Friday, May 10, 2013

Guns, Minus the Bombast

In the following blogpost, I am going to engage the topic of guns in America and I am going to do so without going ALL CAPS, without using any swears, and limiting my use of exclamation points.

But I am angry about guns.

To readers who are not currently residing in America, most Americans are angry about guns.  This is the current state of being an American: you probably weigh more than you should, are worried about money and angry about guns.  Most of us are angry because we are sick to death of the gross proliferation of guns and gun violence and our government's failure to do anything about that.  The minority of us (or as I call them, "them") are angry about how Barack Obama is politicking over the graves of dead children as part of his ongoing, insidious plan to take all the white people guns away and give them to illegal immigrant Mexicans who are Muslim and also Black Panthers, who are still totally a thing.

In the meantime, the NRA has long since ceased advocating on behalf of the purported "sportsman" (a rather nebulous, meaningless term itself) and is now focused with laser-like precision on enabling the endless profiteering of gun manufacturers which it does by fanning the flames of the tribal righty, whom you may recognize as that uncle or old college friend who believes there's a War on Christmas and that Barack Obama is a socialist.

We are ruined by tribal politics.  Most of us (a vast majority of us) are on board with broad gun control  measures involving things like mandatory background checks, banning large capacity magazines, tracking large scale ammunition purchases, etc.  But we are stagnant, suicidal, murdering and murdered, while our politicians vote against background checks after cashing NRA checks, muttering something about rights while a large, but quite narrowly focused chunk of our media maintains its relevance by endlessly flogging an increasingly paranoid Barack Obama conspiracy bombast.

I leave you with this quote from St. Ronald of the Huge Balls, Savior of America:

Certain forms of ammunition have no legitimate sporting, recreational, or self-defense use and thus should be prohibited.

And I ask you to imagine what Gretchen Carlson or Rush Limbaugh or, heaven forfend, Glenn Beck would have made of those same words had they come out of Barack Obama's mouth.  And that right there is all of the problem.

By the way, an eleven year old shot his twelve year old friend in the face today.  Just another crazy accident.  Fourth accidental shooting of children this week.  This is the only one where the victim lived.