Click to buy from the NRA
The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. That is the axiom promoted by the NRA in the person of its main mouthpiece, Wayne LaPierre. What it means is that the only path to a safer America is one in which every man, woman and child strong enough to point a weapon and coordinated enough to snap a clip into one ought to strap, thus rendering domestic terrorists and homicidal loonies outnumbered when they go out to shoot as many random citizens as they can.
I don’t know if anything more sensible has ever been proposed. Sure, weenie liberals might point out that when some young person, who has been rendered insane by video games and Hollywood, whips out a weapon and starts plugging passers-by, if all of those passers-by have gats of their own and start firing back, it could result in some hellacious crossfire and possibly some civilian casualties, or when the cops respond they might have trouble sorting out who was the bad guy with the gun and open fire on everybody, but here in the USA we’ve always been pretty casual about collateral damage and friendly fire. It’s what makes us a strong, non-wuss nation.
Once we’ve neutralized every bad guy with a gun out there, though, we’ve got to figure out how to stop the dumb guys with guns. Like Charles Vacca, who found the stairway to Heaven by trying to teach a nine-year-old girl how to fire an Uzi. Or Bill McCollom, an ex-police chief in Georgia, who was sleeping in the same bed as his wife and his gun, when the latter suddenly discharged on the former.
The dumb girls with guns make headlines too. Just the other day, Colondula Green dropped her purse in the emergency room. The gun inside went off, giving her child a nice facial wound in addition to whatever problem the kid was having that led to them being in the ER in the first place. Jamie Gilt, who we’ve mentioned before, got shot by her own child when her gun slid close enough to the little guy’s car seat for him to grab it. Another kid in Idaho made it plain he was sick of his mom dragging him through Walmart by grabbing her gun out of her purse and making sure she’d seen her last price rollback.
You can’t just dismiss these tragedies as Darwin at work. All right, you can, and that is in fact what I do, but perhaps the NRA could come up with something more effective. At least a new slogan:
THE ONLY WAY TO STOP A DUMB PERSON WITH A GUN IS A SMART PERSON WITH A GUN.
A smart person with a gun (SPAG for short) would have told Charles Vacca “Hey, those Uzis pack quite a kick. Why don’t you tell that little girl to go watch "Frozen" for the eighteenth time instead?” The SPAG would have told Police Chief McCollom “I’m sure your wife would appreciate a little nocturnal discharge, but you already have a weapon designed for that. Leave your piece in the bedside table drawer, where it belongs.”
A SPAG would have told Colondula “When you got your chiller in your purse, wrap that strap twice around your arm.” To Jamie, “Hey, you’re hot. Got time for a drink?”
Sometimes even smart guys get distracted.
But now that I’ve written these words, I see a major flaw with solving the problem of dumb people with guns by arming smart people with guns.
Smart people just need dumb people to pay attention to them. They don’t really need guns.
The NRA is never going to get behind that. Sorry I brought it up, Wayne.
I don’t know if anything more sensible has ever been proposed. Sure, weenie liberals might point out that when some young person, who has been rendered insane by video games and Hollywood, whips out a weapon and starts plugging passers-by, if all of those passers-by have gats of their own and start firing back, it could result in some hellacious crossfire and possibly some civilian casualties, or when the cops respond they might have trouble sorting out who was the bad guy with the gun and open fire on everybody, but here in the USA we’ve always been pretty casual about collateral damage and friendly fire. It’s what makes us a strong, non-wuss nation.
Once we’ve neutralized every bad guy with a gun out there, though, we’ve got to figure out how to stop the dumb guys with guns. Like Charles Vacca, who found the stairway to Heaven by trying to teach a nine-year-old girl how to fire an Uzi. Or Bill McCollom, an ex-police chief in Georgia, who was sleeping in the same bed as his wife and his gun, when the latter suddenly discharged on the former.
The dumb girls with guns make headlines too. Just the other day, Colondula Green dropped her purse in the emergency room. The gun inside went off, giving her child a nice facial wound in addition to whatever problem the kid was having that led to them being in the ER in the first place. Jamie Gilt, who we’ve mentioned before, got shot by her own child when her gun slid close enough to the little guy’s car seat for him to grab it. Another kid in Idaho made it plain he was sick of his mom dragging him through Walmart by grabbing her gun out of her purse and making sure she’d seen her last price rollback.
You can’t just dismiss these tragedies as Darwin at work. All right, you can, and that is in fact what I do, but perhaps the NRA could come up with something more effective. At least a new slogan:
THE ONLY WAY TO STOP A DUMB PERSON WITH A GUN IS A SMART PERSON WITH A GUN.
A smart person with a gun (SPAG for short) would have told Charles Vacca “Hey, those Uzis pack quite a kick. Why don’t you tell that little girl to go watch "Frozen" for the eighteenth time instead?” The SPAG would have told Police Chief McCollom “I’m sure your wife would appreciate a little nocturnal discharge, but you already have a weapon designed for that. Leave your piece in the bedside table drawer, where it belongs.”
A SPAG would have told Colondula “When you got your chiller in your purse, wrap that strap twice around your arm.” To Jamie, “Hey, you’re hot. Got time for a drink?”
Sometimes even smart guys get distracted.
But now that I’ve written these words, I see a major flaw with solving the problem of dumb people with guns by arming smart people with guns.
Smart people just need dumb people to pay attention to them. They don’t really need guns.
The NRA is never going to get behind that. Sorry I brought it up, Wayne.
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