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| -Land of the Free |
| Guns are a national disgrace |
| 2015-10-04 |
| From the same guy that tagged Barky as a "Lightworker". Personally, I think he misspelled lightweight. Guns are, in a word, perfect. Guns are unparalleled, really; they are small masterpieces of precision engineering, one of humanity’s most deliberate, perfectly designed tools. There is simply no denying a gun’s intention, no possible misunderstanding of its reason for existing. Unlike cars, knives, drugs, alcohol or any other freely available, potentially deadly items which can (and do) kill lots of people, guns are the only commercially available instrument in the world that we designed specifically for the purpose of the eradication of life. A gun’s nature is, as they say in the tech world, baked in to the hardware. It understands nothing else. Guns are objects, inanimate and unfeeling, not sentient. Which is to say: Guns are death made physical, palpable in the hand. They are our basest, least sacred energies – hate, fear, paranoia – compressed into metal and explosives. No one holds or fires a gun without some fundamental understanding of this fact – that he could, if he so desired, kill anything he wanted, right now, in an instant – and that’s essentially all you’re supposed do with it. Guns have a deterrence value, which is beyond your characterization of the gun as having a deadly use. Without the threat of imminent death or serious wounds from its use, then anyone with any weapon -- not just guns -- can enforce their will on another. The fact that most gun owners do not do this, and manage to resist using their guns for what we specifically created them to do, is merely incidental, and actually a kind of failure: it denies the gun’s primary objective. Gun owners actually know this, as a warped point of pride. “Hey, I own lots of guns and don’t kill things.” How nice for you. Tell it to all the dead. "Most gun owners" as in 99.999 percent of them, which is more than a failure; it is a testament to the users of guns that they do preserve life by making the possibility of death or severe injury an added element into a decision by a bad guy to impose his will on another. If past mass shootings are any indication, gun sales in America will enjoy a nice sales surge after the Oregon massacre. Because of course the answer to all the gun deaths is always... more guns. As the nature of a gun is the abject destruction of life, to use it merely for target practice or for “pleasure” is, essentially, to do it a disservice; you are thwarting its objective, insulting the lethal disposition we ourselves poured into the molten metal. Much like a sports car that “begs” to be driven fast, or an expensive designer dress that begs to be worn to an extravagant gala, a gun begs only to be fired at another living thing, to annihilate it. And eventually, it will be. I don't fool myself about the purpose of the gun, and target practice is simply a way to ensure that the first round through the last fired will hit its mark and stop a threat. The gun I used is transported and loaded safely, fired safely with consideration to others around me. It serves a warning to anyone that there are limits to bad behavior, and that limit is 2850 feet per second. The cavitation on impact is a bonus for bad behavior. This is why we have the headlines all wrong: Guns are not being abused or wielded incorrectly in America. They are not “falling into the wrong hands,” ill-begotten by “evil people” and “crazies” and “psychopaths.” This is not true in the slightest. Good to know. Just the opposite, actually. When yet another mass killing occurs, when another woman is murdered by her ex-husband (which happens every single day in America, BTW), when another despondent teen kills herself with her dad’s gun (ditto), when more males – and it is almost always males – shoot each other in the street, when more schoolchildren die at the hands of effortlessly well-armed adults, these are not tragedies. It’s exactly what we expect to happen. That also is what a fascist thinks and wants supporters to believe. The Wayne LaPierre admonition -- that the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy similarly armed with the will to use the gun -- rings true everytime we see another massacre. The guns are, in a very real way, just fulfilling the destiny we instilled into them. They are doing exactly what we designed them to do, what we demand they do, as physical extensions of our fear and rage. You can’t shove 10 billion tons of carcinogens into the atmosphere and not expect massive outbreaks of cancer. You can’t put 300 million precision tools of death into the culture and not expect their latent, intrinsic objective to be realized, every single day. All true. Large numbers of guns available inevitably will be a proximate cause for shootings. That's math. This is why all religious and spiritual traditions the world over agree: Guns are for cowards. They provide only the thinnest illusion of authority, the ugliest veneer of control, the most artificial aspect of authentic manhood. Like I'm going to take the advice of a lunatic who praised Barak Obama as a "lightworker" as to what is "manhood". I'll take the label "coward" just as long as you take the label "pussy". We will then see who survives a firefight. The man with a gun, or the pussy complaining about too many guns. Proof? Simple: Just remove any gun fetishist’s (or terrorist’s, or mass shooter’s) stockpile of weapons, and watch what happens. They are instantly deflated, lost, rendered vulgar and human. All illusions of power and machismo vaporize, leaving only the base energies of hate and fear they often don’t understand, much less know how to transmute into something like kindness and love. Dr. Morford and his ten second mental health diagnosis. Try Chris Covert's two second diagnosis. Whoever wants to kill large numbers of unarmed people with newly acquired guns is like a mad dog. And guns are a cure for mad dogs. Do you wish to pretend otherwise? To claim that guns are effective for safety, or self defense, or a warped sense of patriotism? This is not merely laughable, it’s the opposite of the truth, of established fact. When Barky leaves office, we will see who has a "warped sense of patriotism". I bet it won't be a gun owner. Put it this way: If guns really conferred stability and protection, we’d be the safest, most peaceful nation on Earth. We are, instead, the most violent and deadly. We are viewed the world over as the most dazzling of bullies, and of hypocrites: We pretend to promote the values of democracy, peace and freedom the world over, and yet we kill one another – and anyone who disagrees with us – more horrifically, and more consistently, than any terrorist cult could ever imagine. Embrace the "we", Mark. It's your laws already on the books which constrict firearms transfers, and your loons who read and agree with what you have to say about guns, yet who will buy them and use them in the way you prescribe. The bottom line is simple enough: America is, by every metric you can name, a far worse place for all our guns. They bring nothing of positive, uplifting value: no kindness, no strength, no peace, no divinity, no sense of community or human connection. Neither did your "lightworker", so we're even. Quite the opposite. Guns are the antithesis of love and compassion; they advance the human experiment not at all, and in fact, shatter and humiliate it with every pull of the trigger. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #19 welllll... San Diego, not so much |
| Posted by: Frank G 2015-10-04 20:09 |
| #18 Parts of USA are Third World? See central California and downtown LA and San Diego. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2015-10-04 19:51 |
| #17 Parts of USA are Third World? WTF, g, haven't you been paying attention? Why do you think Obama leaves the border open? Why do you think this country encourages immigration from Third World countries? His plan, Clinton's plan, Bush's plan have all been the same: they want to turn the United States into a Third World hell hole and they are succeeding at an alarming pace. We won't be so uppity when we're all poor. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2015-10-04 18:19 |
| #16 Parts of USA are Third World? “The only difference between Detroit and the Third World in terms of corruption is Detroit don't have no goats in the streets.” ― Charlie LeDuff, Detroit: An American Autopsy |
| Posted by: SteveS 2015-10-04 17:54 |
| #15 So that watery tart who threw me a 22 rifle, I was only a tool to fulfill Its destiny of plinking half empty cans? And magnets are possesses by spirits who, when close, become madly in love and want to hold each other. I have no concerns about the handgun I purchased from Mordor Armory. Its my precious. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2015-10-04 17:04 |
| #14 I've been having a discussion with a person who identifies himself as a Liberal. Here are his exact words, You should have to register your firearm, so that if by some chance you sell that firearm to someone who is not supposed to have a firearm, you will be held responsible." |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2015-10-04 15:29 |
| #13 If you Really want to save Lives, ban "Liberals". |
| Posted by: newc 2015-10-04 14:01 |
| #12 The chief reason America has remained a free country is the widespread private ownership of firearms. Individual ownership of guns made the American Revolution possible. The principal purpose of the Second Amendment was to maintain our freedom from government. The founding fathers have much more to say about firearm ownership. Citizens have the right to live. No one has the right to deprive us of life and liberty. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2015-10-04 13:03 |
| #11 Planned Parenthood kills around 300,000 people a year. Mostly minorities. Homicides involving guns maybe 10,000. So who is more dangerous gun owners or Social Workers? |
| Posted by: BrerRabbit 2015-10-04 12:07 |
| #10 ...yes, and more are imported daily. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2015-10-04 11:08 |
| #9 #5 Parts of USA are Third World? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2015-10-04 10:39 |
| #8 When Shariah law becomes common in the US, we need to re-invoke Texas Common Law: "He needed killin'" |
| Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839 2015-10-04 10:24 |
| #7 Let's take this to its logical endpoint: Because the political system and the tax code have both been misused on a regular basis, they must be eradicated. They are nothing less than a national disgrace. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2015-10-04 07:46 |
| #6 To me American guns are more somewhat of a mystery---why so heavily armed a population allows itself to be so oppressed? Because the American legal system isn't done destroying its "Mandate of Heaven". |
| Posted by: badanov 2015-10-04 07:22 |
| #5 To recognize the level of gun violence in urban America you must also recognize the causes and participants. While the stats are quietly rolled into the national record, urban recognition will not happen on Champ's watch or the watch of any democrat. Demographics, educational failure, chronic unemployment and welfare, the narcotics enterprise and drug culture, and fatherless families all play a contributing role in urban failure and crime. Did I mention the the urban drug enterprise ? No need to sort the apples, that would be discriminatory and racist, we'll just call the entire basket spoiled. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2015-10-04 04:35 |
| #4 If guns really conferred stability and protection, we’d be the safest, most peaceful nation on Earth. We are, instead, the most violent and deadly. This is, quite simply, bullshit. We are not. We are not even in the top 25. In fact, a quick google suggests the US is just a tad below the median murder rate for all the countries in the world. The other thing missing from this frothy piece is any discussion of geography. Murder is not uniformly distributed. Roughly half the murders in the US are committed in urban black communities. Last Memorial Day weekend, over 100 people were shot in Chicago, Baltimore and New York in 3 days. But we can't talk about that because to even point it out is 'racist'. Care to bet that most of those murders were committed with unlicensed/illegal guns? |
| Posted by: SteveS 2015-10-04 04:14 |
| #3 Yo G, because it is illegal to kill some people. |
| Posted by: Steven 2015-10-04 03:08 |
| #2 To me American guns are more somewhat of a mystery---why so heavily armed a population allows itself to be so oppressed? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2015-10-04 02:53 |
| #1 Then the primary purpose of Cars is to run people over and kill them. After all there are far more more deaths by autos than by guns. And we are much safer than most of the world. We don't have tyrants. Women can walk down the street without fear of being raped (except in liberal enclaves like occupy camps). And there are school shootings and bombings in the rest of the world - our media just hypes ours up for their agenda. As for Obama... I always thought it was shitworker but that's just me. He's sure been delivering it since he's been in office. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2015-10-04 01:32 |