Gun Man Bears Gunners

In the wake of what certainly app(ear)ed to be an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, some folks start to wonder if guns should be so freely available to constantly bullied children. In fact, gun control of some type will be hypothetically discussed every time a fairly hefty chunk of Americans get slaughtered. I say hypothetically because it’s pitifully impossible that any restrictions at all can be placed on guns. The NRA, Vladimir Putin and JimmyBob will slaughter anything or anyone who dares try. Lawmakers at every level understand that the slightest hint of gun control legislation is political suicide. Just the threat of being targeted by Vlady and his NRA partners is enough to keep our politicians at bay. No matter how many bodies pile-up. No matter how many children are buried. No matter how much of our freedom must be sacrificed to protect ourselves from ourselves. 

We have already “hardened” almost everything. Schools, airports, public buildings and hospitals are already police state style fortresses. Airports and schools in particular already look and feel like prisons. A prison we built for ourselves and our children. 

Yet occasionally I will still pointlessly give gun control some thought from time to time and a couple of things shot into my ear and my brain. By the way, all manner of puns and allegory included in this text are intentional. I think. 

Not long ago I saw the bear/man thing going around the interwebs. Just in case you missed it: if you were a woman alone in the woods, would you be more afraid to encounter a human man or a bear. Many, many women professed that they would be more worried at encountering a human male than any bear, even a male one.

Looking further into it I found that this wasn’t a one off. Women in general are clearly more afraid of encountering a man in an isolated situation than they were of a bear.  

Here is where we break off for a moment. In case you couldn't tell, I'm no fan of guns. It is a device that is designed only to cause harm. It is its only practical use. I suppose you could figure out how to use them as a bottle opener. But even the most devoted fanboys of guns would likely advise against that use. So we often hear that guns offer protection. But the kind of protection they offer are mostly for protection from other guns. So I'm going to discard the protection argument as self-reinforcing or perhaps self-pleasuring depending on an individual’s level of infatuation with killing devices. More on that nonsense later.

Hunting is the other argument. I try to give them that one but ultimately I can't. Because if you hunt animals there are only two possible reasons. Food or pleasure. If you are hunting animals for pleasure you have a mental illness and probably haven't read this far anyway. If you are hunting for food with a gun I can deal with it only if you have absolutely no other food choice. It has to be a strictly hunt or starve situation. Here is why. As repulsive as factory farming is—and it is horribly repulsive in every conceivable way—it is still an animal conjured into existence only to be eaten. It has no real life to lose. If you hunt an animal in the wild, it is an animal that HAS a life to lose, which you, in your weakness, choose to take. Not nice. Not right. That is also why lab grown meat can become such an amazing, world changing thing if: 

1. We can get over the creeps about it and bring it to scale so that it’s wonderfully cheap, delicious and death free.
   

2. Survive long enough as a civilization and species to see it happen. Tricky business actually because we are in perhaps the deepest doo-doo, certainly of my lifetime and possibly everyone’s lifetime. But let’s try to stay positive and caustic, shall we.

So where does this leave us? Here is where we circle back to the man/bear conundrum. There is a natural power differential between men and women. In general, men are simply larger and stronger. Obviously there are exceptions and in no way am I inferring that women are in any way “less” than men because of it. Quite the opposite, in fact. Because clearly men have not evolved sufficiently to be trusted with this undeserved advantage. As a man, I cannot pretend to understand the fear and apprehension that every woman in the world lives with. I go anywhere and do anything without a care. It is difficult for me to conceive that a woman must consider every step and every move, everywhere they go. They can't or won't walk down that alley alone. Can't or won't walk that remote trail in the park by themselves, or even in pairs. It's a different and more dangerous world for every woman, everywhere. It just is. Whether men choose to understand that or not. Women need and should have the right to protect themselves from men, and, I suppose, bears.

So we come to a proposal. Guns should be legal for ownership and use, but only by women. Let’s be honest. Guns are unique in that they have no beneficial use of any kind. Guns solve no problems that they don't themselves cause. Everyone who wants a gun, does so out of fear and weakness of some kind. Women for a legitimate biological and social reason. Men because they are fearful and emotionally frail creatures that need forged metal to reinforce their withered sense of their own manhood. So let’s allow guns for their only conceivable valid purpose. To balance the physical scales between men and women until such time as men can be trusted. It could happen. I would say "stranger things have happened", but I'm not so sure about that. We may not even be biologically capable of so fundamental of a transformation. 

Perhaps we could allow certain exceptions for men who are physically handicapped or are willing to admit that they are weak and frail minded and need the weapon in compensation for actual physical weakness or insufficient male genitalia. They would need to sign a confession. Maybe actual measurements could be verified and recorded. In extreme cases a man may be permitted a gun if he could prove a lifelong inability to gain legal access to consensual sexual contact with females or a documented track record of failure to satisfy any female partners they may have somehow procured. 

Again, let’s deal with the issue honestly. All arguments for male gun ownership are easily dismissed with easily verifiable facts. A gun in private hands is ALWAYS far more likely to harm its owner or an innocent than it is to be capably used for protection. 5-10 times more likely. A statistic that has remained consistent for as long as we have been capable of keeping track. 

A gun’s only value is to its manufacturer, retailer, Vladimir Putin, the weak, and the weak-minded. Guns should be for women only. They alone "need" them. And even then only for protection from men. Let’s give it a shot.