Armed and Dangerous

Armed and Dangerous

Yesterday I had a conversation with a friend, an intelligent friend, about gun control.  He owns guns himself, which he bought in his home state, California, and stores there. From what he told me the guns are all fairly ordinary – nary a flamethrower or rocket launcher or anti-ballistic missile in the lot – and with each purchase he went through the registration process and two-week waiting period without travail.  Yet, many of the standard arguments against gun control fell from his lips like last night’s dinner from a flock of pigeons.  Later that night I heard Posterity calling out to me: “Jake, the standard arguments need to be preserved, so later generations can see that in the days when their forefathers were card-carrying members of the NRA, the gene pool was already pestilent.”  A debate is called for, and luckily, having read so many of their posts on Facebook, I am familiar with all of their best arguments.  I will let them state their case first, though in the interests of clarity I may help by acting as moderator, prompting them with questions, or restating their point.

Gun Lover – Guns are for hunting.

Jake – Grandpa Walter kept a shotgun on the stairs off the dining room.  For a hundred years a shotgun was more than adequate for killing birdies and bunnies.

GL – You can’t hunt deer with a shotgun.

J – Very true. I wouldn’t think of killing Bambi’s dad and putting his head on the wall – Norman Bates isn’t my idea of an interior decorator – but it is your baby’s nursery.  If you need a dead deer’s head, why not use a bow and arrow? Ted Nugent (speaking of Norman Bates) hunts with a bow and arrow. Unleash your inner rock star, and do the same.

GL – Neither a shotgun nor a bow and arrow will stop a charging rhino or stampeding elephant.

Argument one: You need high powered weapons to kill endangered species.

GL – If you take away my guns, only criminals will have guns. If you ban guns I’ll just buy a 3D printer and make my own illegal arsenal.

Argument Two: You should have unlimited access to guns because you harbor criminal fantasies.

GL – Guns are for protection.  If an army of Colombians armed with Uzis besieges my home a shotgun isn’t enough, it will take an arsenal of automatic weapons to deal with them.

Argument Three: You need an arsenal because you are planning to become a drug kingpin.

GL – If we are invaded, we need our guns to resist!

J – Let me understand this.  Someday China or North Korea or Vanuatu attacks us.  And they are by then so powerful they are able to shrug off our thousand nuclear missiles, depth charge all our nuclear submarines, sink our aircraft carriers like paper boats, shoot down our fighter jets, flatten our tanks, toss back our grenades and mortars, capture our millions of soldiers and sailors and pilots, reduce our Marines to a very few good men, throttle our Green Berets and SEALs and Delta Force with superior kung fu, and then they will cross the ocean with tens of millions in their occupying force, they will brush aside our millions of state police, transit police, sheriff’s police, city police, US Marshalls, FBI, Fire Marshalls, New York City Streets & Sanitation police (yes, really, I had a buddy who used to be one!), casino security guards, and nightclub doormen, forces that are equipped with armored cars and battering rams and unmanned drones to deal effectively with the jaywalkers, turnstile jumpers and water-the-lawn-on-the-weekend scofflaws, and will fan out across our millions of square miles of countryside, rounding up our hundreds of millions of citizens and … The one thing that will stop them is your unregistered rifle with the 30-round clip?

Argument Four: You need unregistered weapons with high-capacity magazines because you are a delusional paranoid.

GL – It may seem farfetched, but one day we might elect a Black Muslim Communist from Kenya who wants to confiscate our guns and enslave us on behalf of the UN.  I need to be ready to fight them off.

Argument Five: You need a private, secret arsenal because you expect that one of these days you will need them to shoot a lot of police.

GL – Anyway, instead of worrying about the guns, you should concentrate on criminals and insane people!

Argument Six: You want us to recognize the urgency of dealing with criminals and lunatics.

J – After hearing your arguments I think you have won me over on Number Six!

Now, it is time for Jake’s rebuttal.

Jake – Rather than rebut, I think I will let the Gun Lover keep talking.  He is doing a more effective job of making my case than I ever could.