How do you defend your fragile masculinity? With a gun! Prepare to throw up in your mouth.
The primary weapon used in the Newtown massacre was a .223 rifle manufactured by Bushmaster, and that is the last time I will mention the massacre for the next five paragraphs. Because if that had never happened, if NO mass shooting had ever happened, Bushmaster’s “Man Card” [site down at present, see screencaps and related images throughout this post] advertising and promotion series would still be indefensibly awful, grossly irresponsible, and plainly harmful.
I do not like asinine gender enforcement in advertising. I do not like it in my beer, I do not like it far or near. I do not like it on my soap: do I like it? Fucking nope. There is no time when any talk of a “man card”, or any implication that one’s entire gender hangs on a purchase, does NOT piss me off. But nowhere, EVER, have I seen it done so nasty, so viciously, dangerously stupid, as it is here.
Let me be clear: I’m a gun owner. I pack heat, I’ve got a roscoe, however you want to put it. And one of the criticisms gun owners face is that guns are just macho assholes buying lethal penis metaphors to cover up for their desperate insecurity. Responsible gun owners raise the counterargument that that’s not so, we are aware that these things are not toys or fashion accessories, they are deadly weapons and should be treated as such.
Well, except the indefensible assholes at Bushmaster, clearly. They’re explicitly selling rifles as toys, as fashion accessories, as a way to reassert your threatened masculinity. You think I’m kidding? The site they have up provides a list of ways to threaten your friends’ masculinity, and lets you inform them that they can have their masculinity back if they’ll consider purchasing some of Bushmaster’s line of firearms. If I were making up a parody commercial to INSULT American gun culture, I would consider that model way too on-the-nose to actually use, but Bushmaster just rolled with it.
This is not remotely okay. You sell weapons as weapons, because that’s what they damned well are. You do not sell them as some sort of cutesy little social one-upmanship dick-measuring thing, because that is not a good reason to buy a gun. Not saying there aren’t guys who buy guns for exactly that reason, just that they shouldn’t, nor should they be encouraged to.
Note, by the way, how fragile they’re assuming their customers’ masculinity is. When revoking your friends’ cards, you can’t make up your own reasons, no, you must choose from their preselected list, including such heinously genderbending offenses as doing pilates, being on a “short leash”, and feeling threatened by… fifth graders.
Your five paragraphs are up. A few days ago, kids that age got murdered for real, by yet another spree killer, another guy in the “danger age” between 15-35, another alienated, unhappy, fucked-up guy whose interior life was so far out of whack that the idea of shooting a bunch of children to death started to make sense to him.
We have enough of these cases now that we’re starting to see some patterns. Most of these guys felt alienated, felt humiliated, felt stripped of their power and their agency, and were also so damaged that the only way out they could imagine was cathartic, even redemptive violence, murder on an appalling scale. It’s still a bit early to say if Adam Lanza followed that pattern exactly, but it looks pretty likely that he did.
Imagine it. He felt powerless, impotent, unmanly, so what did he do? Why, he picked up a Bushmaster rifle to fix that feeling.
Just like the ad said he should.
About Noah Brand
The AR15, Black Rifle, etc is one of the most intrinsically beautiful machines ever made…
Out of the box they are renowned for their ease of use and intuitive kinesthetic fit.
It is the only firearm I consider not needing a tear down & tweak as it comes from the dealer.
I know of no other rifle, other than the AKs, that are so easy to train someone on.
And Stoner’s rifle is much more accurate & elegant than the AKs
The newer M4 derivatives are a gilding of the lily, truly the IPhone of firearms…
First of all, why does the “man card” have a revocable status as opposed to a “permanent” one?
Secondly, what happens if a male refuses (or more to the point) doesn’t want a man card to begin with(Personally I tend to think that if you need a gun to make you feel “manly”and or the need to kill something( wildlife like deer) or more likely SOMEBODY(as in a gang/organized crime/ outlaw motorcycle group/terrorist group- OMGs like the Hells Angels or OC groups like LCN call a murder carried out for the simple purpose of joining or at least associating “making/rolling one’s bones”), then you are precislely NOT the person I would care to associate with!
Terry
I am not surprised to see such a vitriolic reaction from anyone here at the GMP. This is a rabidly politically correct group. The folks at Bushmaster have no reason to pander to PC people, the same ones who have called them and their products “evil”. A firearm has no will of its own, and companies are not responsible for the actions of deranged people. The ads you find so distasteful are a reaction (in a completely un-PC way) directly against the people who are attacking them. I have news for you. As distasteful as it is, it is great marketing. It resonates with their base of customers who have also been attacked by liberals for their gun ownership. Their disregard for who they offend is a sign of the extreme polarization on this issue. If you take offense at the black humor, you were probably not going to buy their products anyway. They love getting a reaction like this article because it generates buzz for them. You fell right into their trap, Buttercup!
So your argument is that Bushmaster are, in effect, trolls?
Well sure, I’d agree with that.
But “YOU MAD” isn’t exactly a compelling argument in favor of repressive gender norms or against gun control. Bushmaster may be winning the battle, but if they keep this shit up they’re going to lose the war.
The problem with being a successful troll is that, at the end of the day, you’re still just a troll.
No, the point is that both companies which produce firearms and gun owners in general have been attacked inappropriately, and the attackers are being stereotyped just as they were. It is a normal human psychological reaction and defense mechanism and is to be expected… You could try to demonize them for reacting, but it is in fact, A REACTION. They didn’t start this fight. They manufactured a legal product which 99.99% of their customer base uses in a responsible and safe manner. Its to be expected they would push back rhetorically and in a way that that their customers can relate to. I may also ruffle some feathers here, but the people who are attacking the ownership of AR-15′s are by and large people who have never touched or fired one and are from a cultural group whose political indoctrination prevents them from even opening their minds to any possibility of legitimacy of ownership of these very versatile and useful tools. Those people are not difficult to pick out. They, by dress, mannerism, and actions simply scream “liberalism”! Bushmaster in these ads is simply poking fun at them in a way that its customers find amusing. They are not endorsing anyone shooting up a school. If you take genuine offense at someone questioning your masculinity (because you don’t own an AR-15) instead of laughing it off as a normal SECURE person would, you probably need to see a heathcare profession about your insecurity and persecution issues.
What Bushmaster is TRYING to call lost-card guys, (tongue-in-cheek) is “pussy.” But they chose not to use the actual word. NBD