I’m so sick of the gun lobby. So sick of the argued “right to bear” automatic assault rifles by any idiot Tom, Dick, or Harry. I am brokenhearted by the school shooting in Connecticut, and that just the most recent. It is stupidly, ridiculously easy for anybody to buy a concealable and/or mass-murdering firearms. And don’t call me reactionary. I’ve been thinking about and watching this thing for a long, long time. Too long.
And please, don’t give me the hunting, sport argument. I grew up in northern Minnesota, where deer hunting was its own season. Every self-respecting male did it — my dad, for whom I have the highest respect, among them. Around this time of year, standard fare was Swedish style venison meatballs (lutfisk first, if it’s Christmas Eve). But the gun my dad, ex-boyfriends, and others used to take down the beautiful whitetail who wouldn’t have made it through the winter was a long, heavy instrument, the size of (dare I say it) a schoolchild. I shot it once, and it nearly took my arm off. One shot. Assault rifles, pistols, and the like have no place in real hunting culture.
“Sport,” you say?, with a tough-ass swagger. I’ll give you sport. Play catch every week as Big Brother to some kid whose dad’s in prison, mom’s strung out on drugs, and the local gang is seducing with God knows what. There’s some tough-ass sport for you. Or try wrestling a clay-baked plot of land into cultivable soil with nothing but egg shells and dried leaves. Or! How about working your way around the globe on a vessel propelled solely by wind? Gosh, the options are endless.
But we have the “right to bear arms!” you protest. Muskets, dear sirs, ma’ams. If you want to walk around town packing a long nosed weapon with a sack slung over your shoulder of round balls or lead shot that you made yourself and will stop to pack into that thing, have at it. Aim real good, now!
Enough. Enough with the guns and the hysterics and the politics. Enough. If you want to sell such weapons to some guy off the street, then you better put a 24-7 sentry outside his door and watch his every move that he doesn’t wander out to buy milk and end up killing a dozen of kids. I’m sick of it.
