The Powerful Pornography of the Gun Fetish.

Source

This is from an op-ed over at Truthout by William Rivers Pitt, that I thought was very spot on and worth sharing: 

Over the weekend, hundreds of gun-rights activists descended on the Alamo in Texas to lament how hard it is these days for gun-owners in America. The crowd was regaled by luminaries like Alex Jones, who dispensed his gibberish with the proud fervor of someone who has taken to heart the old adage, "There's a sucker born every minute," because he knows he's getting paid no matter what he says. "If it's a war they want," he roared again and again as the day wore on, "it's a war they'll get." 

Maybe I am desensitized at this point, but after another week of stories about dead children, I find myself most bothered by this thing at the Alamo, for it represents the distilled essence of the ongoing, blood-sodden catastrophe that is this nation's terminal fetish for guns in all forms. They really do think they are under siege, and see themselves standing post on the walls of their own fictional Alamo, facing down hordes of Obama-programmed FEMA soldiers who carry the banner of the UN and seek to take their guns before instituting Sharia Law across the land. 

Under siege? It would be funny if it wasn't so completely lethal. It is almost like a magic trick: a pack of dangerous, dim-witted blivets who drape themselves in camouflage and masturbate relentlessly to "Red Dawn" on a nightly basis sprawled on a pile of NRA leaflets while clutching an AR-15 in their other hand have figured out a way to become an untouchable class in American politics, even as the blood and brain matter of children swells past their ankles and up over their fatted calves. 

It is, perhaps, the most remarkable trick ever turned in modern American politics. A few bottles of Tylenol are poisoned in 1982 and kill seven people, and the country erupts, and Tylenol is scourged from every shelf in the land, and new safety measures are swiftly enacted. More than three hundred million guns kill tens of thousands of people on a yearly basis, however, with gun and ammunition sales going through the roof every time a mass slaughter happens, and the nation barely twitches. 

Somehow, these sad, sorry, pathetic, weak, soulless, gutless sacks of shame have not only insulated themselves and their deadly little hobby from the normal procedures of civilized society that take place when a mortal threat is exposed, but have giddily convinced themselves that they are, in fact, the real victims in all this. They can, and do, sell guns on Instagram and evade any and all background checks or other firearm laws, yet somehow they are being crushed under the bootheel of tyrannical governmental overreach.

There is more, and if you are interested I suggest that you click the link at the top to read it, however this part really spoke to me in that it lays out just how perverse this obsession with owning guns has become.

Now I personally don't really have an issue with a person owning one gun for protection and keeping it locked away in a safe location, or owning a rifle for hunting, and also keeping that safely locked away when not in use.

No my problem is with these assholes that own an arsenal of weapons, many of them designed for combat, who spend their days fantasizing about repelling an attack by the Iranians, North Koreans, or Obama led liberals, who they believe are about to tread on their sacred freedoms, seemingly unaware that most of those freedoms were taken from them by the previous administration right before their very eyes.

These people have traded away their actual manhood for a symbol of manliness, leaving them largely impotent in regards to dealing with aggression or personal safety unless they have a gun in their hand.

How else to explain the outpouring of support for George Zimmerman, who gunned down an unarmed teenager who was doing nothing wrong other than trying to get home in the rain?

I truly believe that if Zimmerman had beaten Trayvon Martin with a baseball bat, or a crowbar, and left him alive, that he would have been convicted. However the gun, an instrument solely designed to kill, has become such a symbol for freedom in this country, that it seems to defy justice. (Well unless you are a woman of course, then you get a twenty year sentence for firing a warning shot.)

Our entire perception of an appropriate response to potential violence has been skewed to the point that it almost seems that murder with a gun is more accepted these days rather than to injure to our attacker, or to fire a shot to dissuade them from continuing.

As I have shared before, I was trained in the martial arts by a very strict traditionalist.

And the guidelines that he taught me forty years ago, still resonate with me today.

It is better to walk away than to argue.
Better to argue than to injure.
Better to injure than to maim.
Better to maim than to kill.
And better to kill, than to allow innocents to suffer harm.

A simple lesson, but one that has never seemed more timely.

I just wish that these gun nuts had been exposed to similar instruction when they were young.