Toys in the Attic

My German born co-worker tells the story of a drunken night some fifteen years ago. He's at home with several friends and after several beers, the topic of guns and ammo is raised. The gun in the attic is withdrawn and paraded around like a toy.

Suffice to say, the hole in his refrigerator was caused by the inadvertent discharge of his .45 while demonstrating his [unloaded] handgun to his friends. Fifteen years later, not but a few months ago, he replaces the old inefficient fridge with the hole in it with another that was subsidized by SMUD.

In my mind, guns are nothing but toys for adult males. I own three, which is three less than the number owned by the average gun owner in the U.S. There are currently 200,000,000 guns in the U.S.; 2/3rds of a gun for every man, woman and child.

They are toys. Cellularized telephones are toys, too. So are in-dash nav systems, they are toys, too, along with GPS systems, headrest DVD players, iPads, iPhones, etc. If they enanced the productivity of Americans I'd say they could be tools, but as we all use them to play games, to twitter, to twatter, to network, to bitch about our bosses, to complain about our restaurant service, or to blog about trivial shit like I do here, they do nothing to make us more productive; indeed they distract us and make us counterproductive, so they are just...toys.

What I find impressive is how a few tens-of-thousands of these toy-owners can argue that owning a MAC-10 assault weapon, or an AK-47, or an AR-15, or all three, is provided to us via the 2nd amendment. The ownership of such devices doesn't enhance our GDP, and arguably doesn't enhance our own security...although they would certainly think otherwise.

I own a few, and the only reason I use them is for play. I plink cans. I shoot clay shells. I shoot the occasional duck and goose but I can hardly call this "puttin' food on the table." I have not once used any for "self defense," or to "protect my family," or any of that other horseshit espoused by the radical right. I don't believe the mantra that "without the second amendment, there'd be no first amendment." This is nothing more than right wing, anti-government phobia in my little opinion. And it is indeed little.

What I am questioning is the assertion by these people, the ones who use guns as toys and for playthings, that the ownership of a 45-round assault rifle should be protected by the 2nd amendment. Under that argument, I suppose I can maintain my 4-round hand grenade arsenal without conviction, too, along with my 60-cal, my squad automatic weapon, and my two Claymore mines I regularly deploy to prevent unwanted trespassers on my Elk Grovian housal unit. Fuck, I might as well admit I have three Light Anti-Tank Rockets and one TOW missle at the ready, just in case you try to come after my beta-VCR or first generation I-Pod shuffle.

At what point do we accept that the ownership of sixty round assault rifles and LAW rockets is a perversion of the right to bear arms? We already illegalize my current ownership of hand grenades and Claymore mines (stolen during my service in the Army), but at what point should we do the same with the "toys" used by a few hundred thousand second-amendment diehards?

8,400 Americans were killed by firearms last year, not including the greater number of suicides by firearms. We can discount this number, yes, as we do the 40-odd thousand killed in automotive accidents. These deaths are effectually caused because a handful of grown-ups simply cannot submit to any restrictions on the toys they can have, or how they can be played with.

We will never, never!, live in a country where we can protect children in supermarket parking lots, by-standers in hair salons, or simply refrigerators from drunks.

"From my cold dead hands." Well, that's something I could agree with...