Paris Attacks. Je’Sui Paris?

Sooo…as I’m sure of you may have heard, a few days ago there were coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris. Half of my Facebook feed the other day was everyone on my friend’s list changing their profile picture to have a French flag over their picture.

Including a bunch of guys who will relentlessly make ‘Frenchies are cowards’ jokes and even a few of the same people who still call them ‘Freedom Fries’ because they’re upset that France didn’t invade Iraq and Afghanistan hard enough with ‘us’.

And then there are my relatives, whom I’ve spoke of before, who post up stupid shit like this:

France has 3.01 gun deaths per 100,000 people. So, with a population of a little over 66 million that would be 1,996 gun deaths per year; 1,545 of which are suicides and only 146 of which are homicides. France also has about 33 accidental discharge deaths every year.

Now, let’s take a look at America.

Now this should be fun.

American has a population of over 322 million people. We also have 10.5 gun deaths per hundred thousand of those people. That equates to 33,812 gun deaths per year; 11,431 of which are homicides by gun, and over 21,500 are suicides. But here’s the fun one…515 are unintentional gun deaths.

So with 515 accidental discharges in the U.S. And 146 murders in France, even if you add in the final death toll of about 130 people killed in the terrorist attack in Paris…

Legal gun ownership in the U.S. accounts for almost double the deaths as gun murders in France. So living in the U.S., where gun ownership is legal, is actually more dangerous than living in France without a gun and being at the mercy of terrorist who own illegal guns.

But let’s play Devil’s advocate. America has a lot higher population, if we cut the population of the U.S. down to France’s level we would still wind up these numbers..

America with a population of 66 million has: 6,963 gun deaths, comprised of 2,354 homicides, 4,443 suicides, and 106 accidental discharges.

Even without terrorists gunning us down, at the same population level, we kill more than 350 of each other more than French people get killed by guns; homicides, suicides, and accidental discharges combined.

When you don’t take into account the population difference than we kill each 9,435 more of each other than French people die to guns, period…all things considered.

 

But enough about silly gun nuts, let’s get back to France and silly ‘Je’sui Paris’ people. About 130 people died in Paris from that terrorist attack. Already France is in talks, or by now probably committing to, increasing its military operations against ISIS in the Middle East. Islamic Fundamentalists attacked Paris and killed 130 people, so we have to go kill some Muslims back. Presidential Contender Ted Cruz has even said that what we need to do to stop ISIS is start carpet bombing Syrian civilians.

Meanwhile Beirut, Lebanon was hit by suicide bombers who killed 43 and wounded another 200+. Where are your Lebanese flags over your profile?

Oh, right…you don’t actually care about Terrorism unless it’s white people, hmm? Beirut gets hit by suicide bombers and you say, “Meh, Brown people killin’ Brown people, amiright?”

Oh, no you’re not racist, it’s simply the numbers involved. 130 Parisians died, Beirut only suffered 43 casualties.

What about Syria? Around 200 civilians have been killed by Russia in the past month. But nobody cared enough about that to change their profile picture. That’s White people bombing Brown people from a plane, that’s cool.

“But it’s ISIS, we’re fighting, Rich…not Russia.”

Well how about the 10,883 total civilians killed in Syria, many of whom are killed by ISIS, many are also killed by Bashar al-Assad, who until very recently was an ally of the U.S. And a portion of that is civilians killed by America, too.

So while I do sympathize with the dead and wounded, as well of their families, within France. Please excuse me for not dropping everything and draping my house in the colors of France’s flag when there are war torn places suffering much harder and are always forgotten by everyone else.

Je’Sui Paris? Non. Je’Sui Humanité.

~RCS

Syria’s Bloody Revolution

For those who are unaware, or ignoring, the issues in Syria.  This is a compilation of what’s going on there.  Syrians are protesting a tyrannical rule considerably worse than Moammar Qhadafi’s.  The leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad makes Moammar Qhadafi look like Big Bird.

Al-Assad has surrounded the 3^rd largest city of Syria, Homs, with artillery, tanks, snipers, and a few army battalions.  The Syrian army, under al-Assad’s direct orders, are shooting unarmed civilians, including women, children, and the elderly.  They are also kidnapping, torturing, and murdering children from the homes of protestors.

Defectors from the Syrian Army have formed what they call the Free Syrian Army.  These soldiers abandon tanks and sneak inside the rebel-favored cities, such as Homs.  The FSA could badly use said tanks, but the Syrian Air Force bombs the defectors if they try to abscond with their armored artillery or tanks.

The FSA have limited ammunition and few good rifles.  They are fighting army snipers with small arms and black-market scope-less AK-47s.  They are fighting tanks with outdated rocket-propelled grenade launchers and hand grenades.

The international community (i.e. the U.N., USA, and E.U.) are ignoring the situation for the most part, at least militarily.  The rebel initiative of the FSA could be aided exponentially by simple things: Food, rifle scopes, ammunition, and medical supplies.

An $80 scope, $20 worth of canned food, and two $30 boxes of ammunition would be less than many people spend on presidential candidate donations, but would allow a single soldier of the FSA to stop a Syrian sniper from gunning down a handful of pregnant women.

Welcome to Syria bitches, another couple of years and the Second American Revolution will be looking like this.  Just wait for it.

~RCS