Give me a gun!

Aside from being really good at Duck Hunt on my old NES, I don't have much experience with guns.

I've never used so much as a BB gun, nevermind something that actually shoots real bullets. It's not that I'm really anti-gun or anything, I've just never had the exposure. I do think hunters are giant fuckwads, but that's mostly because I think anyone who kills animals for fun is a fuckwad. I give more respect to someone who strangles cats for fun, because at least they risk scratches. If you want to hunt, have the balls to do it hand-to-hand.

But I've fallen off-topic. The topic being the delightful letter to the editor I just now happened across in the Sentinel. Its title is "Atrocities could be stopped if people were armed", and the basic premise is that tragedies like what happened at Virginia Tech could be avoided if everybody and their grandma were armed.

Umm... okay. Let met allow the editorialist to speak for himself:

These cowards attack schools, post offices, and other places like this because they know that there is no one there to oppose them. If a principal, or faculty member, or office manager was known to be armed, these people wouldn't dare to set foot in the place. Even if they were armed with non-lethal weapons, such as tasers or mace, it would be a deterrent. These cowards cannot function if they are opposed.

Right on! Let's make sure everyone in schools and post offices are armed! Because having guns in everyone's hands will certainly reduce gun violence! After all, fights never break out in schools. And that whole "going postal" phrase certainly wasn't coined after a rash of postal employees killing people with guns! Good idea, crazy person!

The writer also brings out this awesome argument:

Our politicians and other bleeding hearts with their heads in the sand can only say, pass more laws against guns and the problem will go away. Hitler used the same approach and look what happened to the population when he disarmed them. Ask any Jew how it feels to have storm troopers come into your home and drag you out or burn you out and steal all you have and put you to death at their whim.

Woo! Hitler-based arguments are the best!

I was going to take his advice and ask a Jewish friend of mine how it feels to have storm troopers come into her home and drag her out and kill her, but then it occurred to me that she was born in 1976. Shockingly, there are Jewish people who didn't go through the Holocaust! Beware if you try to follow this advice, "any Jew" might not do!

Anyway, making fun of letters to the editor becomes dull quickly, so I'll wrap this up with a final thought...

Arming everyone in the world may actually not be the best way to reduce gun violence. Also, people who write letters to the editor are almost universally morons.