Please
don't take the following as an attack on guns but instead on faulty logic and poorly
conceived memes:
No, spoons
don’t make people fat, pencils don’t cause people to misspell, and cars aren’t
outlawed just because people drive drunk. But unlike a gun, a pencil has an
eraser. If you misspell a word, you can change it. You can’t unshoot someone.
Likewise, if you gain weight by eating too much, you can put down the spoon and
lose weight by dieting. You can’t make things right by putting the gun down
after using it and not using it for a while. Dead is a pretty chronic condition. Plus, I’ve never seen someone use
a spoon to make someone else fat. As for cars, every possible improvement has
been made to make driving safer. If they did the same with guns, the bullets would be made from NERF. And if you’re caught driving while drinking
you lose your driving privileges. Shouldn’t anyone caught in possession of a gun
while intoxicated lose their gun possession privileges by such logic? Lastly,
cars, spoons, and pencils are pretty damn useful items. You can’t eat soup with
a gun. You can’t write your grocery list with an AR-15 automatic rifle (I know
it’s not an automatic rifle, but I said it because I know it gets people’s
panties in a twist. It did, didn’t it?). In short, guns don’t have much use for
the average person, cars do. If we woke up tomorrow in a world without cars, our
system would come crashing down. I have to think if guns disappeared, we’d all
be better off.
Again, I
didn’t write this to pick on guns or gun owners, I just like to follow a metaphor
to its logical conclusions. If you can’t handle a meme responsibly, I have
little confidence in your ability to handle a bullet-dispensing death machine. Not
everybody finds those nasty things as endearing as you do. Not everyone
collects them the way granny does her Precious Moments figurines. But to each
his own. Spend a little bit of time respecting the feelings and concerns of
others, and perhaps others will be able to tolerate the filthy and dangerous compulsion
you have and the price society pays for it. Oh, and respect my right to smoke
whatever substance gives me pleasure, so long as I don’t blow it in your face
or threaten your children with it. My right to the pursuit of happiness precedes the 2nd amendment.
I know guns
don’t seem threatening to other gun lovers, but they can be quite off-putting
to those of us who dislike them. If you can’t appreciate how you appear threatening
to others when carrying or talking fetishistically about guns, imagine how someone
of a different ethnicity and religion speaking in a different language while
holding a gun would make you feel. Because believe it or not, not everyone sees
you as the protector of their way of life. Not everybody sees you as a good
guy, no matter how pure of heart you might be. Because a lot of us judge you by
your very need to carry a gun in the first place, fair or not. If you were
carrying a cobra, it wouldn’t be any different. You might be a veterinarian who
just saved the animal’s life, I still wouldn’t want to stand next to you and
would feel better once you left. It’s just a natural reaction to danger, and guns
are dangerous. Guns are dangerous, which is main reason a lot of people don’t own
them. They don’t like to be near them, and in all honesty they don’t understand
other people who have a passion for them. If you can’t understand that, just
imagine Brussels Sprouts that explode.
Now I’m not
certain what will help stop gun violence, but I propose a new law. Before you
can purchase a gun, you must be able to prove you have a sense of humor.
Because if you can’t appreciate the spirit in which this was written, you
probably shouldn’t have a gun in the first place, right? Right?
Seriously,
some of my best friends are gun owners. And how about that Charlton Heston, isn’t
he a credit to his race?
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