Thursday, July 26, 2012

The Call of Duty Principle

Look at any Internet meme regarding Call of Duty, Battlefield, or any other first-person shooter with online multiplayer. Inevitably, the joke will be that the enemy team are experts and master strategists, while the poster's team are about as competent as the primates from the opening of 2001.

This, what I have dubbed the Call of Duty Principle (hereafter referred to as the CDP), is equally applicable to the gun control debate. One of the common by-rote refutations of gun control is that gun ownership demands responsibility, and therefore gun owners are responsible. That kind of ass-backward logic is analogous to saying that running a country requires one to care for and protect his people, therefore Edi Amin cared for and protected his subjects.

Guns might demand responsibility, but since they're not sentient they can't insist on it. All of the cases of imbeciles shooting themselves, children shooting themselves or others with unsecured guns, and "amateur" hunters and showmen killing bystanders pretty much prove that guns aren't very fucking well controlled.

The second common argument, repeated like a Z-grade movie zombie repeats "braiiiiins," is that criminals will still obtain guns illegally, so why have laws in the first place? And to anyone who legitimately posits this 'reasoning,' please kindly enact celibacy and become a hermit so that neither the gene pool nor humanity's minds are tainted by your caustic stupidity. By that reasoning, there should be no laws at all. People will still take stuff, so why make theft illegal? People will still kill each other, so why punish murder? People will still crash their cars, so why put up speed bumps or fine speeders or arrest for vehicular manslaughter?

Gun control laws were originally intended to make it harder for bad people to obtain deadly weapons, and they might have worked had imbeciles not continually bitched about them and fought to repeal or weaken the laws. Smuggling in weapons, particularly large ones like assault rifles and shotguns, is expensive and very risky. Sadly, since gun stores now sell these firearms and lack of responsibility makes them easy to steal, there no longer needs to be any smuggling. You can illegally obtain any firearm these days by sneaking into a gun shop after hours or robbing your redneck neighbor. No need to even leave town.

Moreover, assault weapons are generally only used in massacres. Gangs and other criminal groups don't use them because they're hard to conceal. The majority of weaponry used in mass killings is purchased legally, since the killer doesn't care about being caught. Illegal assault weapons are generally only found during large-scale gang warfare or on the persons of cartel bodyguards.

Finally, there's the idea of defense. "If they're gonna attack with assault weapons, I need one too!"
Slow it down there, Skippy. This isn't like Rocky, where you need to be just as big to beat up the other guy. All an assault weapon in your hands will do is to harm more innocent bystanders.

I refer, finally, to the CDP: on the whole, people with legally obtained guns are fucking morons. Recall any recent shooting where the attacker was taken down by a bystander. Did anyone make use of a firearm? No, it was usually an unarmed and elderly person. What happened to these posturing maniacs? In general, such skags tend to run or curl up in a ball and piss themselves. They want a gun to feel like a man, or to compensate for having a toothpick for a cock, but when actual danger calls they're a blubbering mess of tears, mucus and fecal matter.

And even if you did pull out a goddamn Kalashnikov, what then? Somebody starts shooting, then you start shooting, then everybody else starts shooting? How do you know if the other shooters are defending themselves, if they're friends of the first shooter, or if they just want to kill you too? What do you do? Do you keep shooting until you're the last one standing? And how do the police know who's defending themselves and who's attacking? Is the solution then to just kill everyone who's not you?

Even more bizarre are the nutjobs who claim to need a goddamn military arsenal for home defense. Some ex-military fuck admits to having six assault rifles, three shotguns, a bunch of pistols, and enough ammunition to supply Monaco's police force. Who does he expect to attack him, the Huns? Is he going to be raided by Commies who somehow snuck an entire platoon through Customs?

"Yeah, a buncha Nazis ended up in America, and they used their super-secret time machines like Captain Jack Harkness to jump ahead to an indeterminate time. So at any point these fascists could teleport into my living room, guns blazing. I need to be ready for that!"

The argument is that they don't know who might attack their home. But I can say with reasonable fucking certainty that it's not going to be the Egyptian military rolling through your den!

In addition, having that many guns is a detriment. I know that these deep-in-denial shitstains like to believe that Leave It To Beaver was a documentary and that burglars all wear striped prison uniforms and crash through windows, but the truth is, criminals - especially burglars and home invaders- are SNEAKY. They SNEAK. The reason they sneak is because what they are doing is illegal, just like fucking your sister, which most gun-lovers do too. Well, I don't think incest is illegal in West Virginia, but that's where they filmed the documentary The Hills Have Eyes, so that doesn't fucking count.

So you see, a burglar, being SNEAKY, sneaks into your home. Now, since you're an asstard who doesn't secure his sixteen guns - including the Luger-shaped dildo you shove up your pucker - the burglar who SNUCK into your home now has your guns. He can then sell them from his trunk, meaning that you have just helped abet the illegal gun trade.
And let's say that you do wake up. Being the traditional gun-happy sombitch, you are not SNEAKY. You clomp down the stairs with your belly bobbing in front of you or fart your way through the halls. Well, now the burglar has your guns and he knows you're coming. He can shoot you. There are enough cases of people being murdered with their own firearms to support this.

So now you're dead, shot with your own weapon. And why? Because art imitates life, and the CDP applies in both. The bad guys, who make a living at being careful and/or killing people, are much more capable of killing you than you, a couch-potato who has delusions of Rambdeur, have of stopping them.

So shut the fuck up about guns. If you're worried about getting attacked, get a Derringer or other small, maneuverable weapon and load it with hollow-points or explosive bullets. If home defense is your concern, get a bigger gun, maybe a Desert Eagle, and again, hollow points. At most, a pump-action shotgun is all you need.

And if you can't be bothered to become competent enough with a pistol or a shotgun to reliably hit your target, then whatever happens is your own fault, and you wouldn't have been saved by an M-16 or a chaingun.

1 comment:

  1. Okay - all of the above is so true and gun control - or lack thereof - is a serious subject. That said, I gotta tell ya, I laughed so hard reading this I almost wet my pants!! AWESOME post!! You are an incredibly gifted writer Mr. Fox! Keep up the good work : )

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