Hunting Is Stupid

About a year and a half ago when some numbnuts opened fire on a sitting Congresswomen and a bunch of other innocent people in Tuscon, people said it wasn't the right time to talk about gun control, because you don't want to exploit a tragedy for political gain.  Really?  You know what exploiting a tragedy is?  Selling a 9/11 commemorative coin with a little picture of the twin towers on it and not giving 100% of the profits to fire fighters is exploiting a tragedy.  Talking about gun control after yet another round of pointless gun-related deaths is trying to fix the problem.  It's the same thing as building better levees after your city was destroyed by a hurricane.

Personally, I'm not really for total gun control.  Yes, I think owning a gun is dumb, but it's not really the government's job to keep us from doing dumb things.  On the other hand, rights have limits.  I'm allowed to own a car, but I'm not allowed to buy an Indy car and drive it around.  My right to own and drive an automobile is infringed upon by other peoples' right to not be killed by me zipping around the neighborhood at 200 MPH, and I'm OK with that, because I'm a grown up and I understand that we're trying to have a civilization here.

So, I understand if someone wants to own one small-magazine, non-automatic pistol for protection or whatever, but nobody needs an assault rifle.  Nobody needs a semi-automatic anything and nobody needs more than one gun.

First of all, hunting is stupid.  If you really live somewhere that requires you to hunt for food, than fine, you can have one rifle.  But in this way, most people are like me.  I can think of at least 8 supermarkets that have plenty of perfectly good edible meat and are a shorter drive from where I live than any wooded area where I would hunt for food, and I don't even live in a real city anymore.  Most people are just hunting for fun, and if killing stuff for fun is a regular part of your life, you may want to consult your local psychiatrist.

Secondly, if you really want to live off the land like our caveman ancestors (that you may or may not believe in) than shouldn't you be hunting with a crossbow or large rocks like real ancient humans?  Seriously, if you're hunting for sport, I'm not sure I see the sport in killing a deer from 50 yards away with an assault rifle.

I heard a guy on TV today say that it's perfectly reasonable for someone who shoots targets regularly to buy thousands of rounds of ammunition in a month.  I'm not sure he understands what reasonable means, and the fact the recreational gun use provides a context for someone to see purchasing thousands of bullets as reasonable should be a hint that maybe we need to scale things back a bit.

And honestly, why can't people who like to shoot targets just get bullets at the shooting range?  When I go to the driving range I hit maybe 100 balls.  I don't buy 100 golf balls.  I know you can only use a bullet once, but still.

Shouldn't we all be able to agree on this?  Why does half the country freak out at the idea of any kind of gun control?  Is it really a slippery slope?  Is an assault weapons ban really just three steps away from Barack Obama landing a helicopter on your roof and forcing you and your family to convert to islam?

Guns are everywhere, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, they say.  OK, but that doesn't mean you leave the toothpaste all over the goddamn bathroom forever.  I hate when I hear people who are supposed to be running this place make that "well, there's nothing you can do, so screw it" argument.  If you don't feel like you can do anything about the country's problems, resign from whatever position you hold and let someone else at least try.

So here's my proposal.  Everybody gets one non-automatic gun if they want one and, like, 15 bullets a year.  If you need more than 15 bullets a year for self-defense, you might want to try not pissing so many people off.  If you have a better idea, that's fine with me.  And if you're a Senator with a better idea, or a member of the House, or a President, well that would be just great.

There's an idiot (who is also somehow a Senator, seriously) on Fox right now saying that this thing that happened Friday "isn't about guns" and he wishes he could "wave a magic wand" to stop these tragedies from happening.  He went on to say that maybe so many people wouldn't have been shot if maybe someone else in the theater had a gun and had shot back.  Yes!  Public firefights between armed crazy people and relatively untrained private citizens sound like a great idea!  Oh and he just added my favorite argument about how he'd hate to see a tragedy like this used to reduce Americans' freedom.  Congratulations Senator, you're officially a moron.

Things like this aren't the fault of anyone but the shooter, but you can see why some people point a finger at guys like this idiot on Fox right now.  You don't really need a magic wand Senator Idiot, you just need to stop being stupid and vote for an assault weapons ban.  Abracadabra!