Politics
As Unusual
I can understand when two humans try to kill one another
because, well, I'm a human and, frankly, I know from
first-hand experience that we are, at best, modestly
evolved killer chimps… with guns.
As American chimps we're stuck with the Second Amendment,
an amendment to a 250-year-old document about basic killer
chimp rights that was designed to allow one race of killer
chimps to keep another race of killer chimps in bondage.
An amendment that should have become moot once this country
fought a bloody war that resulted in the end of such
subjection.
(Okay, enough of the killer chimp metaphor. Still valid,
though.)
It's completely normal, as I was saying, for one man
to kill another. Happens all the time. A disagreement
manifests itself between two irrational Americans. One
American pulls out a gun and, boom, end of argument.
One American, one gun, one death.
What's completely abnormal is for an American to buy
a weapon capable of hundreds, or thousands, of rounds
per minute who thereupon travels to a different location
to kill innocent Americans he's never met for reasons
that are never entirely clear.
We could end such scenarios now and forever by immediately
banning such weapons.
So let's do that. Let's try banning assault weapons,
anything capable of automatic or semi-automatic fire.
In their
stead, anyone determined to kill someone else, or themselves,
can buy a plain old revolver for mobile mayhem, a shotgun
for personal defense, or a long rifle for hunting the
way Artemis, the god of the hunt, intended.
No semi-automatic pistols. Revolvers only, just like
in the wild West.
The other thing about revolvers is if one is in your
face you can tell if the gun is fully loaded. Not the
first thing one would consider if on the wrong end of
a stick-up but it's a consideration.
To be clear, Americans who want guns can have guns, because
the Supreme Court says they can have guns, so let's do
our best to make sure it's just not the nuclear weapon
of guns.
The scenario of a madman entering a school armed with
a revolver, intent on destruction, would play out far
differently than one armed with, for example, an AR-15.
The children could actually scurry from danger rather
than cower and hope for the best because, unless the
killer is an excellent marksman, he's unlikely to pick
off more than a kid or two in full flight before the
school police, not having to worry in this instance about
a fusillade of shells chopping them into guacamole, will
put the animal down while he's dropping shells all over
the cafeteria floors in his haste to reload. And being
as the bullets from the pistol are of a slower velocity
and explosive capability those wounded may actually survive.
It's still not a pretty picture but an improvement over
what we have now.
The best of all possible Americas is a gun-free America,
which is not going to happen as long as the gun industry
and its entitled user-base continues to feed off one
another. I'm just offering a compromise, at least until
a virus hits this world that makes everyone's trigger
fingers fall off.
=Lefty=
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