I Hate Guns

I hate guns. I don’t like them because they’re used as weapons. I also don’t like bombs, missiles, nukes, torpedoes, or anything more destructive than a knife. What I hate about all these weapons is the fact that they’re too easy to kill with, they cause a lot of collateral damage, they aren’t accurate and they lesson the personal impact of killing. This is something I’ve always believed but after hearing about the two latest shooting sprees I felt I needed to say it.

Last week a 17 year old in Germany killed 15 people and a man in Alabama killed 9 people, both went on a shooting spree. My main beef is with guns so I’m setting my sights on them first. I don’t like guns because of what they represent: an easy button weapon. ANYONE can use a gun. A skinny 12 year old girl could kill 30 full grown wrestlers easily with a gun, in most cases the only thing stopping someone with a gun is someone else with a gun. It requires almost no discipline or skill to use a gun, just point and move your index finger.

Try making a gun with your hand, your thumb as the hammer and index as the barrel, point it at someone across the room, now move your thumb and say “Bang,” simple isn’t it? Now imagine doing that actually killed the person you were aiming at, think about how easy that is, think about how much warning that other person had and what chance of defending himself he had. If he was over two paces away, he’s screwed. It doesn’t matter if he’s a martial arts expert, if there’s a variety of potential weapons around, or potential cover, you could have shot him before he could do anything.

You may be thinking, “Guns are harder to use than you think. They aren’t that easy to aim.” That’s why we have automatic guns and shotgun! It doesn’t matter if you can’t aim, if the first bullet misses, no sweat, in only 1 second the 6^th bullet will. A handful of visits to the shooting range is all you need to go from “I can’t hit the broad side of barn” to “good enough to hit a five foot by two foot target”.

Now you’re thinking, “Guns are heavy, unwieldy and have lots of recoil.” We’ll were always making them better, lighter and with less recoil! There’s enough child soldiers shooting it up to prove this isn’t much of a problem.

So, effort and training required to kill lots of people with said gun is $200, 2.5 hours and the hardest part, getting a gun. Getting a gun is easier than you think.

Option 1:

Buy one: If you are over 18, don’t mind filling out some paper work, have a bit of cash (why pay money when you have option 2?), and can pass whatever background check your local gun laws require, you got yourself a gun. You can even circumvent the background check if you know someone seedy!

Option 2:

Steal one: Easiest option! Chances are you know someone with a gun. Whether it’s a relative, friend or co-worker, someone you know has a gun. On the off chance you don’t, you could always rob a gun store. If you’re thinking about blowing some people away you probably won’t mind the moral burden of stealing.

Guns have the best deadliness:ease of use ratio compared to any other practical weapon. Try going on a stabbing spree, I bet you’ll be much less successful. If you miss with a gun then the bullet becomes a danger to anyone behind your target. A gangster decides he doesn’t like his competition and takes a shot at him; he misses because he’s driving, much easier to aim while standing still but it’s not as cool, the stray bullet now goes through the wall of a house two blocks down and kills an elderly woman watching TV. The gangster didn’t mean to kill the old lady, maybe he’s morally against shooting old ladies, who knows? The gun doesn’t discriminate and it makes it exceptionally easy to accidently kill someone. Now if the gangster tried to stab his rival and missed him, he’s not a very good gangster, someone across the street isn’t going to suddenly keel over. Have you ever punched a wall in anger and knocked out your next door neighbor? No? I didn’t think so (if you did that’s amazing).

I think there needs to be a bigger buffer between a bad mood and a lot of bodies. Sometimes people break and do something stupid, I would feel much safer if it took more than errant emotions and a trigger finger to take down a school. I am continually amazed by how much I see this counter argument,

“We’ll if our gun laws were softer and everyone was allowed to carry a gun, we wouldn’t have to worry about it. That German kid’s teacher should have had a gun and ended it right away.”

I find this argument to be completely and utterly ridiculous and juvenile. Would it really be safer if EVERYONE carried a gun? Would you feel safer knowing anytime someone gets angry or provoked, maybe temporarily acting rash, they have a gun in their pocket. People would eventually start using them simply because they are there. You drive up to the drive through window and the guy forgets the ketchup so you blow him away? You’re walking down an alley alone ,you’re feeling kind of nervous, a little on edge, and suddenly someone comes up behind you and says, “Hey buddy!”. You jump and turn around and he says, “You got the time?” Now if you had had a gun in your pocket and you were fondling it while scared, it would have been pretty easy to shoot the innocent stranger in the face simply because you were startled.

Teachers with guns in their desks, yeah that sounds brilliantly safe. Locked up of course so the kids couldn’t get at them, we’re trying to be safe here, kids aren’t known for mischief, locks always work, and the event of a teacher using it is simply unimaginable. And if the event ever arose that they needed to use it I’m sure the assailant wouldn’t mind waiting for the teacher to remember the combination lock to the safe. Scattering lots of random guns around is like scattering landmines, eventually some will go off and the results won’t be pretty. Plus it makes option 2 of obtaining a gun much much easier.

Now I’m aiming at bombs, missiles and any big bang military weapons. First off, precision weapons my ass! You can argue the targeting ability of a cruise missile till your hoarse but in the end you’re detonating a very large explosion sending lots of uncontrollable debris in random directions at deadly speed. Probably in an area you are not present in, can’t see accurately, without actually seeing the people you’re trying to kill (or not trying to kill, oops didn’t know they were in that building too) and they could always move and you just wasted a few million dollars. Explosives cause terrible collateral damage, instead of killing the old lady our gangster just killed a man walking his dog, the mailman, someone sleeping across the street, his rivals wife and kid etc… Go into the food court of a busy mall and very carefully place a tub of yogurt in the precise center of a table. When you have the yogurt accurately placed pull out you’re 16 pound sledgehammer and hit it as hard as you can. Now look around and see if the yogurt stayed in the center of the table and only hit you. You’ll probably find a large amount of people looking at you with angry yogurt covered faces.

Nuclear bombs, the scariest weapon of them all. I’m astounded that so many of these even exist. It’s ridiculous! How handy is a weapon that can kill hundreds of thousands of people indiscriminately with the push of a button and afterwards poison the land for ages? Should any one person have the power to, no matter what he believes the justification is, pull a lever and annihilate a city? Do you think this person could truly understand the immensity of this act if all he has to do is push a button and watch a screen? They have gunships now that can circle high in the air, safe and out of sight, with enough firepower to destroy an army. All the people in the plane have to do is look at a blurry screen and use a joystick. It’s like a video game. Killing is becoming way easier on the conscious. If you can’t see their eyes, hear them scream or see their blood then it doesn’t feel so bad does it.

I’m not arguing war or politics, I’m arguing weapons. I think things are getting worse as we become more modern. I don’t think killing should be easy. It’s natural human instinct to see killing as a terrible thing. Why are we making it harder to feel that? I hope I didn’t offend anyone but it’s a serious subject and deserves a tough look.

On a lighter note: Damn! Yann Tiersen can rock out with an accordion.