MeghanIsMe

One thing I loved about living in the Netherlands is that it is next to impossible to legally own a gun. World Population Review data for 2021 indicates gun ownership per 100 people in the USA is 120.5. In the Netherlands, it is 2.6. Per person, there are over 46 times more privately owned guns in the USA. That knowledge made me feel safer, and I would love for the US to to adopt policies that make gun ownership similarly difficult.

Thinking about vast paradigm shifts like this bring to mind a thought about capitalism from Ursula LeGuin. “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings."

But I don't know how to get there from here. In the US, gun control measures disproportionately affect groups that are already disenfranchised and which are in greater danger of violence from socially dominant groups who are less likely to be affected by such measures. A big part of of this is that power structures in the US are fundamentally racist and biased against other minority groups as well, so implementation of any policy will be colored by that racism and bias. Attempting to restrict gun ownership is going to harm this minority groups disproportionately.

It seems insurmountable. But so does capitalism, as did the divine right of kings. This change is not impossible. But I don't know how to contribute to it, and it's certainly not going to change soon. The current state of the US is another reason that I, as a queer trans person, feel safer in Canada than in the US. (There are many other reasons like attitudes about Covid, but that's another matter.)

Even in Canada, whose territory covers vast swaths of wilderness full of dangerous wildlife, there are only 34.7 privately owned guns per 100 people. The US is a giant statistical outlier on this, and I can't believe that this is simply the way it has to be.

I also believe that people must work within the system that they occupy. Whether that's the divine right of your liege, or the inescapable necessity of buying things, or the need to defend one's self in a dangerous environment. The environment *doesn't* have to be dangerous in this way. But for a lot of people right now, it is.

I miss people in the USA a lot, but there are many reasons I'm glad not to be there.