| Guns don't kill people, but the gun helps... my very slanted views on Gun Control |
| This rant has been a very long time in the making. It's predecessor, found on the old Globe site half a decade ago, recieved pretty wide acclaim and was probably my most highly-praised rant of all time. In fact, according to one e-mail, it converted a gun nut into a sane human being. Lets see if we can duplicate those results without a popular radio show promoting them! One of the most heatedly- debated topics in the United States today is the issue of gun control. Statistics are thrown in every direction, protests are held by both camps, and somewhere in the middle the legislators have to try and make peace. Staying in tune with the original version of this rant (and trying my best to duplicate its finer points), I won't be a stat-throwing moron, because you can find a lot of people like that. Statistics don't dictate common sense, only logic does. Browsing around this site, I'm sure it's no big surprise which side of the fence you'll find me on in this debate, but I could sit here and argue all day why I think guns are foolish without making any of the gun people observe what I feel are logical, valid points. So instead of arguing with my reasons for gun control, I'll instead systematically destroy the "logic" that gun people tend to use quite frequently. Before I get into it, I'd like to only make one point. I'm not pro-gun control... I'm pro-gun-banning. I think we should do EXACTLY what the FIRST HALF of the second ammendment promotes... militias. The second part? The part about people having the right to bear arms? Lets think about this, shall we? The 2nd ammendment was written in this nation's dark ages. People needed to hunt for food, kill off those pesky indians, and we hadn't yet established police in a very effective way, so the people were their own lines of defense against criminals. Things since then have changed dramatically, and the second half of the 2nd ammendment is no longer necessary if the first half of it stays true. I'll get back to this in a moment, though... for now, lets focus on the most popular arguements that gun people throw at people like me. Somewhere in the mix, you'll learn more about my views on the second ammendment. We need guns to hunt! The United States of America is easily one of the most technologically and agriculturally advanced nations in the world. Most people who hunt do it for "sport," and shy of a few sparse individuals who live in the middle of nowhere and make absolutely no contribution to society (you know... hill people), the people who hunt don't do it to feed their families... they do it because killing a defenseless animal makes them feel macho and cool. I'm in no way a vegetarian... in fact, when a vegetarian tells me meat is murder, I tend to moo at them while I eat my cheeseburger. But killing a dear in its natural habitat is far different from killing a cow that was raised with the sole intention of consumption. The cow was born to die, the dear was born to balance nature... there's a big difference. Hunting serves no purpose to most of the citizens of this country, and whether you eat the dear or not, it's still no arguement that you're quite capable of either (A) working in a butching plant, or (B) going to the supermarket like NORMAL PEOPLE. I need guns to protect me against criminals! Again, back to the banning of firearms altogether. See, if no one had guns, then who would you need to protect yourself against? They say guns are a great equalizer, but lets face it, if the person whose attacking you isn't armed, and you shoot them, that makes it murder. I think the only people who should have guns in this country are the cops, the soldiers, and the militias... not the Michigan militias... but the militias I'll mention shortly. If we do more to get rid of the guns and keep them out of the hands of civilians we can dramatically decrease the murders or accidental shootings in this country... because they won't happen. If you don't want your kid drinking cola, you stop buying cola. If your kid sneaks cola into the house, you dump it down the drain. Seems simple enough. And another thing about this rediculous arguement, and excuse me as I guesstimate a statistic: 9 out of 10 of the people who own guns don't have the heart to shoot someone. They repeatedly say they do, but they don't. Soldiers and police officers are trained to kill if the necessity (or order) arises. But anyone whose been to war will tell you that most soldiers have a hard time firing the first shot. Most cops will tell you that after they shot a criminal, the crime that person committed was no match for the weight of the person's death on their conscious. Even if a gun nut's family is at risk, my money says that most of them wouldn't be able to fire a shot. And if the criminal has killed in the past, he or she is extremely likely to call your bluff. Keep that in mind when you reach for your shotgun when you hear a bump in the night. We need firearms in case there's a revolution! The idea of the militia is that if the government gets too big for it's briefs, the people should maintain the ability to revolt. But most of the people in this nation are overweight, brainwashed slobs who don't have enough ambition to set the government straight if it goes awry. If the police overthrow a city, the citizens will be defenseless. They lack training, wit, and the guts to fight back. Most, if not all citizens, will be helpless against such despotism. So why don't we take the guns away from the citizens and give them to well-trained, citizen-organized militias? The sole purpose of such organizations would be to exist only as a means of deterrance from the government going ape**** and making our society Orwellian. They would be assembled from soldiers and former police, people with no criminal records, who would undergo strict military-style training and they would be mentally conditioned to put the people before the law. This, I assume, is what the founding fathers meant by "A well regulated militia." But you know what? I don't really know what they meant, and neither do you. All I can do is assume. I've never met a founding father, but the things they've said in the past, in famous speeches and in journals and other publications of the like, hint that this was their true meaning. If a revolution became necessary tomorrow, we'd all be in big trouble. Most of the people who own guns blindly follow whatever Bush and the Republican party tells us. So is a revolution around the corner? I severely doubt it. And if it became necessary, my money says that most of the people in this country will tell you the revolution will need to wait until American Idol goes off. -Matt Rock |
| June 28 2005 |
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