I hate guns. All guns. Carried by anyone.
Cops, trained citizens, soldiers, immature jerks who feel powerful with a pistol on their hip. Anyone. My reasons are simple: if a gun isn’t present, no one get’s shot. I don’t care about the second amendment; it was written in a different time, for a different group of people. Hunters? Let ‘em use a bow.
When I’m king of the United States, no more guns.
Guns are in the news this year (again). Assault rifles. Half the population says ban them, the other half screams about their second amendment rights. “It’s a gun,” they say, “I have a constitutional right to bear arms.” Never mind that the rest of us have the right to live our lives unafraid. Seems like a standoff to me.
Enter Dmitriy Andreychenko. Remember that name? He’s the brain-dead kid who walked into a Missouri Walmart wearing body armor and carrying an assault rifle. Unsurprisingly, he created a panic. Shoppers abandoned their carts and hightailed it out of the store. If I was there, I would have done the same thing. But no one needed to fear. Dmitriy wasn’t going to shoot anyone, he simply “wanted to know if Walmart honored the 2nd Amendment.” Dmitriy was exercising his right to bear arms.
He was arrested and charged with making a terrorist threat.
Here’s the deal. Missouri has a law that allows citizens to carry their weapons out in the open, in public, including into stores. Their laws don’t specify what types of guns can be carried. He didn’t point the gun at anyone, he made no verbal threats. In fact he grabbed a shopping cart and started walking through the store like any other shopper. Dmitriy didn’t break the law. He was truly celebrating the second amendment and Missouri’s lax gun laws. So why was he arrested? Why did people freak out? Why was this legal action considered a terroristic threat?
Because it’s a fucking assault rifle, that’s why! It’s a weapon made to be used on a battlefield. To mow down as many of the enemy as possible in as short a time period as possible. It has no place in a peaceful society. The people in Walmart made that clear by fleeing. The police made that clear by arresting him. If the innate assumption is that a person carrying an assault rifle is about to commit mass murder, why in God’s name are these things legal?
I have no doubt that many of those shoppers and responding police officers are pro second amendment. I’m sure people exactly like them are the ones answering poll after poll insisting that assault rifles are simply guns protected by our constitution. So why are they saying that Dmitriy can’t carry one into Walmart like, say, a holstered revolver?
There’s a change in the air. With the Democratic primary in full swing, the timing is perfect for debate. Even Trump, a man always willing to push back on any demand made by “the liberal elitists,” is thinking about toughening gun laws. Uniformly, as a nation, we’re sick of notifications on our phones offering body counts, using terminology like “shooter” and “shelter in place” and “AK-47.” These shootings won’t stop, and with each one, the resolve of the Republican party will erode a little more. Support for the NRA will falter. We’ll hear more outcry, and one day we’ll hit a tipping point when finally, assault rifles will be pulled from the street.
Back to me being King again… The law I envision is to make it illegal to transfer ownership of an assault rifle. Inherited weapons must be turned over to the federal government for a fair price based on the value of the gun when purchased. No one’s gun is ever taken away, and in fifty or sixty years, our society will be virtually assault rifle free. Sadly, I’m too old to see this play out, but my kids and their kids will live in a safer world.
—
A version of this post was previously published on JefftCann and is republished here with permission from author.
—
◊♦◊
Have you read the original anthology that was the catalyst for The Good Men Project? Buy here: The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood
◊♦◊
Talk to you soon.
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project and want to join our calls on a regular basis, please join us as a Premium Member, today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—
Photo credit: istockphoto