Marc Alan Fishman The Right to Bear Arms
No, I didn’t spell that wrong. I just think all Americans should have the right to a free pair of bear arms. For protection. Or something. OK, I lied. I just like to be coy with my titles. But, as always, I digress.
A while back, in response to the “Religious Freedom and Restoration Act,” I’d likened the right-wing penned law as being worthy of super villainy. Now, I find myself once again questioning how the Grand Old Party has now become the party of Ultron, Lex Luthor, and Dr. Ben Carson.
Somewhere between Donald Trump desiring to build a wall to protect us from Mexican rapists, Carly Fiorina proclaiming Planned Parenthood as a secret fetus-selling black market, and Jeb Bush basically aping a parody of his own brother a la Aaron Sorkin (no, seriously), it’s sad that Dr. Carson’s recent verbal pile-ups haven’t awaken new ire in me, so much as deflated acceptance of the status quo. Forgive me for being political this week. But when Doctor Doom starts preaching at the pulpit, I find it near impossible to keep my pinko-commie lips shut. Blame my maker, Mike ‘Reed Richards’ Gold, esquire.
Dr. Carson, amongst several bouts of recent word vomit, has suggested in light of the continuous gun-related tragedies that our kindergarten teachers should be packing heat, and that the Holocaust could have been prevented had my ancestors been more like Frank Castle than Frank Zappa. Doctor Doom indeed.
Forgive me. Guns are bad, mm kay? Outside the sport (a term I use in the loosest of senses) of hunting, the need for a firearm just rubs my rhubarb. And for those folks who profess to the ideology that the ownership of a gun is their right, or that it’s paramount to their personal safety, I wholeheartedly believe no one has the right to take the life of another person. Period. And any instrument that is as potent as a modern firearm is simply way-too-easy means to ends no one should have the power to profess over another. But I know my place; my opinion is not law, nor should it be. Guns exist. They can’t unexist. So, we attempt to achieve balance.
Balance isn’t reached by arming the world with weapons. I cite Fiddler on the Roof:
“We should fight back! An eye for an eye… a tooth for a tooth!”
“Great. So the world should be blind and toothless, then?”
Dr. Ben Carson, and his conservative cohorts are playing a dangerous game. Fear-mongering. Hate-spreading. You know… Super-villainy. Put a gun in the hands of everyone, and we can live-out the end of Reservoir Dogs every time someone cuts us in line. That ought to cut down on the mass shootings, right Herre Viktor?
If we lived in the world of comic books, imagine how much worse it might be. If weapons discharged from people’s eyes, fingers, or anuses. If people could explode on demand. If violence was solved always with even more violence. If we believed Carson, the world of comic books would be the safest world possible.
And if that were true… Comic books would be a hell of a lot more boring.
