Thursday, October 29, 2015

An ovary can't kill an elk


All the Republicans have is Rand Paul playing air guitar to Rush.

Most people say, “The NRA” but I pronounce it, “Ner-raw.” It sounds kind of primal, a growl and a sneer at the same time. I say it all the time, sometimes to scare my wife’s cats, “Ner-raw,” as I round a corner, reminding them that I have the constitutional right to own as many guns as I can fit into my house, car, and pants. Having seen me in action with a squirt gun, the cats are probably happy that there’s only just enough money for cat food. After the latest hairball incident, they don’t want me roaming around the house with a loaded Desert Eagle.

In the days following yet another twisted loner pumping bullets into a large group of people, the folks with armed pants (yes, clothes made for chimpanzees) are not asking, “How do we stop these tragedies?” but “How do we stop Obama’s Muslim buddies from taking our guns?” Ner-rah, committed as they are to turning teachers into paramilitary commandoes, manages to steer the conversation towards mental health, apparently unaware of the irony, the insanity of denying that these bloodbaths are the result of people firing weapons at human targets.

Pick at Ner-raw’s skin long enough and what will be revealed is their own insane fantasy of being a “super patriot” insurrectionist warrior, the defender of frontier values. In less time than it takes to load Pez dispensers with shiny bullets, Ner-raw’s Basement Brigade begins warning of the made-up people who will be coming for everyone’s guns and decides that the most logical response is to declare war against the US.

Yes, despite the US having drones and hundreds of other things that rain death from the sky, millions of really, really big guns that require teams to move and fire, a navy, and millions of people who go to work every day for the sole purpose of waging war at any moment (as opposed to waiting until the Hot Pockets have been nuked in the RV before starting the Saturday shoot-a-thon), the Basement Brigade believes that the Tree of Liberty will be watered with blood, presumably the blood of the people who own almost all the serious war shit and train 24/7 to use it. Mental health issues, indeed.

Given that their fantastic war is premised on the guh-mint breaking down a door to take a perfectly legal stash, you’d think that DEA raids on medical marijuana clinics would get the gun crowd losing their collective shit over federal powers and individual rights. Oddly enough, you’d be wrong.  Since marijuana dispensaries aren’t usually fronts for weapons warehouses, the Second Amendment holy rollers must have shot all the fucks they had to give when it came to hippies and sick people. There’s zero chance that we’ll see Ner-raw’s flapping jaws on Fox spraying outrage over a bunch of shut down medical marijuana clinics.

Despite their seeming concern with everyone’s mental health, Neh-raw seems curiously ambivalent towards law enforcement shutting down any kind of clinic. In fact, it wouldn’t be overly wacky to assume that the average phone contact list, of those state officials and law enforcement who raided Planned Parenthood offices in Texas, contained a veritable Who’s Who of the local Ner-raw. Indeed, why own a gun if you can’t poke it in someone’s face after kicking down their door? With any grasp of self-awareness and irony dropped in favor of a bony gun grip, the Ner-raw members raiding the clinics saw themselves as Pro-Life patriots, doing God’s work while brandishing guns, protecting Texans from lawful health care services.

Perhaps it’s just a question of priorities – an ovary won’t kill an elk – but my guess is that Ner-raw and its hardcore members are really only interested in arms bearing with the rest of the Bill of Rights being either partial or total bullshit. They’re willing to throw their country into war against itself if there’s a hint that they can’t have whatever gun is necessary to shoot at toy spiders but when it comes to their country abridging other rights, they’re off spray painting their lawns or reprogramming the fake fish on the wall to sing “The Ballad of the Green Beret.”

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