Guns and the Settlers

The American identity is founded on individuality. I get it. The first settlers had only themselves and family to count on. That kind of rugged persistance is at the heart of the American psyche. I've got it in me too. It's a really good thing.

But the world is different now. No one lives expressly on their own merit. How many people had something to do with the manufacture of your car? How many people are involved in extracting and processing the fuel that powers it? How many people put your computer together? How many people make sure you have the electricity to run it? Extract the coal... transport it... run the plants?

We're not pioneers... okay? We are not primitive homesteaders, as romantic and admirable as that notion might be. We are part of a sophisticated and highly complex society. We are interconnected in ways unimagined in human history. Money is becoming more liquid, transportation cheaper, and technological communication more tightly woven. I for one like it that way.

As an aside, if you go for the frontier thing, you can still do it. Alaska is the best place, but the deep West is still good for it. Wyoming, Idaho...

But the rest of us know that as a society gets more complex, it requires more laws. With cars come speed limits. With the internet comes new child porn laws. Its the nature of human organization. Please, frontier people... get over it. Laws really are necissary, not because YOU need to be told what to do, but because some other dumb fuck does. Hell, I dream of the day handguns are outlawed because I shudder at the fact of some 80 IQ asshole who's mama didn't love him has a fucking 45 with hollow-points. Doesn't that bother you? Are you a parent? I am.

I'm willing to give up my FREEDOM to carry a gun in exchange for the RIGHT to live in a country were dumb fucking assholes can't get guns. I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. My best friend growing up was in a gang at age 15 and owned a sawed-off shotgun. Others in the gang had handguns. Are you hearing me? 13, 14 year-olds with lethal weaponry. I'm a city boy. I hated knowing someone might have death up their sleeve at any moment. I've had three guns pulled on me. Twice shown a gun, which gets the fucking point across, I guarentee. And once pulled and pointed. That one sucked. I faced my mortality in that moment. I really thought I was going to die. Because that's what handguns do: kill people.

Here's the big difference again, for those who missed it the first time: If I live alone on a prarie, you'd better not even try to take my gun. But if I live in a city with millions of inhabitants, I would way rather have no guns. Its a game of odds. If one in 100,000 is an out of control crazy fuck, that means Manhattan has 16 serial-killer crazy fucks right now. Just walking around on that tiny island. What is it? Six miles by two?

I look at a country like Great Britan. Once one of the greatest empires known to man. They subjigated entire other cultures to work and pay taxes to them. India. Africa. Australia. The United States. Canada. All over the world, England has left its mark. It remains a world power, although diminished by WWII and the passing of the 'age of empires.'

Now they have a modern, prosperous nation. But without guns. No one has guns. Not even the cops. They don't need them. Gun deaths are so much lower it's rediculous. Rediculous. Like 13 to 15,347 kind of rediculous. No one dies from gunshot. There just aren't that many guns around. They're highly illegal. (In the US any random terrorist jackass can buy a gun at a gun show.) Pawn shops have slightly higher requirements, but just barely.

Can I remind you that we're talking about the UK, who once bragged that "The sun never set on the British Empire?" They subjigated entire cultures at gunpoint, yet... kept guns out of their own personal lives.

Now, let's go that last mile. Let's look deep inside and see that England represents the very boogey-man that modern conservatives fear when they talk about 'government.'

England never feared its own government. They have strict gun laws. As it was establishing colonies across the world with the liberal use of musketry, it was keeping the lethal consequences of gunpowder away from its own citizens.

So along comes the American Revolution. We can't stand the British government's heavy handed rule anymore. We vow to never again be subjigated in such a way. We write gun ownership into our founding document, since guns were essential to our overthrowing the tyrants.

But what an irony. Our own neurosis leftover from British domination has led us into a love affair with guns that has now killed more Americans than all the wars we've been in combined.

Yet people still hold on to their guns, claiming that if you take them away, only criminals will have them. Ignoring the fact that if you stop making them, and destroy all you find, eventually even criminals will no longer have them, with the exception of the criminal elite. The criminal elite do not rob convenience stores. They do not shoot up schools.

By the way, most police support this idea. The only people who do not are the ones who somehow feel that a handgun makes them safer. In other words, delusional cowards.

Owning a gun does not make you safer. It is more likely to be used against you or discovered by a child. Furthermore, your right to own that gun puts millions of guns on the streets and into the hands of every strung out 15 year old crack head out there. The presence of handguns makes us all more unsafe. Period.

I almost feel foolish arguing this, it is so obvious. Get rid of handguns. Stop making them. They are an unnecessary hazard.

Plus... they don't make your dick any bigger.