Rant of the Year: Cerberus

At Sadly, No!

NO ONE, INSIDE OF THIS COUNTRY, OUTSIDE OF A MILITARY BASE (and outside trained public officials like specialty police officers and secret service agents), NEEDS A GUN! THERE IS NO REAL COMPELLING REASON FOR CIVILIANS TO OWN FIREARMS IN THIS DAY AND AGE!

Not one, single solitary reason. Oh sure, there’s a lot of grasped straws, a lot of reasons that are even now bubbling to the surface, demanding to be said.

And they’re all bullshit.

1. No one really needs a gun for hunting, because no one in this country needs to hunt in this day and age in order to survive. Oh sure, there may be people who do hunt and in fact eat what they hunt and all power to them. But if they were suddenly deprived of their firearms by a firearm removing fairy, they wouldn’t suddenly starve to death.

And that’s because we live in a modern world where it is nearly impossible to “go off the grid”. If one is close enough to civilization to keep the ammo topped off, one is close enough to go to a supermarket and buy one’s daily bread as it were. And even supposing that meat was critical to life, we live in an era where factory farming sadly has made meat cheap and plentiful to even the most remote wilderness area. And even if you wanted to go self-sufficient, it’s much better to grow crops and set traps for small game (or use a fucking bow and arrow or a pit trap if you really need that fucking deer head on the wall).

Fuck, even the arguments that we need to hunt because prey populations are out-of-whack to sustainability only exists because fucking bastards with guns have been shooting all the predator species in the area in order to “protect” their livestock and homes. And again, the solution in the meantime would probably best be served by government officials working in accordance with environmentalists who know exactly how much game needs to be culled to protect the herd and how to do so in a way that’s best sustaining for said herd and protects their biodiversity.

2. No one needs a gun for collections. I mean, no offense to the collectors looking for historic value or just liking the aesthetics, but hobbies are just that. And frankly, let’s be honest. There’s no fucking reason any “collector” needs to have ammo stored in the same place as their “collection” unless their “collection” is better known as an “armory”.

3. No one needs a fucking gun for self-defense.

I’ll repeat that. No one needs a gun for self-defense.

No one.

Not home defense, not personal defense, not defense against some mystical horde of rampaging black people or magical tyrannical government that is polite enough to come in troops of nicely organized poorly armored stormtroopers.

And the fact that the gun fetishists convinced everyone this was a legitimate reason for gun ownership is one of the true marvels of advertising if there ever was one.

And he's just getting started.  Read the whole amazing, passionate, brilliant thing.