The other day at work, which has become a veritable hotbed of political discourse, mostly thanks to me, the scary extremist, we got to talking about the inevitable subject of gun control. There are about five people involved, including one conservative hunter/family man who I've almost cracked down into an LPer. The two major debaters in this particular round are myself and my department boss who is a party-line singing Democrat.
Naturally we jump right to the extreme examples. So why do we really need 'assault rifles'? The name says it all; its hard to use 'assault' in the same context as self defense, and it doesn't sound very nice to go 'assaulting' deer. After all if we can do without something that kills people might as well try to get rid of it, right? And the 'trying' is what's important. Prohibition? Nice try guys. Drug War? Oh even better, try again! Gun Control? For fuck's sake, I'm trying to live here!
The results speak for themselves. But anyway, since government agents can be counted on to provide for the need left open by lack of private firearm ownership, this policy can surely be applied elsewhere. Hell, cars kill what, 10 times as many people as guns? Since the cops are doing such a bang up job in the gun department, why don't we restrict these evil vehicles to government licensed ambulances and executive motorcades? But what, you want to actually get somewhere and your not cerebrally hemorrhaging and/or on the State's payroll? Well, all you little prolies can badger your congress nanny to slurp up some federal grant money and buy you a whiz bang Smart-Gro Light-Rail Play-set (tm) for Christmas. "Saves commuter's lives, and politician's careers!" And then you can sign up for a bicycle exchange and pedal to all of the seven thousand and nine places the public transit doesn't conveniently plop you. Nice, I always wanted to live in Beijing. At least those big, unused 4 lane streets can fit lots of people bartering the last of their house hold belongings for food.
But the car analogy doesn't fly with my esteemed opponent. Just because there's no better chance of us enjoying a system involving government run transportation, then one with government controlled guns, doesn't mean Democrat bossman should give up his absurd argument. So then he brings up the case about 10 years ago of the unfriendly kook who sprayed about three pounds worth of 7.62mm brass into a crowded room of California grade-schoolers. Of course the guy is incompetent in addition to being insane and pathetically only manages to KIA five of the fleet footed tykes, but that's not the point. The fact is we have a clearly negative strike against weapons of mass destruction (in skilled hands, theoretically) with no perceivable positive benefits. So according to statist logic, if item X has a below zero social score, stamp big red Verboten all over that shit, no matter what the Constitution says on the matter, or doesn't say if we still care about the 10th.
However, I say big caliber, high capacity, select fire battle weapons (assault rifle for short) are harmless, or at least no better or worse than any other gun. Blank stares. Don't get it? Let's take the example of a bank robbery. Two things can happen: the robber can egress before the cops show, whether he's got the loot or not, or he can spend too long torturing tellers or descrambling the time lock vault and end up as a 'barricaded suspect' (its HRT time! w00t!). In the former case it doesn't matter if he's got an M-60 or a dull spoon; he's in, he's out, no confrontation. In the latter case it doesn't matter either because after the Hostage Rescue Team (Newspeak for Death Squad) has spent the obligatory time respecting their use-of-deadly-force requirements for the news cameras, the snipers are going to blow his brainstem out before a last-twitch nerve signal could even pull the trigger post-mortem. Do not doubt this last item, if you are on the receiving end of such an attack you are not just fucked, you are (to quote the fine film Snatch) proper fucked. I'm sure many of you have seen the Discovery channel special on snipers where the LA Swat dude, in a matter of seconds, puts 10 consecutive rounds into a distant moving dummy's head and upper torso while it constantly ducks around cover. That is friggin scary.
Anyway, automatics
render no advantage to the criminal; if he doesn't engage
the authorities, the gun is optional altogether, if he does engage,
ha, his Kalashnikov will
make a nice trophy for Horiuchi Jr. But what about our
case where the perp is only interested in committing violence against
innocents? If you recall,
at the end of the story, upon completing his little tantrum,
the old gent painted the classroom ceiling with his gray matter. If
he somehow had failed to
acquire his black market rattle gun, I'm sure the industrious
fellow would have found a way to take some unlucky pre-pubescent to
Hades along with him regardless. (Hint to prospective psychopaths: the
U.S. over-funded, mighty
Israeli army can't ever seem to deter Mr. Arab-with-a-vest-full-of-road-flares-wait-
thats-plastique-crap-BOOM) Bottom line,
if making a getaway isn't part of the plan, there is precisely squat
you can do to guarantee
safety against a determined suicidal attacker. Your only
hope is to blast or be blasted John Woo style. And that requires firepower,
preferably equal to or better than your deranged adversary's. That
would mean letting me
stroll about with a Galil or similar armament. The assault
rifle problem thus solved. Think about it, why do soldiers get equipped
with bad ass hardware? Because it was on clearance sale? No, because
its the best damn tool for
the job, and its a very important job, no less important
when its my life on the line.
But then who the hell am I kidding, this is a Democrat in a power
position over me, the
usual laws of the universe don't apply. So in response,
much evasive rhetoric wafted my way before I started getting pissed.
Finally I demanded to know if this quacking simpleton had ever even
touched a gun, to
personally confirm his party's fear mongering. And that's when
I got the shocker. This hypocrite owns a .223 target rifle, which he
shoots on the range
frequently, with the disclaimer that he only buys ammo on site
and leaves the leftovers behind.
"I shouldn't be trusted to carry it [the rifle] around." These words actually came out of his mouth. I asked in all seriousness if he was schizophrenic or had some other reason to doubt his ability to refrain from massacring stray passer-bys (my apologies to any schizophrenic readers offended by being compared to a big-government lackey). This man's rights and pastime are being directly threatened by his own political causes, but he is so enthralled with the divine wisdom of the state that he instinctively trusts their judgment of his sanity and morality over his own. If the state says you could be a lunatic menace, well gosh darn they aren't kidding around. Joe (yes, his real name) knows for a fact that he is sane, and that he has no intention of using his firearm as anything other than a hobby, he's not even interested in self defense. No thoughts of violence of any variety against others have crossed his mind. However, because the government is afraid that the crosshair of his plinker might one day be lined on an XYZ Agent's sloping forehead, they tell Joe--no Joe asks them to tell him--that he might be crazy and won't you please put down the gun and step back, before you start putting 1st graders in body bags; and Joe is only too happy to be relieved of his responsibility over his own mind. Someday when Joe's in Room 101 with the rat cage, he will be glad he was discovered before it was too late. In the meantime though I'm pretty sure I just shitfired my chances of swinging a new workstation anytime soon.
August 14, 2001
