Bowling For Common Sense

By Michael Parish


Having grown up in a Middle American backwater, I'm no stranger to guns and the guys who fetishize them, which I think qualifies me to discuss the issue with a greater degree of clarity than their side is currently capable of. Seeing as the gun issue is one of the most roundly misunderstood and misrepresented in our public discourse, I find it imperative that I do so. So, with my egotistic over-appraisal of my own analytic capabilities, let us enjoy another rant shall we? Gun control is yet another issue where I find both sides lacking, one because they've got no clue what they're yapping about and the other because they've got no cluse how to refute the clueless yapping. Hence, my mission to grab both by the hair and club their hands together with a resounding "Shutup the botha ya's." Hopefully, we'll be able to divine a bit of sense from the resulting cranial friction.



As is typically the case, we can uncover the reasoning of a position or argument by closely examining its adherents and by doing the same with those whose lives the policy will affect. In this particular example, the average would be gun grabber. This creature is typically from a middle or upper middle class background, typically lives in an artifically pleasent suburb, and typically has no exerience with guns (or crime) whatsoever. Now, let's shift our attention to the average would be gun grabee. He likely hails from a blue collar background, in an authentically unpleasent neighborhood, and has no experience with the 'burbs (or the brand of liberalism they produce) whatsoever. So, by a simple process of social deduction, what is presented as a crime issue is actually a class issue...



And a cultural one also. It's not insignificant that gun culture is a staple of working class life in the central and lower regions of the country, a pastime rightly associated with uncosmopolitan social envieronments. It's equally important to remember that those outside these envieronments regard them with the utmost horror, seeing in the Field & Stream mailing list the end of the open society. So there you have it-a double shot of bourgeos elitism and paranoia, manifesting itself in a mad drive to strip "those people" of what makes them happy. The great paradox in all this is the inherent authoritarianism of those who buy into The Authoritarian Personality...especially when it comes to things they find aesthetically displeasing.



That their "arguments" always involve vulgar caricaturizations of gun enthusiasts shoud come as no surprise. In the liberal mind, merely expressing interest (any interst) in those wicked weapons automatically brands you a "redneck", an illiterate idiot, which of course, relegates you the bleachers of rational debate. That the safe maintainence and use of a real firearm is an careful and intricate process, knowledge of which the supposed "rednecks" possess but would be impossible for the "non-violent" liberal...this does not play into the debate whatsoever, because merely calling yourself "liberal" autmotically grants you the intellectual high ground.



This debate could be over (and the left side of it neatly exposed) if it weren't for the equally false pretenses of those on the "right." Movement conservatives professing a support for gun rights typically ground their position in the Constitution, using it as a springboard for "Founding Fathers" emulation. This falls flat, as it demonstrates a greater adherence to liberal-legal ideology than to actual gun ownsership. If you support gun rights because it's "in the constitution"...then what if it's wasn't in the Constitution? And, what if gun rights could be tied to issues other than self-defense and deer hunting, the two points the right's arguments always hinge on?



Because those two concerns are infertile ground for planting a dedication to an armed America. As a child of Wisconsin's Fox Valley region, I'm more than familiar with the deer hunting subculture, which my attitude toward is summed up by this quote from the late Edward Abbey: "Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal over the live one." Deer hunters tend to be social conservatives who balance a belief in our supposedly God-given right to kill animals with an attitude of preciousness about humans, embodying to me the most lunkheaded excesses of "Judeo-Christian Vlues." They've accordingly transformed their hobby into a "family tradition" i.e. father and son bond over a buck corpse, to be taken home to mom for food preparation. This nauseating combination is why I feel next to no sympathy when I hear about lethal hunting accidents. I don't see "our right to hunt" as something worth defending, as guns have far better applications that killing inconsequential animals.

Nor does private crime, that perrenial hobby horse of the law and order Right, really send me reaching for my revolver. It would be preferable if Americans would arm themselves and take repsonsibility for their own safety. It really would. An armed populace I can at least respect, rather than the defenseless weaklings, crimes against which are invariably the fault of the police for "not being there." For a people that prattles incessantly on about "personal responsibility", this one area seems to be their blindspot. But that's not in the cards, and neither is building a worthy pro-gun argument with self-defense as its basis.

Unless its self-defense against those who are nominally there to protect you. It's interesting that neither side of this debate mentions the police and surveillance states in their positions, despite those institutions posing a far greater threat to our well-being than private crooks. Oh, the libs came out (admirably for once) against the Patriot Act, but since their man has taken the helm of Homeland Security, they've mysteriosuly made peace with it. Because the threat now is not Islamofascists but...well, those hapless hicks from the beginning of this article. Meanwhile, Faux News followers cling to their guns (and, yes, their religion) but lack the logic to see the two plus two connection between them and the "anti-terrorist" activities of the guy they voted twice into office. The "Right" remains as docile as the Left.