WARNING: THERE ARE NAUGHTY WORDS IN THIS AND IF THAT OFFENDS YOU, TOUGH SHIT.
Dear Second Amendment Gun Nuts,
I’m sick and tired of you guys being assholes. Gun violence in the United States continues to increase (I’m writing this on the day of the Newtown, Connecticut, shooting), and the only thing you self-righteous fucks want to do is piss and moan about how your precious right to carry a death machine is being taken away from you.
Stop it.
Seriously, stop it. I understand that guns are tools, and that a gun requires a human being to pull the trigger, but every time one of these tragedies occurs, we as a nation are prevented from having any sort of meaningful dialogue about it because cum-gargling shitmilitias immediately start attacking anyone who even hints that stricter gun control might not be such a bad idea. “ERMAGERD, IF THEY TAKE ERR GUNZ WE CAN’T FIGHT THE FEDARALIS WHEN THEY INVADE THE COMPOUND!! SLIPPERY SLOPE!! SECOND ’MENDMENT!! SECOND ’MENDMENT!!”
Listen up, fuckwits. The Second Amendment is absogoddamnlutely worthless in this day and age. If the government ever wanted to seriously oppress you, IT HAS TANKS AND AIRPLANES. Your kitted-out AR-15 with folding bipod, bitchin’ thermal scope, and custom-engraved Dale Earnhardt bald eagle on the grip will do approximately jack and shit to any sort of modern mechanized force, especially one operating within its own logistical-supply theater. The only thing your gun is good for is killing someone who isn’t from the government, and citizens having guns so they can kill people who aren’t from the government is pretty much exactly the opposite of what the Second Amendment is for.
Pop quiz number one: Do you know what the tech level was when our Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment? Single-shot muskets. The Second Amendment guaranteed citizens the right to bear arms because they could effectively hold their own against an oppressive government force. Both sides would be equipped with the same weaponry, and a well-armed citizen militia would actually stand a fighting chance of defeating a power-hungry president or rogue federal agency.
Pop quiz number two: Do you know what you need to blow up a mainline M1A1 Abrams battle tank? SOMETHING LARGER THAN A FUCKING GLOCK, YOU STUPID MOUTH-BREATHER. There’s no longer parity between the amount of force available to a citizen of the United States and the amount of force at the disposal of the United States government. If the government seriously wants to oppress you, it’s going to fucking oppress you. Bend over, spread your ass cheeks, and try not to cry too much. The drones will be recording it all, and you don’t want to embarrass yourself.
Pop quiz number three: If a SWAT team hits the wrong house (which has happened multiple times) and kicks open your door in the middle of the night, how friendly will these men be when they see you pointing something threatening at them? Do not try to kill the SWAT team. That’s absolutely asinine. The solution is better police oversight and education, not a Bushmaster with armor-piercing rounds; if you try that, you’ll find out firsthand what “You’ll get my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers” actually means.
So let’s call it like it is. No more hiding behind “Well, if the government takes our guns, how can we prevent the tyrants from taking over?” The tyrants are already in control, and they have been for a while. No, the reason you want to keep flooding the streets with easily accessible guns is that you’re too fucking lazy to think for yourselves. You’d rather buy into the NRA propaganda machine and spin yourself a nice little fantasy, one where you single-handedly defeat the dastardly hordes of black-suited, sunglasses-wearing federal soul snatchers who come to tell you freedom ain’t ringin’ no more and yet somehow avoid any repercussions from committing multiple homicides. Or perhaps, in your fantasy, you’re living the James Bond life, sipping a martini while a supermodel hangs off your arm and strokes your engorged nine-millimeter.
Pop quiz number four: Any idea who funds the NRA? PEOPLE WHO MAKE MONEY FROM SELLING GUNS. Seriously—go look it up, it’s right on the NRA Web site.
Imagine that. A group of businesses that have vested interests in seeing that guns are easily available for people to buy supporting an organization that pushes legislation to make guns easier to buy. Despite the fact that, you know, their product is used to kill people, and has been used to kill people—over, and over, and over. Details, details, the devil’s always in the details.
Speaking of details, here’s an interesting one: Despite the proliferation of concealed-carry laws and the loosening of gun restrictions, in the past thirty years, not a single mass shooting has been stopped by a civilian carrying a gun (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map). Shootings have been stopped by police officers or by the offenders suiciding, but there is not a single instance of an armed civilian putting a stop to a rampage.
Yeah, that whole bit about “If only more people carried guns, none of this would be happening”? Total bullshit. Guess who wants you to carry more guns. The people who make more guns. I wonder what possible motive they could have.
Oh, wait—I figured it out. They want to make money, and they don’t really give a fuck if people die because of it.
To be fair to the Gun Nuts, though, our problem isn’t strictly the proliferation of firearms in America (though that’s a big part of it, and we need better control over our weapons). The problem, ladies and gentlemen, is us.
As a society, we glorify gun violence in everything from movies to books to video games to television shows. We sexy it up with action scenes and history specials; we celebrate it in first-person shooters and war games; we sanitize it by not showing the consequences of what happens to a human being when a gun is used against him. Don’t show any blood, heaven forbid the children see some blood, but so long as everyone dies offscreen, you can kill as many hapless extras as you want, guns blazing the entire time. Gotta make sure you get that PG-13 rating so as many impressionable adolescents as possible can drive up your box-office revenues.
(Personal note: That last paragraph was difficult for me to write. Everyone who knows me knows I love to play video games, and I also enjoy playing first-person shooters. However, to deny the fact that they highlight an underlying problem in our society is willful blindness, and I try not to knowingly lie to myself. Honestly, we should use these games to teach consequences to our children—if you die in an FPS, that shit needs to carry some weight. Instead of you re-spawning, perhaps your console gets bricked and all your gamer-score achieve-points are deleted, or maybe you have to donate one hundred dollars to mental-health care and veteran services every time you reload. If you want to play with guns, there’s always a cost. Probably going to be tough to get that one by marketing, though. I mean, who would want to play something that had real consequences attached to losing?
Also, parents, pay some fucking attention to what your children are playing/watching/reading. You should not be letting an eight-year-old play a mature-rated game or watch Sons of Anarchy. Show some common sense, and actually invest something in your kid. It’ll pay off in the long run. Back on topic.)
As a society, we see mental illness as a stigma, not a disease to be treated. We build prisons instead of hospitals, and then we wonder why someone who’s “not right in the head” does something crazy instead of getting help. We see going to therapy and counseling as signs of weakness, not as an attempt to heal a sick body part. How fucking ridiculous would it be if someone made fun of you for doing physical rehab after a knee surgery? “Ha-ha, you stupid jerk, you’re so weak. Real men just walk off their ACL tears.”
Idiotic. Yet that’s what we do! We continue to cut funding for health care, especially for mental-health issues, and we treat our mentally ill like rabid animals. We force them to live on the street, or we lock them in prison and give them no assistance, but if they want to buy a gun, it’s no questions asked, make sure you get some bullets in aisle four.
So, Gun Nuts, please, if nothing else sways you, at least think on this: Is your gun really that important to you? Is it worth another classroom of dead children? Is it worth teenagers solving their problems with bullets instead of words, cutting off forever the possibilities of life? Is it worth denying American citizens the opportunity to have a meaningful conversation just because you’d rather support some corporation’s bottom line instead of basic human dignity and empathy?
We are killing ourselves, we are killing our neighbors, and we are killing our children, all in the name of greed and power. We can be better than this. We have to be better than this, because if we’re not, we’re murdering our future.
Bang bang.
Sincerely,
Someone Who Has Shot Several Guns,
Enjoys Playing Shooting Games, Knows Your
Slippery Slope Argument Is Utter Tripe, and
Realizes Enough Is Fucking Enough