reign capitalism of the early 20th century. They say Reagan, but they are so far to the right of Reagan, that he would be considered a liberal now.)

Anyway, Beyonce, if you are dressing in those skimpy dresses and showing so much skin, you deserve
getting spanked.

Hold on!

These people are the same ones that say, guns don't kill, people do.

Okay, let's couch that in the terms of this topic:

Skimpy dresses don't spank, people do.

Can you see the parallel logic? You are saying above that if you take away the skimpy dresses, men will stop spanking women's bottoms. But take away guns, and people will continue to kill others.

You could say that if you take away skimpy dresses, you might reduce groping. These "conservatives", however, refuse to believe that taking away guns will reduce gun violence. Instead, they cling to an out-dated second amendment.

They say that they should be allowed carry weapons equal to those of the government, so they can protect themselves from said government. In that case someone should be demanding that it should be legal to possess nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction.

We are told from our school days that the best antidote to bad government is the ballot box, yet we cling to weapons that are often misused for evil purposes.

Around the world countries with gun bans have had mixed results, mostly depending on how effective their governments are. The UK has one of the best records of those countries, with less than 1% per capita of the gun violence of the US. On the other hand, Mexico is in the midst of a drug war, and although they have a recent gun ban, their gun violence per capita is higher than the US. (Where do they get their guns? The US, of course.)

The bottom line is that men are going to grope women regardless of what they are wearing, and if someone is intent on killing, they won't need a gun to do it. If you can at least reduce the firepower, you can reduce the number of deaths. One single shot weapon is not going to kill as many as a semi-automatic in a short span of time.

It's time to make the hard choice: repeal or limit the second amendment. (I'm afraid skimpy dresses are first amendment territory, so unless you want to limit free expression, too, you'll have to live with seeing a little too much of Beyonce's flesh.