Post by Joe the Revelator on Apr 26, 2015 7:15:36 GMT
Author: Joe the Revelator
Catagory: Random Shit
Word Count: 733
Post Preference: Filler, Thursday
Gun ownership in liberal Portland is like rat ownership during the bubonic plague. Everyone is sure you’re the reason people are dropping dead, and defending your decision may come off as callous when children are running for their lives. On CNN, anyway.
Once, a woman caught sight of the holster under my shirt. She fled so fast her tattoos were left fluttering on the park bench beside me. After I showed her my permit I was given a stern talking-to about my spiritual decisions. The incident ended with us hugging, and her offering a prayer that I find a more peaceful way through life. The smell of sandalwood incense clings to this day.
To clarify, I was packing a shootin’ iron before Sandy Hook. When I grew up it was adults who did the shooting and adults who got shot, sometimes because they deserved it. I’ve always followed the Hemmingway example of playing multiple roles in life; writer, drunk, and constant danger to animal and man alike. Only now, with my particular stretch of the northwest reaching the hipster saturation point, have I started speaking out on the issue.
I’m a firm believer not in gun ownership, but in history. In the early stages of civilization if citizens were denied rights to carry weapons while the governing body was armed to the teeth, feudalism soon followed. Of course with 270 million guns in America, that would be like Samurai trying to revoke swords from the serfs while fishermen pulled Katana from the river by the net full. So I guess it’s a combination of social responsibility on my part, and really wanting a Kurosawa film break out on my front lawn.
If any of this has made you want to get a gun, please don’t. It’s said that civilization comes from the barrel of a gun. But so does road rage. And I honestly can’t trust any more of you with firearms. I originally purchased a gun not because I’m afraid of other guns, but because I don’t trust the public. Culturally we’re all of 137 years past the Salem witch trials. I get death threats online when I argue that half of the new Battlestar series was fluff. And if I knew statistically one in three of you had a velociraptor on your person, I’d carry a T-Rex.
Does this make me a hypocrite? In so, so many ways, yes.
I don’t trust the people who issued me a firearm permit, either. Have you ever taken a handgun safety class? I did. The instructor had a vaguely southern accent that disappeared halfway through the course. He showed us Youtube videos for an hour or two, mostly of cops discharging guns into their feet, and asked if we were Ford or Chevy men. I was insulted that he would waste our precious gun-safety time on banal questions.
Ford, of course.
The climax of the class was when the entire group (90% Harley enthusiasts, by jacket logos) was asked to “rack the slide” in a safe manner. Training pistols were tilted into gang poses. Satisfying click-clack cocking sounds rang out. A pair of teens in black eye liner asked if .45’s were as easy to cock as the 9mm. A woman in a wife-beater was so meth-thin she couldn’t pull the slide back on a pistol…a training pistol, so oft-used it had the resistance of a condom soaked in hydrofluoric acid.
“Doesn’t matter.” The instructor said, giving her a pass. “We’ll hook you up with a Pink Lady. No resistance, and .38 comes in hollow point.”
For those of you less gun-savvy, the instructor was setting her up with a hot-pink revolver that spat bullets larger than the piece she was unable to heft, aim, or handle. For both our wellbeing I wish I was making at least some of this up.
This was the class required of me by the state of Oregon to carry a gun in public.
So if you see me chasing ducks in the park and you catch a glimpse of my pistol under my bathrobe, or if you see NRA supporters on TV fantasizing about blowing holes in home invaders, try not to panic. Just remember what your parents told you about bees and rattlesnakes. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them. So keep it to yourself, you inky hipsters.
Sincerely – Old Man Joe
Catagory: Random Shit
Word Count: 733
Post Preference: Filler, Thursday
Gun ownership in liberal Portland is like rat ownership during the bubonic plague. Everyone is sure you’re the reason people are dropping dead, and defending your decision may come off as callous when children are running for their lives. On CNN, anyway.
Once, a woman caught sight of the holster under my shirt. She fled so fast her tattoos were left fluttering on the park bench beside me. After I showed her my permit I was given a stern talking-to about my spiritual decisions. The incident ended with us hugging, and her offering a prayer that I find a more peaceful way through life. The smell of sandalwood incense clings to this day.
To clarify, I was packing a shootin’ iron before Sandy Hook. When I grew up it was adults who did the shooting and adults who got shot, sometimes because they deserved it. I’ve always followed the Hemmingway example of playing multiple roles in life; writer, drunk, and constant danger to animal and man alike. Only now, with my particular stretch of the northwest reaching the hipster saturation point, have I started speaking out on the issue.
I’m a firm believer not in gun ownership, but in history. In the early stages of civilization if citizens were denied rights to carry weapons while the governing body was armed to the teeth, feudalism soon followed. Of course with 270 million guns in America, that would be like Samurai trying to revoke swords from the serfs while fishermen pulled Katana from the river by the net full. So I guess it’s a combination of social responsibility on my part, and really wanting a Kurosawa film break out on my front lawn.
If any of this has made you want to get a gun, please don’t. It’s said that civilization comes from the barrel of a gun. But so does road rage. And I honestly can’t trust any more of you with firearms. I originally purchased a gun not because I’m afraid of other guns, but because I don’t trust the public. Culturally we’re all of 137 years past the Salem witch trials. I get death threats online when I argue that half of the new Battlestar series was fluff. And if I knew statistically one in three of you had a velociraptor on your person, I’d carry a T-Rex.
Does this make me a hypocrite? In so, so many ways, yes.
I don’t trust the people who issued me a firearm permit, either. Have you ever taken a handgun safety class? I did. The instructor had a vaguely southern accent that disappeared halfway through the course. He showed us Youtube videos for an hour or two, mostly of cops discharging guns into their feet, and asked if we were Ford or Chevy men. I was insulted that he would waste our precious gun-safety time on banal questions.
Ford, of course.
The climax of the class was when the entire group (90% Harley enthusiasts, by jacket logos) was asked to “rack the slide” in a safe manner. Training pistols were tilted into gang poses. Satisfying click-clack cocking sounds rang out. A pair of teens in black eye liner asked if .45’s were as easy to cock as the 9mm. A woman in a wife-beater was so meth-thin she couldn’t pull the slide back on a pistol…a training pistol, so oft-used it had the resistance of a condom soaked in hydrofluoric acid.
“Doesn’t matter.” The instructor said, giving her a pass. “We’ll hook you up with a Pink Lady. No resistance, and .38 comes in hollow point.”
For those of you less gun-savvy, the instructor was setting her up with a hot-pink revolver that spat bullets larger than the piece she was unable to heft, aim, or handle. For both our wellbeing I wish I was making at least some of this up.
This was the class required of me by the state of Oregon to carry a gun in public.
So if you see me chasing ducks in the park and you catch a glimpse of my pistol under my bathrobe, or if you see NRA supporters on TV fantasizing about blowing holes in home invaders, try not to panic. Just remember what your parents told you about bees and rattlesnakes. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them. So keep it to yourself, you inky hipsters.
Sincerely – Old Man Joe