Tag Archives: guns

Fuck it. Let’s Just Give Everybody all The Guns.

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I have an idea.



See, as this whole gun control debate rages in congress, each side seems unwilling to back down from their position like every goddamn issue in American politics ever. Personally, I’m in favor of stricter gun regulation. At the very least expanded background checks.



I’m aware that there are many reasons for being pro-gun. This is a very complicated, nuanced issue and you can’t just boil it down to “people want more guns because ______!” Everybody has their reasons, some hold more validity than others and some more personal than others.



I think, however, that a lot of people don’t truly understand the ease of killing that a gun provides. Probably not a majority, but more than you’d think. They get that guns can kill but don’t fully absorb the fact that it’s just a flick of the finger. Flick – dead. The slightest accident, the one time you don’t follow all the safety precautions can lead to somebody accidentally not being alive anymore. One slight overreaction, one lapse in judgment or temper flare up is now a 2nd degree murder. It can happen to anybody. It has happened to a lot of people. One time it almost happened to me.



Every year from when I was 12 to 18 I would go pheasant hunting with my dad, brother and a few other people (uncles, friends of his, etc). We were never really big outdoorsmen but one time he thought it’d be fun to try hunting, pheasants seemed like a good place to start and we had fun so it just sort of kept doing it and turned it into a tradition. I’ve even gone a few times as an adult to South Dakota or southern MN and always had fun. One of the first times I went out, though, I almost accidentally shot my dad.



It was somewhere in southern MN late in the season. My dad and I had gone with a couple of his work buddies and we had split into groups of two. I was far from experienced but this wasn’t my first time out and I had undergone the MN firearm safety course. In it, they repeat over and over again that you are never to point a firearm at another person or yourself and to always treat a gun as it’s loaded. Treat it like it’s loaded even if you know for a fact that it’s not. Following this creates good habits until keeping the barrel away from a person just becomes a subconscious thing you do. I followed this to the letter, knowing boomstick=dangerous but as we were walking through a soybean field and I got a little bored trying to scare up a pheasant (late in the season you have to practically kick one in the ass to get it to fly) I cradled the gun with the barrel pointing towards the ground as my dad walked in front of me.



The gun wasn’t pointed at him but he was close enough to my line of fire that I should have just had the barrel over my shoulder or off to the side. I tripped over a rock, stumbled and jerked the gun hard enough that the gun fired without me even touching the trigger. The pellets hit the ground, ricocheted off and a cloud of dust hit the back of my dad’s jeans. He wasn’t hurt. It was a .410 with birdshot and the soft, plowed farmland absorbed a lot of the pellets’ velocity but we were both really shook up. Just a slight jerk upwards and he’d have been in the hospital or worse. I profusely apologized and he assured me that it was an accident and he was fine but maybe we should take the gun safety a little more seriously in the future. I’ve gone hunting and shooting at the range plenty of times since and every time I’ve made sure I was following every single minute rule that was taught in the gun safety course.



This is why I think we should give everybody guns.



I truly believe that if you want tighter gun regulation, we should issue a firearm and permit to carry anywhere to every single person in the country over the age of 12 (that’s when I got my first gun). Let this country just turn into a giant standoff. Give people an idea of what it’s like to actually be responsible for that kind of power. Let this go on for a few months and see what public opinion of guns is like after that. After people have actually had a chance to get to know them.

You walk into a grocery store and you know that everybody is packing some sort of heat. Go to the movies and know that every single person in there with you has some sort of loaded gun. Your kid’s school play? Every parent in the auditorium and teacher backstage has a cannon at the ready. I’m sure it would make for a much more polite society.



After a few months we’ll have congress put it to a vote. Is this how we still want it? Now that everybody’s had a chance to really get to know guns, how much do we want them to be a part of our lives? I’m sure that some people would love the 1 person = 1 gun thing even after the trial period but I think we might end up with tighter gun regulation.



Just a thought.

Something About This Whole Gun Debate we can all Agree on.

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Last week’s tragedy in Sandy Hook has kicked up a lot of dust. The way the news rushed to get info out to the public caused a bunch of errors and unsubstantiated rumors. Fox News has pulled out the old Red Herring of violent video games to kick around. And, of course, the whole gun control debate has come to the forefront. Everybody from high level politicians to half of my goddamned friends list on facebook have been out there demanding that guns should either be banned or given to teachers to prevent this from happening in the future.



I have my opinions about gun control. I haven’t really talked about it on social media because I’m not about to change any minds but of course I have my opinions on guns. Sure, I could post on facebook about how the “deer rifle” this guy used seems to be designed to take out a platoon of genetically engineered armored cyborg deer with flame spewing antlers. I could tweet about how a small part of me wishes that the government would instate martial law just to see you gun nuts try to fight back against the might of the world’s most well funded military with your precious fucking firearms but I’d be doing nothing more than pissing off people who disagree with me. Also that would be way too long for a tweet.



I don’t fault people for reacting strongly, though. Things like last week’s massacre are hard to process and bring out a lot of strong emotions in people. There’s bound to be some harsh words and irrational responses. No matter what your opinion on gun control and however you’re feeling about this whole incident, though, there’s one thing that everybody in this country can agree on. These are the dumbest fucking parents in the world.



For those of you who don’t want to click the link, that right there is a story about an 11 year old who brought a gun to school. The gun was allegedly given to him by his parents for protection in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre. The kid pulled the gun in recess and put it to a friend’s head and threatened to fucking kill her if she tattled. Thankfully, the gun wasn’t loaded considering there are roughly 650 accidental gun deaths and over 15,000 accidental shooting injuries a year.



Whatever. I think we can all agree that these parents should not be in charge of kids. Even the biggest gun nut wouldn’t think that the solution for the gun control debate is “give kids guns”. Nobody ever thinks “give kids guns” is the correct answer for anything ever except maybe to the question of “how do you be the worst parent ever?”



More proof that these are shitty parents is they raised a kid who accepted the gun and took it to school. Remember. This kid is 11. That’s 6th, maybe 5th grade. This kid should know not to take a gun to school. Just to check I asked my 12 year old stepson what he would do if, after hearing about the Sandy Hook shooting, I gave him a gun to take to school for protection. He said he wouldn’t have accepted it. Smart kid.



So thank you, worst parents ever. In a time where our nation is fiercely divided you bring us all together in agreement that you’re incredibly fucking horrible at being parents.

Thank You Veterans

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Today America honors all the soldiers that have fought for this country and survived (no offense, dead vets but you already have memorial day!). These men and women work the toughest job in the world for little pay and almost no recognition and it’s because of them that we can call this country the land of the free. On behalf of all civilians I just want to say to all the Vets out there in every branch of the military, thank you for shooting all those people.


You shot them in the face, in the chest and in the arms. You shot people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, France and Germany. You shot them from trenches, from trucks, from planes and from boats. Sometimes you blew them up with bombs. You shot the fuck out of them.


This day isn’t just about the vets who shot people. Many vets out there supplied the guns for shooting, made sure the vehicles were running so they could take the soldiers to the people that needed to be shot. Some vets told others who to shoot and some helped heal the vets who got shot while trying to shoot people. Every soldier out there matters. Not just the ones shooting the guns.


We honor veterans this day because it’s not easy shooting a bunch of people. You have to worry about them shooting back at you. Sometimes you have to worry about accidentally getting shot by soldiers on your side. You might get blown up with a bomb. Serving in the military is a clusterfuck of explosions and bullets and murder. Even if you don’t get shot or exploded you may come out of the military messed up in the head because you had to shoot a bunch of people and/or you were getting shot at all the time. Frankly, you’d probably be some sort of sociopathic monster if that didn’t mess you up at least a little.


When you think about it it’s all pretty fucked up. Frankly, I think rather than spending Veteran’s day honoring vets we should spend it profusely apologizing to them.


So sorry, veterans. Sorry the world’s governments are so messed up that they use war as a way to solve problems. Don’t get me wrong, you still deserve our thanks because you’re ultimately protecting us from other governments’ fucked up agendas but the system is still broken and you pay for it with your lives, limbs and sanity. Maybe in the future wars can be fought by robots shooting the shit out of each other instead of people. Of course, if war ever becomes robot based then Japan will take over the world in a week.