Here’s A Gun You Really Need.
If there was one moment in the last few years which
reminded me of how fuck*d up this country has become over guns, it was when
Sleazy Don introduced one of his guests at last night’s SOTU address, an
81-year old from Pittsburgh, Judah Samet, who just missed
being inside the Tree of Life synagogue last year, but also just missed being
incinerated in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945.
Now the idea that Sleazy Don, who somehow couldn’t
distinguish between some college kids running around a Confederate statute and
a bunch of Nazis yelling anti-Semitic slogans at Charlottesville, would cynically
use this man’s life to promote his warped views of American values isn’t bad
enough. What’s worse is the fact that this schmuck New York landlord has gone
out of his way again and again to push messages supporting the idea that
walking around with an assault rifle is a good thing.
If it were the case that a gun will really protect you
from being the victim of a violent crime, then go ahead, buy your gun, go to
the range, practice shooting it all the time and just make sure that the target
you are using actually moves – do all those things in a regular (let’s say
weekly) way and maybe, just maybe you’re ready to defend yourself with a Glock
or an AR-15.
But the truth is, you’re not going to do all those things
and sooner or later, usually sooner, the gun will wind up in a drawer, or under
the mattress or somewhere else where it shouldn’t be found. And then what do
you do when the gun is found
by your four-year old who then shoots you in face?
My point is that the gun industry exists to fulfill the
fantasies of lots of grown men who grew up watching Dirty Harry or Bruce Willis
movies, and the gun makers, knowing they are selling a product which nobody
except cops really need, is very adept at catching and channeling the feelings
created by cultural motifs that celebrate the positive role of guns. Is there
any guy who doesn’t feel an emotional surge every time Old Glory is hoisted at
the top of Mt. Suribachi or as Virgil, Morgan, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday walk
towards the OK Corral?
Two weeks ago the gun industry
held its annual trade fest, the SHOT Show, at Las Vegas, with the theme of this
year’s show being ‘Gear Up.’ What kind
of gear are they talking about? What this
means is any product connected in any way to military-style weapons, in
particular assault rifles which used to be known as ‘modern sporting rifles,’
but since Trump came along, sporting guns are out and tactical guns are in.
One of the featured items at the FN booth was the
assault rifle pictured above. It’s a civilian version (meaning it shoots in
semi-auto mode) of a design model known as a SCAR, which stands for Special
Operations Combat Assault Rifle, which is carried by combat units just about
everywhere, particularly special ‘ops’ units whose job is to get in quickly,
kill as many as they can, and get out again. Now if this gun doesn’t evoke the
greatest fantasies of all, I don’t know what does. Think about how we got our
hands on Osama bin Laden, okay?
You can own one of these pieces for the paltry sum of
$4,500 bucks. And what you get for that mere bag of shells is a gun that is
considered – ready? – the non plus ultra
sniper gun. Now why in God’s name does anyone need a sniper gun?
The shooter who walked into the Tree of Life Synagogue didn’t
have an FN SCAR, but he did have an AR-15, which does exactly what the SCAR does
except at a much more reasonable price. And the fact that Trump continues to
promote the violence caused by such weapons while telling us that surviving a
mass shooting is what makes America ‘great,’ has to rank as about the sickest
commentary on gun violence that has ever been made.
