Today I Am Angry About: Guns in the USA

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Do you ever gaze around you and feel disgusted with the world at large yet agonisingly powerless to do a damn thing about it? Yeah, same (and if you don’t – pull your face out of your gooch, man. Political apathy is for fucking dweebs and I’ve got no time for that shit).

There are a million topics ricocheting around my cranium right now, and for the sake of my own sanity I’m going to articulate one of them below, with nice little subheadings to save you the sheer exhaustion of proper reading.

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I once fired a machine gun in Las Vegas when I was 21 years old, because I was young and I thought it’d be cool, because Hollywood. It wasn’t cool, it was boring and terrifying, somehow simultaneously. I pulled the trigger, it made a loud bang, and suddenly there was a hole in the face of a human-shaped target. Truly, a thrilling experience well worth the violent deaths of thousands of schoolchildren. More than anything, I was just very aware that I was holding a heavy metal tool that was created solely, solely­, to kill. If I aimed it the wrong way I would kill someone, or myself.

Maybe it gets some people hard to hold a weapon in their hands and know they could execute a room full of people, but – and pardon me if this is a totally wild, radical opinion here – I would rather not carry around a murder-device created specifically to disembowel another human being as fast as possible. I’d rather not hold in my hands a weapon that, if I handle it wrongly, could blast the teeth out of a child’s mouth. Maybe that’s just me! Maybe I’m weird!

Now, here are some pro gun arguments:

  • The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun!!!

Right-o, name me 5 mass shootings out of the hundreds this year that were stopped by a ‘good guy with a gun’. If nobody at all had guns, then – wait for it – nobody at all would have guns. Mass shootings become physically impossible. This really isn’t a difficult concept to grasp.

  • If we ban guns, only law abiding citizens will give up their weapons. Criminals will still have theirs. We will be helpless!

Alright, sit down. I have some news for you: the police exist. And it may take time, decades even, but there’s this weird thing that happens: items tend to drop out of circulation once you stop SELLING THEM TO LITERALLY EVERYBODY. YOU CAN BUY A GUN IN THE SAME SHOP YOU CAN BUY A PINT OF MILK FOR FUCK’S SAKE AMERICA WHAT ARE YOU DOING.

  • It is my right to own a gun, it is the second amendment. You cannot change it. I will shoot you with my gun if you try to take my gun.

The wording of the second amendment is: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

First of all that sentence doesn’t make any grammatical sense and who the fuck lacked the foresight to spend a little more time on the wording of such a crucial piece of legislation, but whatever.

A militia is no longer necessary to keep America free (the British are, I’m quite sure, not going to invade any time soon), and any semblance of a civilian militia is certainly not regulated. The fact that gun owners actually threaten violence at the prospect of giving up their guns is testament to this.

This useless, vague sentence was written 230 years ago, when only muskets existed, and a single person couldn’t shoot 500 people in ten minutes. The amendment doesn’t even say the word ‘guns’, it just says ‘Arms’. Give everyone fucking tazers if you must. You have the right to a tazer, fine, whatever.

  • Cars kill people too! Shall we ban them as well?

All I can do in response to this argument is sag in disbelief. This is why right wing types win arguments – they don’t really care about being correct, or logical, or anything – they just care about pissing you off enough to cause you to lose your cool and sink to name calling, because when you do that, they can shrug you off and say things like ‘so much for the tolerant left!’.

A note on the idea of ‘the tolerant left’: tolerance for all manner of faiths, ethnicities, nationalities, sexualities, and beliefs, and intolerance for intrinsically violent or oppressive beliefs, are not mutually exclusive.

No, we should not ban cars because, unlike guns, they serve a purpose beyond tearing apart human flesh – they are designed to quickly transport us around the world, thereby enriching our lives to an unimaginable degree. A more accurate analogy would be “Tanks kill people too! Should we ban tanks as well?” And to that I say: yes, no civilian should own a tank.

  • You’ll never oppress me!

Americans have the right to a gun but not to medical aid for gunshot wounds. You already are oppressed.

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