Let's be honest: no matter how much we on the left would love it to be more difficult to legally or illegally purchase guns to shoot up a movie theatre, temple, high-school, or college town, it's not going to happen. We've lost. The NRA has won. It's time to face the fatal facts. And so it's also time for a new strategy -- the NRA's very own. After all, if you can't beat them, join the militia. Rather than push for gun control, let's just arm everyone.
The entire country should be carrying. The whole population packing. All of us armed and dangerous. And then we'd have nothing to worry about. Who in their right mind is going to pull out a gun and start shooting when they know everyone else can return fire? You'd have to be a real nut-job. If we ever want this nation to be truly safe from gun violence we need to get everyone a gun, to terrify the most violent amongst us. We need to all be on an equal hunting field.
We shouldn't be making it more difficult for people to obtain guns; we should be making it easier. We should just hand them out on the first day of school. With the option of upgrading after every year you graduate. It's called incentivizing success. We need to get the kids started young so that by the time they finish high-school they're finely-tuned assassins. Capable of shooting a shooting classmate from the complete opposite side of campus. This is no games.
Read your history. If it's one thing we can learn from the Wild West, when even the drunks and harlots were holding, it's that it sure was a safe place to be. It was a better America. A real America. A time we can all collectively long for. Complete with nostalgia and sepia tones. A time of sheriffs and shootouts, of bandits robbing banks in bandanas, of outlaws and OK Corral, of cowboys and the mass-murder of Indians. It's time for a new American frontier.
Right here and right now. Don't tell me less guns will somehow equal less violence. That's like saying if there is less drinking and driving there will be less people killed by drunk drivers. It's just ridiculous. There will always be the rejects that get drunk and drive and there's nothing we can do about them, so why not just let everyone get on the road as drunk as they want and make everyone else aware of the dangers of going out for a drive anywhere at any time. Education and safety is the key, not prevention.
Guns don't kill people, a lack of guns do. It is simply impossible to imagine how many fewer people would die from guns in this country if we had no guns in this country. Just look at all the other nations with strict gun controls and their extremely low rates of gun deaths. And notice they still have some rates at all. We Americans want to do better. We shouldn't just want to figure out how to reduce the amount of gun deaths significantly. We should want to figure out how to prevent them entirely. With more guns.
If we have the right to bear arms then it is flat-out wrong not to. It is irresponsible. It is reckless. It is un-American. I shudder to think what Alexander Hamilton would say today if he knew that some Americans weren't pistol-ready at all times. As one of our nation's first constitutional lawyers, he'd probably whip us with his. And then we could shoot him in the abdomen. And go back to settling disputes like men.
We are a nation that evolves. Whether we believe in it or not. We learn from our mistakes and we adjust our behaviors with the goal of doing better. We freed slaves, we enfranchised women, we aided the poor (for the time being at least), and now it's time to do something for the group that is currently being victimized, victims. And what better way to honor those that have lost their life to gun violence, than with complete access to more guns capable of violence. I know if I ever died in a fire I'd want my mourners to burn down a building. And here's our chance, as a nation, for revenge. It's time to stop the fantasy of gun control, and embrace a future of guns for all.
And I just dare you to disagree. It would make my day.
NOTE: This piece is satirical.