A Short Conversation About Gun Rights

Ralph: I believe the right to own guns is a matter of personal freedom. I take it you disagree?

Washington-based Gun Control Advocate (GCA): Personal freedom is overrated. It’s been scientifically proven that the need for freedom is just a passing phase in the growth of human beings from embryo to adult and through their fetal and larval stages. Children and fetuses don’t need freedom! They need security, a warm place to sleep, an occasional Happy Meal and free HBO when they subscribe to basic cable. That’s it . . .

Ralph: There’s no such thing as free HBO. Besides, even the Rascals knew that “people everywhere just want to be free.”

GCA: A good song, but bullshit. Not until people reach sexual maturity do their thoughts turn to freedom because that’s what they want most.

Ralph: Really?

GCA: Okay, second most. Like way back in second. I’m talking ten games out and not even making the playoffs second. But compare the adult world of gunloons to the world of little children.

Gunloons are not nice. They have independent thoughts. A gunloon might actually harm another citizen and call it “self defense” just because the other citizen is robbing their elderly grandmother and beating the shit out of her with a tire iron. Here’s news for you, gunloons. The government robs grandmothers every day, and for big bucks, too. We call it “redistribution of wealth.” And just to show you that we treat everyone equally, Grampa’s gonna get cornholed, too.

Children, on the other hand, are nice. Well, they’re not nice when they crap their pants and scream and cry, but they’re mostly nice. If gunloons stayed like children the way that we want them to, they would always be nice, even when they got big. Of course, they’d need someone to care for them in “loco parentis.” And who would that be? The government, of course! No parentis could ever be more loco than the government, which is why you gunloons need it even if you don’t want it.

Ralph: So we fought the War of Independence so that government would take care of us? I don’t remember that from high school civics class.

GCA: Well, you have to look back at our written history from before prehistoric times. In the evolution of homo sapiens and hetero sapiens, we once hunted to live. It was our only livelihood. Sure, there was cannibalism, but without refrigeration it was pretty hard to stretch a meal.

Primitive people couldn’t even plant crops because there was no government to subsidize their soybeans and alfalfa. So men became murderous fiends, killing helpless mastodons, cave bears and dinosaurs. The better the hunter got, the fatter the hunter got. Then one day a bear ate one of those slow-moving lard-asses instead of the other way around. Hunters got scared, stayed home, and invented pizza delivery.

Ralph: You’re quite the amateur historian. Can I get you another martini?

GCA: Great, and snag one for yourself while you’re at it. As I was saying, when cavemen stayed home all day, it drove cavewomen totally batshit, so they decided to do something about it. They told their cavemen to get their lazy asses off the couch and go kill something. So now, the urge to watch the NFL on CBS is part of the male DNA, while women are more concerned with putting food on the table and buying some nice shoes.

Watch a male hunting. When he spots a big rack, the hunter shakes. He sweats. He gets a major chubby. Nothing except a nooner in the back seat with Salma Hayek comes close to that excitement. This is called “buck fever” when there’s a buck involved. When there’s a woman involved, you switch the first letters of “buck” and “fever” and you got it. It’s totally primal!

Ralph: Yah, mon!

GCA: I can see we’re on the same wavelength now. Look at it this way. If someone checked a chicken into the vault of a local Bank of America branch, at night the chicken would fly to the top rung of the vault to protect itself from foxes even though there aren’t any foxes in the vault.

Ralph: There’s also no money in there either, but a chicken is too stupid to know that.

GCA: Just like Tim Geithner. Anyway, men want guns for the same reason that a chicken roosts. It’s a call of nature. It’s the task of modern man to overcome the call of nature whenever possible and become completely anal like Michael Bloomberg.

Ralph: But what about the Second Amendment?

GCA: Well, it’s sloppy writing for one thing. “Shall not be infringed” is completely ambiguous. The Second Amendment does not say that guns “shall not be regulated.” So if all guns are taken away from gunloons, that’s not infringement, that’s common-sense gun regulation! And who are gunloons? Anyone who even thinks about owning a gun, that’s who. So there you are. “Shall not be infringed” means that gun ownership can be infringed. It’s so obvious that only a gunloon could miss it.

Ralph: I missed it. It must be the martinis.

GCA: The fog of war. Anyway, I’m so tired of gunloons whining that it would be some kind of tyranny to kick down their doors without a warrant, kill their household pets and take their guns away. That’s ridiculous. It’s not tyranny if the ATF does it; it’s just standard operating procedure.

Ralph: But I still don’t get what you have against guns in the hands of decent, law-abiding citizens. Oops, you spilled a little of your drink there.

GCA: (Blotting his tie) Don’t worry, it’s a magic tie. It changes from polyester to silk when I put it on the expense account.

First of all, if someone needs to get capped, we have people to do that. We don’t need any help from you.

GCA: So you’re against self-defense?

GCA: Let’s just say that we think it can be abused. For instance, a woman gets jumped by a serial rapist. She could jack that guy up with a .308, but the police advise all women that if they get raped, they should just lay back and enjoy it. Call 911. The cops will be there soon enough. We just don’t understand why some people are so impatient.

Ralph: With the Supreme Court protecting gun rights, banning guns doesn’t seem to be an option. Just between us, do you have any new tactics in mind?

GCA: Of course. Until we can get rid of all guns, gunloons should not be able to buy more than one gun. That’s it. The more guns a gunloon has, the more power a gunloon feels. People can’t be trusted with power.

Ralph: Why?

GCA: Because this would be a terrible country if every regular person had the freedom to make choices based on their own circumstances and interests. It would be, I don’t know, like a democracy or something. We can’t have democracy, not while the economy is being so well managed. It would mess up everything.

Ralph: Yes, guns would mess up everything. That’s why we need them. Man, you drank that fast. Want another?

GCA: I really shouldn’t. I’m carrying.