Clearly it does no good to assess the gun-control "debate" in a logical even-handed fashion. The discussion, such as it is, has nothing to do with anything sensible or reasonable. There are, in fact, sensible responses to the plaints of gun-control advocates that this or that measure worked in Britain or Japan or Australia or wherever. Near as I can tell, such responses have not been proffered much; by and large, the ante has been upped way past that.
It is a crystal-clear fact this is not an argument that will be won or advanced with mere reason. Any reasonable gun advocacy that might exist has been drowned in a steaming vat of hurr. And while it is somewhat heartening that a few of these mouth-breathing, window-licking, soul-deadened, nose-picking, dick-grabbing, ass-spelunking, knuckle-dragging irate goobers managed to shoot themselves at their own Mow-ron Super Bowl yesterday, the problem is that they thought it would be good sport to hold said event in the first place on the holiday for the victim of an assassin, the target of a chickenshit cracker with a gun and a grudge.
Coupled with their incredibly brave response to the tragedy of a lunatic slaughtering a classroom full of first-graders -- armed guards at schools, which has graced some hapless students with dipshits and child molesters (and if there is a god or even basic karma, explain the continued existence of Joe Arpaio) -- it seems that we are no longer dealing with two legitimately opposing viewpoints. We have one group of folks who, morally exhausted at the weekly massacres and spree-kills at schools, malls, wherever a deranged asshole with more firepower than sense decides to tune up his shit, timidly propose rather modest regulations and safeguards in the hope that said deranged assholes find even minimal resistance when they decide it's time to listen to the voices in their heads.
On the other side, you have the usual claque of industry lobbyists bolstering the usual clatter of misfits sporting laundry lists of imaginary grievances and paranoid fantasies, refusing to budge even a goddamned inch. Their "right" to immense quantities of firepower trumps everyone else's right to wonder if some shitbird will buy a Glock with a 30-round clip of some fucker's trunk at a gunshow, and give it a workout at the nearest place populated by people who can't fight back.
There's a pathology at work here, and I wish to hell I had a clue what it was. I wish Saint Bill Clinton had half as much empathy for the voices of reason as he does for the toxic, emotional ranting that has taking over the pro-gun side. I wish more people in general would understand that it is a complete waste of time to try to deal rationally with irrational people.
And make no mistake, every plank of the pro-gun side's argument has been utterly irrational, more often than not borderline insane. Look, even if your Red Dawn fever dreams of armed insurrection somehow came true, you and your drinkin' buddies with a couple SKSs and Glocks and a few thousand rounds of ammo, are not going to bring down the Islamocommienazimoooslim Kenyan's Army o' Doom. Okay? It's just not going to happen.
Their jabbering might have at least the veneer of legitimacy if they hadn't already ceded all pretense to rational thought. Where the fuck where these dimbulbs when the Fourth Amendment was thrown out the window, in the name of the War On Some Drugs? Where were they when the banksters monkeyfucked the world economy and threw a party on our graves? Where the hell were these self-styled patriots when warrantless wiretapping, extrajudicial killing, drone-bombing civilians, and torture became part of the landscape? Huh? Where were they when any number of things that actually counted and actually took place went down? Fucking hunting hay bales and pigeons with Uzis, apparently. If they were seriously planning on using their armaments to preserve the country and their precious inalienable rights, they missed that boat a loooong time ago.
Seriously. I wanna know what the hell they're yammering about. Their country was taken out from under them years ago, by politicans from both parties. But these brave, mighty Constitutional literalists are butt-hurt over this, and nothing else. Well, excuse me if I call that a total crock of shit, people who wasted twenty times as much time and energy over mindless birtherist bullshit, than the millions of people across this country who lost their homes and jobs for no other reason than Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein don't have quite enough money.
Whatever. Their burbling nonsense has zero credibility at this point, and frankly, despite being a fairly strong believer in the Second Amendment, I no longer care if they do have their guns forcibly confiscated (even though that will never, ever happen). Because they're dicks, and they're way too proud of it.
Rather than this incessant, irrelevant fixation on technical definitions of "assault weapons" or "automatic" or "semi-automatic", let's address the subject of gun control more realistically. Start with the premise that perhaps it ought to be of roughly equal difficulty to own and use guns as it is to drive an automobile. What would that entail? Licensing, registration, and insurance. You could even forgo the second one, since you would have to grandfather every existing weapon in anyway. But I promise you that mandatory insurance will bring the marketplace -- oh, the vestal virgin of pure, untrammeled capitalism! -- into the scheme of things. We'll see how the catechists of unfettered market economics sing their praises then.
Between that and putting a maximum on magazine capacity, you would make a serious dent in what has weirdly, rapidly devolved into a cartoonish, bloodlusting pseudo-culture, teeming with pissed-off Walter Mittys endlessly fantasizing about their heroic exploits fending off communists and/or zombies. Maybe Hollyweird can distract them with another CGI tentpole movie franchise slapped together from a comic book, a toy, a board game, or a public-domain retread.
It is a crystal-clear fact this is not an argument that will be won or advanced with mere reason. Any reasonable gun advocacy that might exist has been drowned in a steaming vat of hurr. And while it is somewhat heartening that a few of these mouth-breathing, window-licking, soul-deadened, nose-picking, dick-grabbing, ass-spelunking, knuckle-dragging irate goobers managed to shoot themselves at their own Mow-ron Super Bowl yesterday, the problem is that they thought it would be good sport to hold said event in the first place on the holiday for the victim of an assassin, the target of a chickenshit cracker with a gun and a grudge.
Coupled with their incredibly brave response to the tragedy of a lunatic slaughtering a classroom full of first-graders -- armed guards at schools, which has graced some hapless students with dipshits and child molesters (and if there is a god or even basic karma, explain the continued existence of Joe Arpaio) -- it seems that we are no longer dealing with two legitimately opposing viewpoints. We have one group of folks who, morally exhausted at the weekly massacres and spree-kills at schools, malls, wherever a deranged asshole with more firepower than sense decides to tune up his shit, timidly propose rather modest regulations and safeguards in the hope that said deranged assholes find even minimal resistance when they decide it's time to listen to the voices in their heads.
On the other side, you have the usual claque of industry lobbyists bolstering the usual clatter of misfits sporting laundry lists of imaginary grievances and paranoid fantasies, refusing to budge even a goddamned inch. Their "right" to immense quantities of firepower trumps everyone else's right to wonder if some shitbird will buy a Glock with a 30-round clip of some fucker's trunk at a gunshow, and give it a workout at the nearest place populated by people who can't fight back.
There's a pathology at work here, and I wish to hell I had a clue what it was. I wish Saint Bill Clinton had half as much empathy for the voices of reason as he does for the toxic, emotional ranting that has taking over the pro-gun side. I wish more people in general would understand that it is a complete waste of time to try to deal rationally with irrational people.
And make no mistake, every plank of the pro-gun side's argument has been utterly irrational, more often than not borderline insane. Look, even if your Red Dawn fever dreams of armed insurrection somehow came true, you and your drinkin' buddies with a couple SKSs and Glocks and a few thousand rounds of ammo, are not going to bring down the Islamocommienazimoooslim Kenyan's Army o' Doom. Okay? It's just not going to happen.
Their jabbering might have at least the veneer of legitimacy if they hadn't already ceded all pretense to rational thought. Where the fuck where these dimbulbs when the Fourth Amendment was thrown out the window, in the name of the War On Some Drugs? Where were they when the banksters monkeyfucked the world economy and threw a party on our graves? Where the hell were these self-styled patriots when warrantless wiretapping, extrajudicial killing, drone-bombing civilians, and torture became part of the landscape? Huh? Where were they when any number of things that actually counted and actually took place went down? Fucking hunting hay bales and pigeons with Uzis, apparently. If they were seriously planning on using their armaments to preserve the country and their precious inalienable rights, they missed that boat a loooong time ago.
Seriously. I wanna know what the hell they're yammering about. Their country was taken out from under them years ago, by politicans from both parties. But these brave, mighty Constitutional literalists are butt-hurt over this, and nothing else. Well, excuse me if I call that a total crock of shit, people who wasted twenty times as much time and energy over mindless birtherist bullshit, than the millions of people across this country who lost their homes and jobs for no other reason than Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein don't have quite enough money.
Whatever. Their burbling nonsense has zero credibility at this point, and frankly, despite being a fairly strong believer in the Second Amendment, I no longer care if they do have their guns forcibly confiscated (even though that will never, ever happen). Because they're dicks, and they're way too proud of it.
Rather than this incessant, irrelevant fixation on technical definitions of "assault weapons" or "automatic" or "semi-automatic", let's address the subject of gun control more realistically. Start with the premise that perhaps it ought to be of roughly equal difficulty to own and use guns as it is to drive an automobile. What would that entail? Licensing, registration, and insurance. You could even forgo the second one, since you would have to grandfather every existing weapon in anyway. But I promise you that mandatory insurance will bring the marketplace -- oh, the vestal virgin of pure, untrammeled capitalism! -- into the scheme of things. We'll see how the catechists of unfettered market economics sing their praises then.
Between that and putting a maximum on magazine capacity, you would make a serious dent in what has weirdly, rapidly devolved into a cartoonish, bloodlusting pseudo-culture, teeming with pissed-off Walter Mittys endlessly fantasizing about their heroic exploits fending off communists and/or zombies. Maybe Hollyweird can distract them with another CGI tentpole movie franchise slapped together from a comic book, a toy, a board game, or a public-domain retread.
No comments:
Post a Comment