Guns and Freedom

When I was young and stupid, I often said that the only reasonable objection to gun control was that someday we might need to shoot the cops. If I had been saying this when I was five years old in the fifties, I might have been right. To say it today is just plain wrong.

We are long, long past the time when guns are useful in defending yourself against the government. If the government wants to screw you, they will hop onto their computer terminal and type, Fuck You. If they want you in a prison camp, they will shut down your grocery store and put a trail of Froot Loops leading into the cell. Sure, somebody will hunt rabbits to avoid the camp but if you have kids, you'll do what you have to to feed them.

Oh! you say, you'd hunt if only we hadn't taken your gun. Well, how long do you think it would take Chicago to be stripped of all animals, down to the rats, if the grocery stores were gone? I live in semi-rural Minnesota and am 100% sure that the local ecology would support us for a couple of months at most.

But, if you don't believe that, then they can turn off the gas and freeze you out in the winter. The trees on my property would keep me warm for a year but, it would be a really tough year. Year two would be a double bitch.

Tens of thousands of people are harmed every year using guns justified, at least in this context, by the microscopic possibility that those guns might someday be useful in securing freedom. Trading year after year of tens of thousands of people's lives and even more are are harmed for something that is a bizarrely rare possibility (we are not living in the Sudan) and is even less likely to be remedied by guns (technological society has much, much more effective means of tyranny than violence) is the epitome of foolishness and cruelty.