After two mass shootings targeting country music fans, the 2017 Route 91 Harvest festival massacre and the following year’s Borderline Bar & Grill attack, country music artists slowly began speaking out in favor of gun reform. The call for regulation only increased in August following mass shootings in Gilroy, California; El Paso, Texas; and Dayton, Ohio, with Kacey Musgraves leading her audience at Lollapalooza in a plea that “somebody fucking do something.”
In all three incidents, the guns used by the assailants were semi-automatic assault weapons. More than half of Americans favor a ban on such “assault weapons,” which some gun proponents argue is a misleading term. Americana singer-songwriter Jason Isbell disagrees.
“If you’re on here arguing the definition of ‘assault weapon’ today you are part of the problem. You know what an assault weapon is, and you know you don’t need one,” he tweeted.
Isbell’s back-and-forth with pro-gun enthusiasts eventually spawned a meme, when one Twitter user asked him how he should kill “30-50 feral hogs” that menace his kids. Isbell’s reply: “If you have dozens of hogs chasing your children around your yard, you have problems no weapon will fix.”
These artists in the country music and Americana worlds all support some form of gun control:
Kacey Musgraves
Maren Morris
Eric Church
“I don’t understand why we have to fear a group [like the NRA]. It’s asinine. Why can’t we come together and solve one part of this? Start with the bump stocks and the gun shows. Shut a couple of these down. I do think that will matter a little bit. I think it will save some lives.”
Tim McGraw
“There is some common sense that’s necessary when it comes to gun control. They want to make it about the Second Amendment every time it’s brought up. It’s not about the Second Amendment.”
Faith Hill
“Military weapons should not be in the hands of civilians.”
Kelsea Ballerini
Little Big Town
https://www.instagram.com/p/BguGO2KAQIb/
Cam
Brothers Osborne
https://www.instagram.com/p/B0wEiNRJdrQ/
Florida Georgia Line’s Tyler Hubbard
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1EnZ1thglN/
Dierks Bentley
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bqsikx3F3bo/
Lady Antebellum
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bq4-OAEnDWl/
Rosanne Cash
Margo Price
Jennifer Nettles
Sturgill Simpson
“Nobody needs a machine gun, and that’s comin’ from a guy who owns quite a few guns.”
Source: Read Full Article