Anywho, I was going to wrap it up and tie it with a bow
short and sweet in a Facebook status. But then I imagined how my page could
possibly blow up with...um...strong opinions (canon to the right of me, cannon
to the left) and I thought better of it.
Time and place and all that.
But let me say, it fascinates me no end how the slaughter of
20 children and 6 educators in a sleepytown public elementary school has
triggered such heretofore unimaginable trauma…for our poor gun enthusiasts, I
mean. In case you haven’t noticed, many
of these people are pooping their everloving pants.
And if there's anything I hate, it's to see people
suffering, so gun people, hear my voice, gently, soothingly in your ear, like a
lullabye:
You need to CHILL THE FUCK OUT.
First of all, let me tell you that I get it. I may be a
pinko hippie liberal America-ruining 47 percenter, but I honestly do get it. And
to show you how and why I get it, I will tell you a little story. (Because you
love my little stories, do you not?) It
all began on a rifle range in my senior year of college back in the early
1990s. You see, in order to gain favor with my affection withholding, emotionally
abusive, soul-sucking long-distance boyfriend (who also had a tiny penis), I
satisfied my college PE requirement by taking riflery.
The gun I got to shoot was a single shot .22 caliber
Winchester rifle. At first I couldn't get anywhere near the paper target and
had nary a prayer at making a hole in it. It was like "Lucy Goes to Gun
School." Oh that crazy redhead.
But within a few weeks, something completely unexpected
happened. I became a veritable lethal weapon.
Ok, that may be a slight exaggeration,
but I did get way damn better at it with every single practice. I learned the proper way to breathe and how to squeeze the trigger just right and I fell into an almost magically focused and
calm place I didn’t normally have access to (as a self-loathing bulimic with a really
mean boyfriend). Besides which, before long I was hitting the sumbitchin’ BULLSEYE.
Or right up against it. More than half
the time. That's the head of a pencil eraser at 50 yards, folks, and if you
know anything about my history of dexterity, agility, athleticism, and basic
eye-hand coordination (ok, lack thereof), you'll appreciate what kind of accomplishment
we're talking about here.
And you know what else? I’m not gonna lie. It felt fucking
great. And exhilarating. And stimulating.
So much so that I had fantasies (that I can neither confirm nor deny acting
out in real life) of throwing that big-armed, military-cut hulk of a gun instructor
down right there on the range after class and having my wicked Annie Oakley way
with him. Turns out that maybe my affection withholding, emotionally abusive, soul-sucking
long-distance boyfriend (the one with
the tiny penis) wasn't the only one who was impressed with my newfound talent. Or maybe not, because I repeat that the record
should show that any extra-curricular activities between me and my (hot) gun
instructor are a totally hypothetical tale for another totally hypothetical day.
The point is that I’m not completely talking out my ass here
in that I may have the vaguest idea of why a maniacally radical right-wing fanatic
with a radio show has gained national attention for wanting to have Piers
Morgan deported. Ok, no I don’t, I don’t
have the vaguest idea why that is, specifically…but even so, I might understand
your…passion, the littlest, tiniest bit.
But let’s come on back to a world where 26 priceless souls
were gunned down in an instant by a psychopath who stole this extremely
effective weaponry out of his soccer mom’s arsenal. In other words, let’s talk
priorities. Let’s talk about this fascinating
outcry I’m hearing about how our power-mongering president is taking our guns
away and creating a fascist state...just like Hitler did, and Stalin did, and
Chavez did, and let me say this.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Come back to us, you nutbags. Please please come back to us,
because you have gone off into the deep end of the crazy pool. But let’s say you’re right. Let’s pretend I’ve drunk whatever wackadoo
Kool-aide you’re in on and I totally agree with you and we should make our
stockpiles and hole ourselves up and wait for the day when we’re taken over
by…um…our own government. I might want
to remind you that we live in a world where some overzealous yahoo somewhere
can push the wrong button and an entire land mass can go up in mushroom smoke with an
earth-shattering kaboom. So whatchya got,
oh my dear Billy the Kid, that isn’t a pea-shooter by comparison? And how're
you fixed for shooting missiles out of the sky, Wild Bill? Or maybe you’re
ready to scramble your drones? Got that kind of fire power? If you do, don't
tell anybody, because I'm pretty sure that's not covered under your belovedly
revered and perversely fetishized sacred text known as the Second Amendment of
the United States Constitution (by the way, there’s so much more in there than
just your favorite part, you should read it sometime).
Oh but wait, I forgot. It's not just about the guns, per
se…it’s about protecting your families. It's about defending yerself and yer
kin aginst not only the pending rise of the EOE (Evil Obama Empire), but then
there’s the bad guys who are taking over our streets and lurking at our windows
in the darkest hours of the night and in our schoolyards in the bright light of
day. And when President Barack Hussein Hitler Stalin Chavez Mao Tse Tung Obama
comes for those guns, he’ll have to nuke them out of your cold dead vaporized
fingers. That's what it's all about.
Or is it.
Or is it.
I will offer my humble opinion on the matter, like it or
not. I’ve hung around your type enough to know the truth, and you know it too.
Three simple words.
You. Love Guns.
Can we just cut the crap and agree on something so obvious
it's practically a cartoon? Like Harley riders love hundreds of pounds of steel
vibrating between their thighs. Like nerds love Star Wars collectibles. Like I
love my DVR. (And double A batteries.
And the coffee bean.) Can you PLEASE just admit it? In fact, I'd invite you to
do more than that. What you ought to do is EMBRACE it. Fling open your windows
and scream it to the masses. I LOVE MY GUNS!!!!
Because your refusal to openly admit this simple and
utterly transparent fact, along with your insistence on pretending that you're
all just a bunch of freedom-fighting Constitutional purists, is quite
frankly constipating the whole works. You go on creating and perpetuating all
these ludicrous tall tales of looming fascism, hoping against hope to scare the
bejeezus out of all us dullards who don't share your enthusiasm for those greasy
oily things that go bang. And don’t get me wrong, you’re hilarious, it makes
for excellent comedy. But the trouble is that there are all these freaking
lawmakers who care how you vote. And that translates into disaster, because no
matter how much compassion and lovingkindness there is (and there TRULY is) in the
real world that we (relatively) non-insane people live in, with millions of souls—left,
right, and center—who would do anything humanly possible to prevent the
slaughter of even one more innocent, the noise you make threads us into a continuous
loop of idiocy that strips any of us of adequate power to make even the smallest
constructive step forward. A constructive step that might make it so that I
don’t have to turn on my TV one morning and have to spend the next several
weeks in the fetal position in a corner of the couch sobbing in unrelenting
empathy over immeasurable tragedy that the craziest amongst you are doing your
best NOT to prevent. I mean seriously,
whose side are you on?
Can I tell you how much all this pisses me off?
So let’s all get real.
The second amendment, that old friend, that eternal safeguard against
tyranny, it ain't goin nowhere. No matter that the well-organized militia
called for in the 1770s is a complete anachronism in today's world of assault
rifles, air to ground missiles, nuclear warheads, the Death Star, and whatever
else they got percolating out there in the Arizona desert--you still have
nothing to fear. How can I be so cocky about this? Be reasonable. If we pinko
commie hippies can't even get an equal rights amendment passed, and if the most
stellar female is not allowed to make as much money as the stupidest ass of a
male, and if we still have gays and lesbians that aren’t allowed to get married
in the land of the free and the home of the brave, do you REALLY think we can budge
ole number 2? Mark my words, it's in
stone, you can unclench your bowels. I’m even pretty sure that if you read
really close you’ll find it nuanced into that one that repeals prohibition,
just for good measure. Because what goes
better with the reinstatement of liquor than a happy reminder of your right to
shoot rounds into the air while you hoot and holler like an overcaffeinated
Yosemite Sam.
So how about you all cool your jets. I’ll repeat it, when we
pry it from your cold, dead, fingers, yes, absolutely, you got it--so go clean
it and take it apart and put it back together again and oil it up and wipe it
down and stroke it and love it and rub your lips up against it all you want (you
do so, don’t lie). It’s yours til death do you part.
But about that...is there really nothing...NOTHING we can do
to help those cold dead fingers not be the ones belonging to a bunch of
kindergartners and moviegoers and mall shoppers? Do you really believe there is
NO need to do anything different when it comes to…all this gun crap? Is it
really a bad thing to make it harder to get weapons like the Columbine and
Aurora and Newtown psychos got hold of?
Is there really no call for any changes to be made? Should a garden
variety mental patient be able to walk into a gun show and stroll away with a
firearm that can spray enough bullets per second to wipe out his entire family
before he can say "Wendy I'm home"?
How come it’s easier to get a gun out of Walmart than an over-the-counter decongestant?
It’s true, take it from me. Uh oh, look out for the crazy-eyed broad with
the stuffy nose, that box of Sudafed she just signed out from behind the
counter might be the last remaining ingredient
she needs to blow up the meth lab bubbling away in her filthy kitchen.
Columbine and Aurora and Newtown and all the others have
been tragedies where a few people who were mentally ill or demonically
possessed or a combination thereof did horrible things with guns that they
should not have been able to get their hands on in a million years. And instead
of the appropriate unilateral rallying of an entire nation dedicated to one
common goal—that it NEVER EVER EVER happen again—instead what we’ve got is a bunch
of maniacs screaming and yelling that the Nazis are coming and Obama is Hitler
reincarnate and we’re all gonna die we’re all gonna die cuz they’re coming to
get our guns.
Have the lunatics completely taken over the asylum or does
anybody else see anything effed up about this?
Seriously, while the number of bad people with guns in their
hands may be infinitesimal compared to the number of you law abiding citizens
who wouldn't harm a soul (at least not on purpose, because I'm sure at least a
few of you are useless klutzes with shrapnel lodged in at least one foot…or
maybe in your elderly hunting buddy’s face…whatever), isn't any single person
who is gunned down by a lunatic one too many?
Isn't it? Or does that apply only if that person happens to be someone you know and love? What if it’s your sweet old Grampy that’s got a face fulla buckshot because he
picked the wrong sociopathic Vice President of the United States as a hunting
buddy? What’s your answer then? Does it
have to happen to you before you give a shit?
Seems that way. And that is this
girl’s definition of an abomination.
A few years back my
husband and I were in our local mall. We
were 8 or so months pregnant with our first baby, and we were there for the
sole purpose of finding some snazzy pjs to take to the hospital when the big
day finally came. When we’d finished up at Preggos R Us and stepped outside the
building, there was police tape everywhere and it was a while before we were
allowed to walk to our car. Because in the particular section of the lot where we
were parked, someone had just shot and killed an Old Navy employee.
Yep, turns out the 40-year-old shooter thought his
girlfriend might be in a relationship with her boss, a 22-year-old store
manager…so he did what every unstable nutbag with a rifle might do. He killed
him. A few minutes before I, my husband, our unborn child, and countless others strolled on out there into the line
of fire.
The killer used a Marlin .22-caliber bolt-action rifle.
Probably a lot like the one I used in my college class. And incidentally,
although I'm sure you already know this, you don't need a permit to purchase or
carry one of these in New York State. You don't need to register it. You don't
need any kind of a license to own or operate one. (Google it if you don’t
believe me.) And it just so happens that right down the street from this murder,
the one we almost walked into, is a store called Gander Mountain, a handy place
where you can have your pick of a gun like this and walk right out the door
with it. How insanely convenient. I do
not know where he got his gun, the news reports did not say. But it’s not a far
stretch to believe that he walked in and out of the store, drove a minute or
two up the street to the mall, and then all that was left for this guy (who had
a history of violent behavior and suicide threats) was to park his car, wait
for his target to get off work, and shoot him point blank in the chest with a
gun that was easier for him to purchase than it is for me to fill my ritalin
prescription.
Too bad.
Good thing this kind of thing so seldom happens, right NRA?
Well guess what. Once isn't seldom enough. Not for that 22-year-old. Not for
his family. Not for any of us.
You may not be willing to admit that something's loose. But the rest of us know.
Make it stop, or at least get out of the way of those who
want to try.
It’s already too heartbreakingly late.
