Guns, glorious guns, cold blooded murder and justice…
Yes, the title to this blog is a play on “Food Glorious food” lyrics (it’s the best I could do!).
The gun debate in America has kicked off big time and commentators from all parts of the spectrum have locked horns. Also, I must admit, that I did learn something new about the American attitude towards guns whilst watching Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones flip out at Piers Morgan, in that some Americans see their rights to bear arms as a protective clause to arm citizens against the government in the event of some kind of totalitarian apocalypse, instead of just defending the right for a paranoid neighbourhood watchman to shoot dead his neighbour in the face for being Black and wearing a hood (George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin).
First of all, my basic view is this – Civilians should NOT have guns.
This is my story – Many years ago, I lived in America and went to school. I lived with my cousins, they lived in a massive house, they did NOT own a gun. Some of the kids in my grade had guns at home and sometimes talked about how cool they were. In the naivety of my youth, I thought guns were cool, I liked the way they were portrayed in movies (only in the pursuit of justice of course) and thought that one day when I was old enough, I’d own a gun or sixteen too one day. I returned to the UK, I was 13 years old, and with unsightly bumfluff about to make an appearance on my top lip, I started high school and a whole new world started for me. I was a skinny kid that looked like he could be easily bullied or mugged, and every single day after school, local fuckfaces would approach me anywhere between the school gate and my front door, “asking” me to “lend” them money. Sometimes, I would have 20p in my pocket to give away, most times I would talk my way out of it, but not without often being threatened with violence. It happened ALL THE TIME and soon enough I became sick of being preyed upon by these predatory delinquents whose parents had done a rubbish job at raising them. I told a few friends of mine, and it turned out that one of my friends had access to a number of air rifles and BB guns etc as his father was in the US military at a base in North London. I was now 14, and due to my curiosity about owning a gun, my friend had bought in a handgun that fired small metal slugs (probably for target practice or to kill small animals), despite this it looked very real. It was huge, heavy and looked exactly like a gun you’d see in the movies. He offered to sell it to me for £15, I asked if I could trial it for a week, and then give him the money if I really wanted it, he agreed and so my trial began.
I’m a 14 year old skinny pathetic-looking boy whose life is under constant threat of violent mugging, and now I have the power to turn the tables. I was now equating empowering myself by weaponry. Even though I would NEVER willingly perpetrate a crime with this weapon, I would only use it for self defence, I think you’d agree that there is NO circumstance under which a 14 year old should have a concealed gun about his persons. For a whole week, I walked about with an assured confidence, fantasising that some rude boy would try his mugger patter on me, only for me to pull out this huge Robocop gun to his face and tell him to fuck off. Fortunately, it never happened but the dangerous seed of being empowered by a weapon was sown in my mind. One day, I stuffed some paper down the barrel of the gun to make some kind of makeshift iron spitball weapon, and during lunch time I took the gun out in view of the entire playground and shot my friend in the face. The paper projectile almost hit him straight in his eye. He went wild and throttled me, I shat myself knowing that I was in the wrong. I apologised profusely and quickly concealed the gun back into the inside of my jacket pocket, not wanting to attract the attention of the teachers who patrolled the playground.
The gun was huge and quite clunky, fortunately my friend never gave me any form of ammo, after all I just wanted to use it to deter muggers, so I gave it back to him. That summer, I started martial arts and my life changed. Suddenly, I saw that I could empower myself through learning to defend myself like my hero Jackie Chan. I was addicted to martial arts, I would do nothing but rent martial arts movies and train 4 times a week. Now I equated empowering myself through martial arts, training hard and disciplining myself to improve the quality of my character and thus becoming more confident. No longer was I tempted by the sexiness of guns.
So, since my early teens I have been anti-gun.
Now fast forward to where we are today, let’s talk about guns.
Right now, many commentators are citing many types of statistics to justify their position on the gun debate in America. One person cites statistics in one way from certain sources, another person cites other statistics from other sources. So in the vein of my #LetsCutTheCrap has tag, here’s the bottom line –
1: There are too many stupid people in the world.
2: Legal access to guns for everyone will invariably put guns into the hands of stupid people.
3: Stupid people will shoot you.
In all walks of life, it is the stupid, selfish, dangerous idiots that ruin life for the rest of us.
If you are reading this blog, you probably don’t want to shoot anyone for any reason. I too do not want to shoot anyone for any reason. You and I would most probably get along on this subject and never end up shooting each other. However, there are swathes of plebs in the world who have chosen to make it their life mission to be the antithesis to civilisation and given any reason and the resources to do so, will systematically destroy the relative peace that the rest of us can maintain.
It’s not religion, video games, or music that cause violence. It is simply stupid people. People are conscious accountable beings, that can be influenced by the aforementioned factors, but there are plenty of devout religious people, video game geeks and music fans whose lives are nothing but enriched by their passions and wish no ill will towards others. However, any conviction or hobby in the hands of a stupid person can become the scapegoat for their stupid actions.
Ultimately, it is the content of someone’s character that is the deciding factor to how they behave in society. If anything is obvious, it’s that the culture and attitudes that we nurture in society MUST change. And it must start at home, it is not the job of the government to raise your family and tell you how you should behave. Unfortunately, stupid people are spawning at a fast rate and the culture of stupidity that is being engendered in popular culture is being consumed without either moderation or with a reality check. TV will always be full of vacuous celebrity bullshit, and if you as an individual or as a parent cannot guard yourself or your family from this, then you are an idiot and you have no one else to blame but yourself.
I’m sure many will disagree with my point of view, but just remember this. I only extol the virtues of self-responsibility so that individuals raise their standards and contribute towards a better society. I am anti-gun so that NOBODY gets shot, even those who are pro-gun.
Right, I’m off to play Black Ops 2 on my Xbox.
