| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Aurora & Gun Control | ||||
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The NRA has every politician, on both sides of the aisle, completely buffaloed. We can't even talk about gun control? It's "insulting" to even bring it up?
As Jon Stewart says, this is a complicated issue. But when guns are completely off the table, when we can't even talk about gun violence, how are we ever going to find a solution to this kind of thing?
Instead, we'll ban costumes. Maybe we should put restrictions on buying comic books. After all, guns don't kill people, so it must be comic books, right?
I don't have THE answer on the gun-control issue, I just have AN answer.
ReplyDeleteMy attitude on the gun-control issue comes from, and this is going to sound very strange, the Drill Instructor in the movie "Full Metal Jacket."
"Your rifle is only a tool. It is a hard heart that kills."
Perhaps the bigger problem is not so much the proliferation of guns, but the proliferation of hard hearts.
On the other side of the coin, I find it amusing listening to people who say, 'if it were me in that theater and I had a gun, I would have...'
Yeah, right. They probably would have been doing the same thing everyone else was doing; hiding under their seats pooping their Fruit-Of-The-Looms.
Which brings me to Part 2 of the Drill Instructor's take; and this applies especially to all those talk-tough, would-be John Waynes:
"If your killer instincts are not clean and strong you will HESITATE at the moment of truth! YOU WILL NOT KILL!! You will become dead Marines! And then you will be in a world of shit! Because Marines are not allowed to die without permission! Do you maggots understand?"
Like I said, it's AN answer, but probably not THE answer.
Well, if that were true, Jeff, we wouldn't issue guns to our soldiers, saving a lot of money in the military budget! :)
DeleteThis guy was clearly nuts. He could have killed someone with a knife or a rock (whether he would have is another question), but guns make it far, far easier to kill, especially in quantity.
And some guns - like assault weapons - are specifically designed to kill large numbers of people quickly. That's exactly why we use those guns in the military. This guy wouldn't have been such a menace with a single-shot rifle or a black-powder shotgun.
Finally, the last thing I'd want is a whole theater of would-be Rambos just itching for the chance to shoot someone. I want human beings to hesitate before killing. The real world isn't actually a Stanley Kubrik movie.
(Of course, you already know all that. I'm not trying to imply otherwise.)