I want to take away your guns

/ July 12, 2016

The one and only purpose of guns is to kill.

The desire to own guns, and the notion that owning them is some inalienable right of Americans, points to a sickness. The symptoms are clear.

I don’t wish to offend anyone who thinks differently, but I can’t imagine a greater offense than the gun violence we’ve seen this year, and the refusal of some to change our laws regulating ownership.

You may say that a law restricting gun ownership is the first step towards taking away your guns.

I hope it is.

Because I want to take away your guns.

You may be a responsible gun owner.

I don’t fucking care.

When you buy your guns, you feed the monster. One that is more powerful than Black Lives Matter, more deadly than White Cops, more blind than “Justice.” You feed he NRA, and the business of making money selling guns. Stop lying to yourself that this is about freedom and the right to bear arms. It’s not. It’s about money, which is now more important than the bullet-torn bodies of elementary school children.

My daughters may be randomly assassinated at school because of you.

Not because of some lunatic. Because of you. Because you want to own guns.

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69 thoughts on “I want to take away your guns”

    • I’m glad you kind of agree, Robert, even if you don’t entirely agree. If you were to entirely agree, there might not have been an Orlando nightclub shooting in Florida, on June 12, 2016. 50 people were shot that night.

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      • That is entirely possible.

        But the guns that I would let people have would be single round hunting rifles and pistols.

        In my world, the only people who would be allowed to have more than two guns are legitimate collectors, those in the industry-and hunters.

        But there would be a limit for hunters.

        I would ban all guns from any neighborhood in the vicinity of a school.

        So what you say is possible.

        But I don’t believe that anyone needs assault weapons.

        In my world the pathetic closet queen who stormed that bar with an assault rifle would be under treatment for what I hear was a mood disorder. (I may be wrong on that)

        But he would not have had access to assault rifles. (because they are banned)

        And his presence on the no fly list would have precluded him owning any
        other kind of firearm.

        That’s not to say that he couldn’t have scraped up a rifle or two from some unscrupulous arms dealer…

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  3. So well said Mr Waltbox. I live in New Zealand and nobody except game hunters and gang members have guns. Even the police don’t carry guns – they carry OC spray (pepper spray), batons and tasers. Guns are very difficult to get. Guns aren’t found under every bed. Guns aren’t found in every glove box. And we don’t live in fear. It’s easy to judge from afar but it’s about what’s normal. However, when our children were young we moved to California for three years, telling each other there was no way we would ever own a gun. Everyone around us told us we were nuts, and after a crazy mass shooting nearby we were worried they were right. So we went to a nearby store that sold guns, candy and booze (trifecta!) and got a gun for under the bed. We joined in because we got scared. But, you’re right, the guns have got to be taken away. Start by making them not normal.

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    • Thanks Angela. As I’m sure you know a man went into a school called Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut on Dec. 14, 2012 and killed 26 people, mostly children. He was able to do this because people in this country want to own guns, and won’t give up that right. If we had taken away their right, those children would still be with their parents.

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  4. Never fear offending Walt, I read a quote recently, along the lines of “Whats a Fatwah anyway. You echoed my anger, I can see your country from the bus stop- and worry for you all. So well said, thank you.

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    • Thank you, Worzel. There was a Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas where on Oct. 16, 1991 a man opened fire with a handgun. He loaded and emptied his gun several times, leaving 23 people dead. He was able to do this because we fight for our right to own guns.

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  6. “The desire to own guns, and the notion that owning them is some inalienable right of Americans, points to a sickness.”

    I didn’t read past this line. My dad, who makes less than $10k a year doing construction jobs as he can get them and who doesn’t even have a high school education, depends on his guns to put food on the table. I grew up eating a lot of rice and gravy. It’s part of our culture, but it was also the only way we could survive.

    I get that not everyone lives this way. I do. But taking EVERYONE’S guns is not the solution.

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    • Jess, your dad sounds like a responsible gun owner, and a man I would respect. But if you stopped reading, you missed the part where I said I don’t fucking care. On August 1, 1966, a 25-year-old student climbed the University of Texas Tower and began shooting at people on the ground. He killed 14 people and wounded 31. My grandparents grew up on farms in Eastern Europe. They had no jobs, and no guns. They were able to put food on their table. Humans can hunt without guns. Hunting with guns is not hunting, it’s killing. That’s what guns do.

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  7. Glad you put this out there, thank you. I feel the same, and how sad (though it’s an unfair comparison) we feel more safe letting our kids walk around a small village in Germany than here in the suburbs outside of Seattle. We just don’t feel they’re as safe here, it’s that pervasive feeling in the air, piped in with the news, the savagery. I wanted to read more the American Sniper post you started, that looks interesting. I couldn’t watch the film because it had that Eastwood smear on it, that smeared me at the end of Million Dollar Baby, kicked me in the privates, the fuck, then went nuts at the Republican National Convention. I guess he is taking over for Charlton Heston. We’re in the most liberal part of the US it seems (which isn’t itself a good thing) and still we see bumper stickers like you wouldn’t believe, beautifying pistols, our rights. Fucked up.

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    • Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999: two students enter the school with the kinds of guns that people in this country think they have a right to buy and want to keep in the house, and that our fucked up capitalist economy encourages us to fight back against by buying more guns that are somehow supposed to keep us safe. Those students killed 13 people and wounded 24.

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  8. I get up in the evening
    And I ain’t got nothing to say
    I come home in the morning
    I go to bed feeling the same way
    I ain’t nothing but tired
    Man I’m just tired and bored with myself
    Hey there baby, I could use just a little help
    You can’t start a fire
    You can’t start a fire without a spark
    This gun’s for hire
    Even if we’re just dancing in the dark

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  9. My father was a state trooper many years ago.
    As a child his father hunted for food,
    While he saved broken birds, and cherished life.
    He grew weary of the possibility of having to take a life on the job…so he quit.
    He bought two funeral homes and never looked back. He, and then I, saw the destruction of guns.
    My husband was an infantryman in the US Army.
    He fought in war. He came home.
    He fought again. He came home missing.
    The gun took things from him.
    He will never be the same.
    I don’t have many answers but I know what I know.
    Taking a life should never be as easy as aiming stock and barrel, pulling a trigger.

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    • Taking lives was far too easy at a Post Office in Edmond, Oklahoma on August 20, 1986, where a man shot and killed 14 co-workers, which he couldn’t have done without the arms which we for some reason still feel were his inalienable right to bear.

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  10. You nailed it. When my own sister went out and bought a gun recently, I went, “Why, for shitssake?” And she said, “For protection. Aren’t you afraid of someone breaking in?” And I said, “No. And I’m not afraid of getting struck by lightning either.”

    We’ve been conditioned to be afraid in our own homes.

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    • Thanks, Kevin. At the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California on Dec. 2, 2015, two people opened fire and killed 14 people. I’m still waiting for the story where a mass shooting was thwarted by someone who bought a gun to protect themselves against a mass shooting.

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    • Thank you, sir. I feel that we are at war with gun advocates. But they have guns, and we don’t. As a result, on April 3, 2009, in Birmingham, NY, someone opened fire on an immigration center, killing 13 people and wounding four others.

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    • Voice it loud and clear, Elyse, and maybe we can prevent another incident like the one in Fort Hood, Texas, where on November 5, 2009 a man opened fire using two handguns, killing 13 people and wounding 30.

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    • Thanks, Paul. If we all agree, we can avoid another incident like the one on February 27, 2012, in Chardon, Ohio, where a high school sophomore walked into the school cafeteria and fired 10 shots at four students sitting at a table, killing three. He is said to have stolen the gun from his uncle.

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  15. At least you’re blunt and honest about it. And I agree. The second amendment allows the right of a “well-regulated milita” to bear arms. Most citizens do not belong to a militia, whether well-regulated or not. Take the damn guns away. Let’s make this a safer country to live in.

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      • I suspect the chances of repealing the 2nd amendment to the Bill of Rights are slim to none. But the way it’s worded seems open to a far narrower interpretation than the current interpretation. But I doubt we can get to that narrower interpretation without a broader change in cultural attitudes.

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        • Let’s get there. Let’s change the culture. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are hard to change, and should be. But they were constructed with the foresight that changes might be necessary; and the mechanisms for change are built into them. Nothing is more in need of change than our gun culture.

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          • Isn’t it called the ‘2nd Amendment’ because they had ‘amended’ the contents more than once?
            To me that means it wasn’t meant to be set in stone and hung round the necks of future Americans, but to have a more fluid ‘let’s take a moment – is this what we still want’ aspect.
            The Founding Fathers were all about newness and progress and democracy (all be it at the time that just meant for white, male landowners and business men – but that has thankfully changed over the years also) Why not add another ‘amendment’?
            This isn’t about rights to bear arms, this is about money and power.

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      • People seem to think the 2nd Amendment is set in stone. They seem to forget that the very reason it’s called the 2nd Amendment is that it’s the 2nd Thing We Changed When We Realized It Wasn’t Going To Work The First Way.

        It’s not working. It needs to be changed again.

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    • Would you believe that on April 2, 2012, in Oakland, California, a former nursing student returned to school, pulled an administrator into a classroom, lined up students against the wall and began shooting them? He killed 7, injured 3, and purchased the gun legally.

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  19. I wish I could like this more than once.

    I am so weary of seeing comment sections peppered with “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers!” every time the topic of gun control is raised. Why? WHY, apart from some antiquated amendment, is having ownership of a deadly weapon so incredibly important to all these people? How can anyone, in the wake of horrific mass gun violence, think that having MORE guns available to the average Joe is the solution? How, in the 21st century, is bearing arms still a right and not a privilege?

    Hunting game, protecting crops and livestock from predators, etc.; these are valid reasons to need a gun.
    Paranoia is not.

    Sickness, indeed.

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    • I’m glad you mostly agree, but I don’t believe that even those valid reasons are valid reasons. I would take away every last gun, so that perhaps the five people killed and four wounded on June 7, 2013 at the Santa Monica College library might still be breathing.

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  21. Australia did it after they had only had a couple of mass shootings. (isn’t that a weird thing to be able to say ‘only’ a couple of mass murders) and it didn’t collapse in a riot of murder and mayhem, but actually improved. As always, follow the money. Guns & Ammo dealers earn a pretty penny for supplying more and more of the same. Now they are trying to/have got guns IN schools IN movie theatres IN shopping malls IN the street IN children’s play areas. Guns haven’t made US citizens safe, they have made them fearful for their children, homes and neighbourhoods. Surely it is now time to grab the Cobra before it bites all of you and pull out it’s fangs.

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      • I saw that… seems like such an overcurrent of tension and anger, I wish we were past this. So many wounds over so much time, it’s hard to believe this failing body is going to get up and have a stroll around the campus again (by that I mean the human body). Can’t we all just get drunk in some large field somewhere, breed a bit, and dance a lot?

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  23. Power of our government (wait, you’re British?) is supposed to be 1/3 S. Court; 1/3 Congress; 1/3 Executive branch. The S. Court has grabbed power from the other two! The 2nd Amendment does after all mention “a well regulated militia” INDIVIDUALS OWNING GUNS IN THE COUNTRY HAVE NOT REPRESENTED A MILITIA for many decades now. Open our eyes, O fellow Murkans!

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  24. I personally hope you grow a brain. Banning guns will only make a black market for guns as it has done to weed and all other drugs. It will not help stop murder it will only make it harder to defend yourself

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    • I’ll make a deal with you. First time a mass shooting is successfully defended against by someone with a gun of their own, stop back by and let me know where to pick up one of these brains you’re talking about.

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      • Well there are many examples you might never hear about them from the mainstream media but if you want too Google examples and cherry pick I’ll leave that to you.

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  25. Love this. I really don’t understand why there isn’t more emphasis on gun control with the amount of shootings nowadays. Police shootings, church shootings, school shootings, etc. You would think with the amount of crimes linked to gun violence we would try to take them away. But there are people who encourage having the right to a gun (which is their own opinion, not trying to disrespect anyone) for self defense purposes. Guns are created to kill people. We shoot to kill, and if every person deserves to be entitled to this, then that says something about us as people. Very, very well put.

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    • Thank you, Angie. As you said, the purpose of a gun is to kill, and there are people who encourage and support the right to kill. That is their opinion, and it is wrong. To advocate for killing is wrong. That’s not an okay opinion to have. Not all opinions are created equal. Hitler had opinions, and they were wrong. There is such a thing as wrong, despite what modern culture might want to tell us, and the retail availability of killing machines is wrong. We should not worry about offending people who think otherwise, because their way of thinking is inherently offensive. Not equal.

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  27. The belief that possessing a gun gives one a magical power to avoid being shot is SUCH B.S.! Look at the police, who all carry guns. No time to react to some crazy, just a matter of timing. Using a gun to settle a petty disagreement. The glorification of gun violence in the media, on TV, in the movies. I gotta go hug my Border collie.

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    • Agreed, the argument that weapons designed to kill somehow make us safer makes no sense. License to carry concealed weapons. License to open carry. Thoughts and prayers to victims of gun violence, the kids slaughtered and families destroyed. Meanwhile let’s keep selling these things. Flyers in the Sunday paper. Click the link for this limited time offer. Ammo on sale. All guns buy two get one free.

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