I hope you’re happy, Mr. Gun.
Ten more people are dead. Their lives are over. End of the road. Dead.
Why is that?
Well, the simple answer is because some madman decided to make a community college his shooting range. The complex answer—the uncomfortable answer, the answer that lots of people don’t want to acknowledge—is that those people are dead because of the United States Constitution.
‘Merica!
Why on Earth are we letting the second amendment run our lives? Crap! Wait. I forgot a letter. I. Why on Earth are we letting the second amendment ruIn our lives?
You shouldn’t have a gun. Period. Yes, I’m talking to you.
Calm down. I’m sure you’re smart. (You read this blog after all.) I’m sure you’re a good person. I’m sure you don’t wish anyone harm. But still, you shouldn’t have a gun. Why the hell do you need a gun? Is anything in this world a better example of the dichotomy between need and want than a gun?
There’s a comedian from Australia (down under!) named Jim Jefferies. He does a bit about guns in America.
See, the thing is, to the 6.68 billion people in the world who aren’t American, we look like a bunch of damn wackos. And actually, to half of the 318 million Americans we look like wackos, too. So really you’re only looking at 159 million people, or 2.2% of the world’s population who sees nothing wrong with this.
Anyway, Mr. Jefferies points out that there’s really only one good reason to own a gun: because you like guns. Guns are cool.
Sorry, Billy the Kid, that ain’t good enough.
Your guns aren’t going to protect you from a tyrannical government. This ain’t 1776 and you’re not George Washington.
Your guns aren’t going to protect you from an intruder. This ain’t the movies and you’re not Paul Kersey. (Maybe Paul Kersey isn’t a household name, so let me explain. It’s the name of Charles Bronson in the Death Wish movies. Capisce?)
Your guns aren’t going to provide sustenance for your family. This ain’t the frontier and you’re not Davy Crockett.
So that leaves the hobby argument. You should have guns because guns are cool and fun to shoot. Well…I’m about as anti-gun as any person could possibly be. A couple of months ago, just for fun, and out of curiosity, my wife and I went to a shooting range. We paid good money to rent a gun (actually that’s a lie because the dude working at the gun range had a crush on my wife so he didn’t charge the $30 gun rental fee), buy some ammo (we did pay for that, and I feel tough just saying ammo instead of ammunition), and a few targets.
We went into the fortified basement and shot 50 rounds of a 9 mm. The dude working there discouraged us from using anything smaller than a 9mm because he said it would be like shooting a BB gun. And for the love of God, if there’s anything worse than shooting a BB gun when you could be shooting a real live gun, then I don’t know what it is.
My wife and I took turns shooting, and we both came to the same conclusion: we were glad we did it, but we’ll never go back.
Here’s what shooting is and what guns are: it’s squeezing a trigger, hearing a loud noise, and then seeing a hole. Boy that sounds fucking great, doesn’t it? How about we take all those old Nintendo guns from the Duck Hunt games, retrofit them with a loud pop, bang, boom type of noisemaker, and then invent some targets that just create holes in random places. BOOM! The shooting experience duplicated!
And the good news? Perhaps the best news ever. No one has ever died from getting shot with a Duck Hunt gun.
Most of you gun owners wouldn’t know the difference. Give you a bang and a hole, and what difference does it make? It’s not like you can see the bullet flying through the air.
My brother-in-law is a gun enthusiast. He has a lot of them. He likes to shoot them. He also just happens to be one of the coolest, best people I know. I’d trust the lives of my four children in his hands any day of the week. He’s one of the raddest, nicest, most responsible dudes I know.
But I don’t think he should have guns. I’m not worried about him shooting anyone. I’m not worried about him selling his guns to some hoodlums. But still, why does he need guns? He’s a badass. I’m quite certain he could just beat the shit out of some shady intruder in his house, as long as the intruder didn’t have a gun either. (And maybe we can get him one of those new fangled Duck Hunt guns.)
So that’s the answer. No one should have guns.
But wait Mr. Dry it in the Water, Americans have .888 guns per person in the country. How the hell are you going to get rid of all of those guns?
Good question.
Maybe we should let these people keep their guns. You want guns? Buy, steal, inherit guns until your heart’s content. Have all the guns you want.
Just give me the bullets. Maybe not even the bullets. How about the gunpowder?
I don’t know how guns work. I’m not a gun nut/ gun fetishist. But there’s gunpowder in there somewhere, right? Let’s outlaw bullets and make gunpowder cost like $100,000 per ounce.
Problem solved, no?
Was the shooter in Oregon rich? If he couldn’t get bullets, and he couldn’t get gun powder for less than $100,000 per ounce, then he would have had to be rich to kill 10 people, right?
Look, I understand that you think the second amendment is cool, and it makes you free, and all that shit. But there are 26 other amendments that make you free and don’t result in the death of innocent people. Ain’t nobody ever died from a prohibition on quartering troops (third amendment) or a trial by jury (seventh amendment).
You think the second amendment is the big one protecting your rights? Try getting rid of some of the other amendments and see how that works. Let’s get rid of the one that lets women vote. Or that lets eighteen-year-olds vote. Or that removes prohibition. Or that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
Here’s the thing…the number of people who have died because of those amendments is a minute fraction of the people who have died because of the second amendment.
So fuck your guns.
And fuck the second amendment.