When people come to visit Australia their friends tell them to watch out for our dangerous wildlife. When I go to visit America my friends tell me to try not to get shot. We think it’s weird that you guys are scared of a few venomous critters when you’re leaving a nation full of primates with firearms.

Guns are uncommon things here in Oz. I’ve never fired one; I’ve never even been anywhere near one when it was fired. I’ve always been afraid of them, I’d never permit one in my household, and until I started deeply researching the unelected power establishment that has set up shop in the United States I used to believe that Americans were foolish to insist on keeping theirs instead of implementing the kind of changes my country has put into effect to try and curb gun violence.

The latter sentiment is one I’ve been hearing a lot from my countrymen in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre, as well as from people in other countries like the UK and Canada, and it just sounds so obnoxious and abusive to me. I fully support the right of all Americans to have a robust debate about the future of their nation’s gun laws, because they’re the ones who have to live smack dab in the middle of the heart of the oligarchic beast. We’re not the ones who have to live under the crushing economic injustice of a plutocracy whose power depends upon keeping the populace poor and depriving them of the social safety nets accorded to everyone else in every major country on earth; they are. It’s sleazy for us to try and convince them not to arm themselves against a power establishment who exploits and abuses them constantly, sometimes without giving them so much as clean water to drink.

People give me a hard time for writing so much about US politics, telling me I should “mind my own business” and only write about my own country, but believe it or not I do have a personal code of ethics where I try to stay in my own lane and write strictly about the things which I believe are my business. If you’ve ever wondered why I tend to steer clear of commentary on more local US politics, for example, this is why. I see it as very much my business that Australia functions as a military pawn and intelligence asset of the US to such an extent that it could arguably be called a 51st state without representation, but not my business who’s running for mayor of Birmingham or whether states should vote to make marijuana legal. I’m big on sovereignty; I think most of our species’ problems would cease to exist if the sovereignty of people and nations were held in higher esteem, which is why sanctimonious, condescending twaddle like this WaPo article by Australian journalist Richard Glover gets under my skin so much.

The Second Amendment of the US Constitution isn’t there for duck hunting or guarding against home invasions, it’s there first and foremost to protect the citizenry from a tyrannical government. Telling Americans they should relinquish or restrict their access to firearms while they’re being exploited and oppressed by an Orwellian corporatist oligarchy is like telling a battered woman she shouldn’t get a restraining order on her abusive ex. It’s none of your business whether a restraining order is an effective deterrent of further abuse or whether she should have done more sooner; the fact is that she’s the victim here, and she’s doing what she feels she needs to do to protect herself from a brute. How about instead of criticizing the perfectly understandable fear and paranoia of an abused citizenry, you criticize their fucking abusers instead?

I am getting so fed up with people arguing that this isn’t a sufficient reason for Americans to be allowed to keep their guns because a few militia groups are no match for the combined might of the US military. It undeniably presents an obstacle. If you think the fact that there are about as many guns in America as there are Americans doesn’t weigh heavily into the calculations of the oligarchic manipulators, you are wrong. The propagandists wouldn’t have to work so hard concocting lies and indoctrinating the public with false narratives day in and day out if they didn’t fear an uprising of millions of heavily-armed individuals should they decide to try and make an overt power grab. They’re forced to deal with things slyly, slowly and subtly, because if they don’t they’re dealing with an angry one-gun-per-capita populace. The oligarchs and their cronies do not want this. If you think that they do, you are wrong.

Because they need to avoid a violent civil war which would damage the plutocrats’ investments, tank the economy upon which their empire is built and likely balkanize the nation they’re trying to rule, America’s true rulers have been forced to rely strictly on their propaganda machine. And it’s been failing them. Because of the population’s unprecedented internet access and internet literacy, the elites lost control of the narrative for the first time ever in 2016, which cost them the regime changes they were itching for in Syria and Russia as well as the TPP. The establishment lie factory is becoming unsustainable, people are beginning to spin their own narratives, and overt tyranny is simply not an option for a power establishment that is built on money.

In a system where money equals political power, those in power are naturally incentivized to try and keep everyone else poor, which is why Americans don’t enjoy the luxuries the rest of us do like a living wage and sane healthcare policy. The plutocracy which uses the US government’s military and economic might to dominate and manipulate the rest of the world needs to keep the American people poor to keep them from gaining political power and thus interfering in the agendas of the ruling elites. Ordinary Americans are the ones being abused by this dynamic, not holier-than-thou professional opinionators from Sydney and London.

Americans can relinquish or restrict their firearms when they’re good and ready, but you’ll never hear me telling them to do so. That is not my area, and as long as the gun nuts are giving the oligarchs who are choking our world to death one more thing to worry about I’ll be sleeping a little easier at night anyway.

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