Son of a gun

            Yeah, you can’t get a more hot button issue at the moment than guns and gun control, unless you want to discuss fake internet girlfriends, then I’m all ears.  Guns is not a topic that is or should be taken lightly, nor is it one that has a clear-cut answer that is going to appease everyone.  Whether it is the NRA or Mom’s Against Guns (or whatever anti-gun group is making noise) someone is going to be pissed about passed or rejected legislation.  There is one thing we can agree on though, the Westboro Baptist Church members can all be hit with flaming buses and no one would care.

            Okay, maybe there are two things that we can agree on.  Yes, fuck the Westboro Baptist Church, but also, guns are not inherently bad, it is the people that use them for heinous acts that are bad.  The main goal here, and unless I am reading something different than everyone else I think that it is the main focus of the government at the moment, is to remove weapons that can do the most damage to the most people.  We are violent, society is violent, and if history has taught us anything it has taught us that we have always been violent, and always will be.  Trying to remove that way of thinking from us is about as easy as removing the idea that we want peace on earth.  Seriously, you don’t think the two are connected?  Ask just about anyone out there if they want an end to violent conflict around the world, and they will say yes.  Threaten those people with harm to themselves or their family and what will happen?  They will put up a fight.  Violence is part of our natural response to situations, it’s called fight or flight for a reason.  Is it always the response, or always the answer in every situation?  Of course not, but that is not to say that it is never the answer.

            What does this have to do with gun control?  Well, I would think that the people in Washington are smart enough to believe that any legislation that they pass regarding guns will not do away with violence in general (I’m going out on a limb here).  The thing is that I don’t think that is their goal, nor should it be.  The role of government, especially American government is not to run the lives of the citizens; it is to help improve the lives of the citizens.  We could go back and forth for days in determining whether they have done or are doing a good job with it, but one thing is certain, they are trying.  They have identified a problem, mass shootings, and are taking steps to make people safer.  Whether those steps will work remains to be seen, but it is better than the alternative.  What else could the government have done that would have been worse than taking away our assault weapons?  Let’s go over some possible solutions.

            Nothing.  Bad shit happens all the time; the federal government could have taken a stance that they were going to let the states deal with it in their own way and only step in if the state’s mandates were specifically infringing on the rights of the citizens.  This is not unheard of, and it obviously would have been similar to stances taken after earlier, similar tragedies.  After the events at Sandy Hook, and Obama’s speech (which was probably the highlight of his presidency in my opinion) no one expected him to stand pat and delegate that issue to the states and I don’t blame him for not wanting to. 

            We could put armed individuals in schools and other places that have proved to be of interest to mass murderers.  This seemed like the main stance that the NRA took.  Instead of regulating guns and what not, we put more guns and more people with guns out there to “keep the peace” be it more law enforcement (on duty or otherwise) or returned veterans from overseas.  Yes, this will create jobs and give a much needed source of income to many people, especially those returning from Afghanistan/Iraq etc. to find that there are no jobs available.  I get it, and I applaud the NRA for trying to come up with a solution that actually kills (no pun intended) two birds with one stone.  The problem is, more guns do not equal safety, more guns equal paranoia.  If I’m in a movie theater and some douche starts popping off his gun at theater goers, I have to get out of the way of his bullets and his bullets alone (and if he is only allowed a gun with a maximum clip of seven bullets then I have a better chance) or I could be in the middle of a firefight between at least two different people, meaning at least twice the bullets for bystanders to dodge. 

Look at any recounting of a gunfight in the old west, they were rarely as neat as you see in the movies, with civilian casualties and property damage the norm, and these were with fucking six shooters.  Imagine if you had assault rifle vs. assault rifle in a crowded movie theater, or even worse, a school.  I’m sorry, but I can’t get behind arming civilians, or even returning soldiers for the sole purpose of vigilantism.  Yeah, you may be arming a retired cop or a retired serviceman that knows how to handle the weapon, but you are basically giving someone a license to be Batman.  Where is the due process?  Sure, if someone is shooting off a gun in a theater or a school, put two bullets in their head, I don’t care.  But with great power comes great responsibility (wow, a Spiderman and a Batman reference, you can tell who reads comics, can’t you), and not everyone you give that responsibility to will be able to do it, and do it correctly.

I guarantee you give a guy a gun and set him loose telling him to protect people and he will sniff out trouble to justify his job.  I’m not saying mass shootings are not an epidemic, because they are, but they don’t happen every day.  What you would get if you arm someone and tell them that they are the “protector” is a hero complex.  They will go looking for trouble, be it with the sketchy looking kid that wears all black or the guy that comes into the theater wearing a trenchcoat that he keeps closed.  The problem is, 99% of the time, the kid wearing all black is doing so because he likes the color black, or it’s laundry day, or he is mourning the loss of his pet turtle.  99% of the time, the guy with the trenchcoat is actually just sneaking a KFC bucket of chicken into the theater and not an AK-47.  Our “hero” may see something where there is nothing, may think that this is his moment, his chance to stop something before it starts.  He confronts the kid in school, but the kid is untrustworthy of authority for whatever reason and takes off.  If the “hero” has a gun, what is to stop him from using it?  Same thing with the movie theater.  Trenchcoat guy doesn’t want to get caught with eight pieces of the Colonel’s extra crispy under his coat, so he runs too (as much as you can when you’re smuggling drumsticks).  What’s to stop that “hero” from opening fire?  Not having a fucking gun to use, that’s what.  Will this happen everywhere and to every person tasked with this responsibility?  Of course not, but it will happen, and you’ll have just as much venom over these wrongful deaths as you would over a school shooting.  The term six of one, half dozen of the other comes to mind here.

That is where I think the government’s decision is the right one.  What, you’re afraid of them taking away you’re right to bear arms?  Who gave you the right to have an assault rifle?  Not me.  Not anyone.  That was an assumption on your part that bear arms meant some serious fucking hardware.  When they came up with that section of the constitution, they had muskets and shit like that.  You can have a musket, I don’t care.  Primarily because you’ll have one shot to take me down before I’m able to walk over and punch you in the face.  That was the idea.  The government did not guarantee you the right to mass murder, or the right to take out a tank with your personal weapon.  There were smart guys back then, but even old Benny Franklin probably didn’t see weapons like what we have today coming, you know, when he took his face out of that French girl’s lap.  The point is, those of you that think you are being denied a right; you never had that specific right to begin with.  Go out, get your background check done and buy a rifle.  Whether it’s for hunting deer or for your protection, I don’t care.  You don’t need an assault weapon, you may want one, but that’s different.  I have to explain this to my son all the time.  He needs that toy, or he needs that last cookie.  No, he wants them, his existence is not dependent on a toy or a cookie, and your existence is not dependent on your ability to make someone look like Swiss cheese.

“But if you take away assault weapons, they’ll just find a way to purchase them on the black market”.  Yup, that’s true.  However it will make it a lot harder for a random disgruntled teenager to find them.  Do you think that cowardly little fucker goes into Sandy Hook Elementary with a butcher knife?  Do you think he goes in there with a regular rifle?  Maybe, but I can almost guarantee that the body count is lower.  If he had a knife I bet he kills his mom and himself and that’s it.  When’s the last time you heard of a knifing spree?  Serial killers are different than mass murderers and they will find a way regardless (and most of the time they’ll find a way without using a gun, that draws too much attention).  If you don’t allow a mass murderer access to the tools, he will either fail miserably at his plot (hopefully just killing himself and saving us the trouble) or he will be a regular murderer, which while it is not great, is more “news at 11” as opposed to “breaking news special report”. 

“Taking away assault weapons won’t stop mass killings.”  See above.  Nothing will stop anything if someone puts their mind to it.  If someone really wants to kill someone else, they will find a way if a way exists, but it will be a lot harder for them and the more they have to do to accomplish a goal, the more of a chance they have of getting caught, or just saying “fuck it” and having a sandwich instead. 

“If they take away this right, what’s to stop them from taking away our other rights?”  Grow the fuck up.  They are not taking away your rights; they are modifying an existing right so that it is not as all-inclusive as you would like it to be.  If they start to remove rights, then we can have that discussion, or even if they start to modify rights that have nothing to do with killing people, then we can definitely talk.  Until that time, why don’t you relax, cut back on the conspiracy theories and have a Fruit Roll-Up.

“You don’t even hunt, what do you know.”  That’s right, I don’t hunt, and I don’t own guns.  I do own common sense though, and that tells me you don’t need an assault rifle to hunt anything smaller than a rhinoceros. 

“You’re biased because you have kids.”  Damn fucking skippy.  I’ll take that bias to my grave and wave that flag proudly.  My goal in life is to protect my boys, to make sure they have a better life than I do.  They are already getting the short end of the stick because the school systems have gone down the shitter in terms of their education content and teacher’s ability to teach, now I’m supposed to be afraid of that school becoming the site of a massacre?  I don’t think so, and if taking an automatic weapon out of your hands will help prevent that, guess what I’m going to do. 

“Seven rounds per clip is not enough to do the job.”  What job exactly?  To take out an elephant?  Are you just that bad a shot that you need eight shots?  If you miss on the first shot the deer will be gone which will remove the necessity for any extra shooting, but you already know that, so what are you saying?  Do you plan on being attacked by eight zombies and then you’re fucked because you only have seven bullets?  That argument is weak.  You tell me what you need more than seven successive rounds to accomplish and I will disprove your theory.  What this will do is make people more adept at using their weapons correctly.  Instead of just randomly firing off shots, hoping to hit something, you will have to actually be able to use your weapon correctly or risk running out of bullets.

As I said before, there is no right answer, and no easy answer, only the answer that will do the most good for the most people.  If I have to choose between the safety of many and your ability to completely annihilate a deer from 100 yards away, guess which one I’m going to pick.  Look, I’m not out to change your mind, but everyone has an opinion on this subject, and whether you agree or disagree with mine, I hope it has gotten you to think about what is really important and really necessary (there’s that want vs. need thing again).

And if nothing comes of last week’s news cycle, remember this:  guns don’t kill fake girlfriends, fake cancer kills fake girlfriends.