Incendiary Image of the Day: Mo’ Better Blues Edition

I wonder how many gun owners don’t love their guns. Seriously. I’d like to do a survey gauging the emotional attachment gun owners feel towards their weapons. What percentage view guns as a simple tool for a job, and what percentage worship them as totemic objects of venal veneration? Enthusiasts have a simple name for that: gun porn. It’s what gun poster makers do. The recipe is simple enough: take a shot of a really cool weapon, then write some inflammatory yet celebratory text underneath. AR-15 + “Gun Control Means FILL IN THE BLANK HERE”. Done. In case you hadn’t caught it already, there’s a deep sexual undercurrent to the concept. If I have the right weapon, I’m better than you are. Well, actually, it’s worse than that. If I have the better weapon, I’m unassailable. Isolated. Alone. Impregnable. In some instances, literally. The majority of the posters featuring sayings about women and self-defense and guns (including mine) show a woman without her family. Go figure. Meanwhile, let’s talk about this image . . .

Looking at this poster, you can practically hear Eric Carmen wailing that ” I don’t want to be, all, by, my, self.” In fact, where is he? Not Eric Carmen. He’s still recovering from The Raspberries’ 2009 induction into the Cleveland Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I’m talking about “This guy.” The one’s who’s prepared for anything. He’s nowhere to be seen.

Come to think of it, there’s no compelling evidence of any human presence. Sure, there are two chairs and a sofa. But they’re all facing the same way: towards a TV, presumably. So even if there WAS a group of people, they wouldn’t be making eye contact.

And they would be guys. Not only can we presume this from the surfeit of firepower, but the seating area is about as feminine as a jock strap. There’s no end table. No place for drinks or food or cigars.

So, the image suggests a bunch of (unseen) guys sitting shoulder-to-shoulder watching the outside world through an electronic window, holding their drinks and food on their laps, not looking at each other.

“This guy” is unprepared all right. For human contact. Hey, you want existentialism (and what over-educated TTAGer doesn’t)? How about the text: “This guy is not.” But wait! There’s less!

The room is obviously a bunker. There’s no natural light. The light fixtures—and there are lots of ’em—are kept high and tight, so that the ceiling doesn’t look low. Basement lighting. A room cut off from the outside world. Safe. Secure. Isolated. Cold. Inherently dark.

The really odd thing about this image: the text’s Jewish/Yoda-like sentence construction. Unprepared he is not? Jarring is the double negative. Of itself in and. And then there’s the fact that the man who’s supposedly “prepared for anything” clearly isn’t.

For one thing, the seating area has its back to the guns. Should someone invade the room—presumably through the door to the left—the “unprepared” guy who is not would be. Unprepared. None of the guns, not ONE, is positioned for a quick and violent assault. Two big ass machine guns are facing away form the portal. The one that isn’t is facing one that is. There’s no clear line of sight.

For another, the guns that give the biggest impression of “excess” armament are mounted next to the ceiling. They’re near-as-dammit completely inaccessible.

The wall-mounted weapons may fall easily to hand, but you’d have to dance around all that machine gun stuff. AND you’d have to do it on a smooth stone floor polished to a high sheen. (Imagine that floor with a bit of fresh blood.) And if the wall-mounted long guns are ready to rumble for “this guy,” they’re equally ready for an attacker and /or posse of perps trying to kill him.

In short, tactically, this room is a nightmare. Best case scenario: the door is hardened against attack and there’s a hundred MREs and lots of water nearby. At the point, you wouldn’t need ANY weapons, really. OK maybe one of those huge machine guns for when you’re ready to bust out.

Personally, I’d rather have one small Sig in my pocket than a thousand “modern sporting rifles” on the wall.

When it comes to being prepared for a violent attack, immediate access to a firearm is priority one. The weapon type and the caliber and amount of bullets comes next. I’m a big believer in having a little gun to get to a bigger gun with other smaller guns ready as a backup.

The idea that more is always better is deeply childish. Truth be told, that broken-ass philosophy applies to the relationship between gun owners and their guns.

And that’s not all bad. How many passions do people, OK, men, sustain throughout their entire lives? The child-like awe and fascination and admiration many males feel towards their guns is a Darwinian adaptation that allowed us, as a species, to claw our way, violently, to the top of the food chain.

On the other other hand, believing that arming yourself to the teeth is the key to survival is a good way to get your ass killed. Plenty of home invasions go badly despite the fact that the homeowner has guns in the house. In fact, many homes are invaded because a home has guns.

In any case, promoting the idea that guns are the be all and end all of personal security, especially through a gun porn poster, is pretty stupid. Given the scope of this firearms collection, and I’ve seen bigger BTW, there’s only way to sum up this poster: epic fail.