We Need To Talk About Gun Control, Says Jason Aalon Butler

THE FEVER 333 are in London this evening for another demonstration, ahead of their appearance at Reading Festival this weekend. We spoke to Jason Aalon Butler a short while ago about the rise in gun violence and he had some strong feelings on the subject, as you might imagine…

“More people – I think more children, actually – have died here in school or mass shootings than those we’ve put into war for our military. That’s fucking insane. And it makes it more and more of a reality that you or someone in your peripheral circle may be affected by gun violence in a very critical or fatal way. That’s the truth.

“I’m not making things up. I’m just trying to say, ‘Hey, maybe we need to address the NRA lobbying against funding to do research on gun violence information.’ Because they are blocking off the opportunity to get purposeful information from the CDC [the leading national public health institute of the United States, which also studies gun violence]. There are amendments and proposals put in place that literally block people from even trying to study what would happen if we had tighter gun control.

“But there’s a strange fear and a sense of offence that people take because they feel like they’re being attacked, and that these liberties they’ve been granted are under threat. But we forget that most of our liberties and our freedoms are just written constructs that we believe grant us our rights. They’re absurd, arbitrary and antiquated, but I see where people are coming from when they’re like, ‘Well, there’s a law and it’s written and if it’s not there then what do we have?’ I get it, but we are superseding fucking humanity to maintain the composition of the [U.S.] constitution.

“I’m not saying, ‘Yo, throw your guns away…’ I’m just saying that we need the mental health checks, we need the criminal record checks, we need to have stricter protocols by which people acquire firearms. This weaponry has evolved and it’s dangerous. We’ve amended plenty of parts of the constitution due to the evolution of our country – why haven’t we considered this one?

“Everyone goes, ‘It’s not the NRA that’s killing people.’ I know that, but it’s the NRA that is lobbying in Congress and mobilising a strong section of the population. It’s easy to say, ‘No, I don’t want this because I don’t,’ as opposed to having a considerably complex conversation. That’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to talk to the people and offer them the information and let them make decisions and see the truth. The truth is not about my agenda – the truth is that people are fucking dying.”

Words: Mischa Pearlman

THE FEVER 333's Made An America EP is out now on Roadrunner Records. You can stream it below.