A mountain of buffalo skulls-- with two douchebags proudly showing their hunting prowess off. If you Don't see these men as sick jerks, you have a problem.
(Image by (From Wikimedia) Burton Historical Collection/Detroit Public Library / http://cowboysindians.com/western/old-west/2009-10/bisonkill.jsp, Author: See Source) Details Source DMCA
It's time to make the gun firing as a sport, hobby, entertainment, obsolete, and to do it by shaming, to create a cultural shift that characterizes gun shooting as a hobby as something pathetic, loser douchebags do.
It used to be a "sport" and entertainment to engage in bare knuckle boxing. Not anymore. It's too violent, produces too much injury. People who supported such a "sport" would now be strongly criticized.
It used to be a hobby to ride a train and shoot buffalo in herds. Now, if you kill buffalo, bison, lions or elephants or rhinos, most of the world will consider you to be a sick, loser douchebag... and you'd deserve it.
In our current cultural milieu, where too many politicians are prostitutes owned and operated by the gun industry and lobby, calls for gun regulation, even by a strong majority of constituents do not work. We need to try something that WILL work.
We need to start a campaign that is supported by churches and NGOS, by corporations and all kinds of cultural leaders that sends the message-- playing with guns is bad for our culture, and to make the death of gun use as a form of hobby, sport or entertainment, we need to get across the message that it's done by pathetic loser douchebags. I'm guessing most of the readers here at this site already believe that.
Let me be clear. I'm talking about characterizing going to a firing range with an automatic or semi-automatic weapon and firing it for fun as sick, depraved-- done by douchebag losers.
Frankly, I've gone to a shooting range and fired at ceramic targets with a 22 rifle. It was more fun than I expected. But there is a price to this hobby/entertainment culture. We pay the price when ten people are killed at Umpqua college, when dozens of children are killed in Newtown CT.
Going to a shooting range to maintain your skill with a weapon you use for a job or for self defense as a legally registered gun carrier is a different story. Hunting for animals that must be culled to keep them at safe levels is another story. I'm not trying to label those pursuits.
But hunting for rare, endangered animals should also be treated as the pursuit and hobby of pathetic loser douchebags. Hunting animals on ranches or where the animals are driven to you-- that is profound douchebaggery.
We need to link people who go to shooting ranges for entertainment with losers. Currently, going to a shooting range is considered healthy, mostly macho fun. If gun control advocates invested in a campaign to turn the image around, to make gun clubs and firing ranges comparable to strip clubs and triple X movie venues, it would make it harder to open new ones and maybe even harder to keep current ones viable.
This would be a long time project, because it is seeking cultural change, but it's worth it.
As is always the case, there will be gun rights advocates commenting on this article. To you I say, it is time to change the value system. Your hobby is indirectly, through your efforts to over-widely protect your rights, directly leading to the deaths of thousands of innocent people. Their blood is on your hands. It is time to ban use of semi-automatic and automatic weapons, time to ban magazines that hold more than six rounds. More than six rounds should almost never be needed for self-defense or for hunting.
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