On gun control…

I’m a bit more calm today, so I want to talk about guns. Note, I didn’t say rant, and I will try very hard to avoid my usual favorite words to make my point. On this topic, I’m willing to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and watch my tone. (Yes, this is bordering on a miracle, so I do hope you appreciate my restraint.)

Yesterday, gun fans online made ubiquitous comments like “it’s too soon to talk about gun control.” I’m sorry, but how many mall and school shootings do we need before it’s not too soon? Over 10,000 people died in the US from guns last year, and most other civilized nations didn’t break triple digits. Why is this not the right time to talk about gun control?

Gun people, the first thing you need to understand is, no one is suggesting that you lose your second amendment rights. But there does need to be some talk about assault rifles.

Let’s use an example, Joe N.(ormal) Hunter. Joe has a handgun in a kid-proof gun safe for home defense, and he stores his hunting rifles in a larger gun safe in the closet. Joe is responsible with his guns and has taught his kids to never trust that a gun isn’t loaded. Joe has a shotgun for pheasant hunting, a rifle for deer, and another for boar or bear, or some other large game.

This is fine. I don’t need a gun to go hunt chicken or cow at the store, but if Joe’s a DIY meat collector with a taste for venison or wild turkey, I’m cool with him. But I don’t believe Joe should have an assault rifle. As a hunter, the ability to hammer out a clip into one animal isn’t sporting, and it isn’t necessary if Joe has spent a bit of time learning to shoot. A good hunter needs one bullet to do the job, two if the first was merely a crippling shot.

Assault rifles are not made to hunt animals anyway. They were designed by the military to lay down suppressing fire and prevent human enemies from advancing. They were made with a principle of quantity over skill. So you hand Joe’s Army cousin, John C.(rappy) Shooter, an assault rifle to give him multiple chances to hit his enemy while burst firing.

Assault rifles were made to kill people, and when Bush lifted the ban on these kinds of guns, he opened the doorway to mass shootings with many more victims than we’d get with a handgun.

There is no defense from the hunter’s position that they need to empty a clip in Bambi. There is no argument for home defense that a gun owner needs an assault rifle to stop a thief when a Magnum revolver has similar stopping power per bullet, and it carries near the same intimidation level when it’s aimed at you. Look down a barrel that big, and you can readily imagine a similar sized hole in you. If you still go on the attack with a gun aimed at you, you are a moron, and I feel no regret for some gun owner putting a bullet in your dumb ass, fatal or not.

But gun people, you’ve got to stop acting like gun control is an all or nothing proposition. You can keep your hunting rifles and shotguns. You can keep your handgun for self-defense. But I want to suggest that we reinstate the assault rifle ban, because these are machines meant only for killing other humans. You don’t need them. You have plenty of other guns. The only reason you could want a gun that spits out so many bullets is that you are looking forward to the end times and your chance to kill everyone you don’t like. And that’s not a defensible position. It’s an irrational fear of the unknown bordering on paranoid delusion.

So please, can we not wait for another mass shooting to decide that it’s finally the right time to talk about gun control? Because I’m tired of turning on the news to see that someone else who shouldn’t have an assault rifle bought one legally and then went to town to bag a dozen innocent people for no damned reason.