From My Warm, Living Hands - Take My Gun… Please

“As I walk through

This wicked world
Searching for light in the darkness of insanity.

I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?
And each time I feel like this inside,
There's one thing I want to know:
What's so funny about peace love & understanding?” – Elvis Costello

The overtly exaggerated and over the top rhetoric to immediately follow denotes satire, please keep your 9 millimeters safely holstered at all times.

Who would suspect that the unassuming, and enormously, egotistical practice of blogging could turn out to be a precarious and perilous pursuit? But alas, my prospective compadres, it is. For I’ve learned, of late, that some particular, pistol-packing people abhor me and the terrorism-train that they think I rode in on. Imagine innocent, guileless, loveable and accessible nycityman, simply wishing to pen creative prose articulating progressive polemics, is reviled by a gun powder-stained handful of dentally-challenged, unmatriculated, paragons of prejudice and the positivity of inbreeding - what could their possible provocations be? Rather than enduring the testiness and intemperance of those bearing bullets, Berettas and bayonets it would have been preferable perhaps to have annoyed anthropologists, frustrated florists or incensed incense salesmen, but, as with their odious images of Obama in white face, Obama as witchdoctor and Obama as Adolph, I am but their paper target, pinned to their backyard beech trees, fluttering in the breeze, awaiting the next squeeze of the trigger and the aimless aim of their 19^th century, misdirected malice. And feel free to take your figurative best shot for ballots triumph over bullets, pens over swords, and logic, facts and intelligence over the imperceptible penises that lead you, like divining rods, to amass armaments as Hugh Hefner hoards silicone-augmented, Midwestern farmers daughters.

In a previous post, I protested the concept of Gun Appreciation Day held, but a callous month, after the heartbreaking events in Newtown; and the unintentionally implied celebration of that tragedy and the thousands of gun deaths that regularly occur yearly in these United States. Responders, in numbers never before experienced, availed themselves of their 1^st Amendment rights to dispatch threatening treatises to this webpage.  By all evidence, they perceive reasonable approaches to limit gun violence, to keep automatic and semi-automatic assault weapons off our streets and out of the hands of mentally unstable residents, as the expiration of the 2^nd Amendment and the beginning of the big, bad, black-guy-lead, federal government commencing the confiscation of their cannons; Obama’s private, all-ebony army taking lead, with the New Black Panther Party (both members) and the Muslim Brotherhood providing support.  Suddenly, with these fictional, Fox-falsified hazards hanging over their tin-foiled festooned domes, these lions of liberty (exclusively for Christian, Caucasian Conservatives, of course) are no longer just 7/11 clerks, CPAs or Martinizing dry cleaners;  but brave, bold conquerors combating the Communist Kenyan, and safeguarding the freedoms of  the paltry percentage of the American populace that they deem to tolerate.  

To call these States of ours “United” often seems purely wishful thinking.  We are a nation of deep divides, presently fragmented between citizens who love this land and its inhabitants, who aspire to assure a safe and secure,  harmonious, happy, healthy future; and those minority of Americans who predominantly and primarily worship what they believe to be their God –given and Constitutional right to fire upon their fellow countrymen as often,  as rapidly and as efficiently as daydreamed in their John Wayne, Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood reveries, with weapons and ammunition capacities designed and intended initially for military use. (Note to Tea-publicans, it is not actually factual  that God wrote the Constitution, is an American, or would favor any country or peoples over any other – that wouldn’t be particularly God-like, would it?)

In the case of the current Congress, too many inmates are running the asylum (on Bachmann, on Gohmert, on Cruz, and on Paul) and it seems increasingly unlikely that any significant gun legislation is going to succeed. Additionally, the further that healing-time passes from the horror of Sandy Hook, the less we hear about guns in the news, and the more citizens and legislators turn their attentions elsewhere.  Unfortunately, as has so often been the case, the Obama administration started from a place of weakness, indicating compromise and surrender before negotiations were even initiated. The President would like to reinstate the assault weapons ban (a God Reagan favorite) but doesn’t believe it achievable, and recent reports suggest that limits on rounds and even universal background checks may be on shaky ground - the latter, despite the fact that 92% of Americans favor it.

An alternate to the stagnation and uselessness of our chosen representatives and their financial fealty and loyalty to the deep pockets of corporate America, including those accessories to murder in the gun manufacturing field, is a declaration by the people. If the government refuses to act responsibly, it’s time that we the people, we who constitute this revolutionary government of the people, by the people, for the people, address this vital issue ourselves. The idea is simple and not, in any way, a lessening of the presumed scope and power of the 2nd Amendment but, if fortunate, could remove some of the 200 million guns from the nightstands and the closet shelves of America.  We, who have no desire or need for guns in our lives, just actively attempt to maintain that status, proudly proclaim it, and share the concept as encouragement for others to exist free of firearms as well.

"As a citizen of the United States of America I, _____________ hereby, voluntarily, relinquish my 2nd Amendment rights to keep and bear arms as -

1) Not being a member of a "well-regulated militia" I never actually had the right to begin with  

2) I have no wish to murder innocent, defenseless animals for barbaric "sport" or fun 

3) Statistics show that a gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used against someone in the household than for their self-defense

 4) Being neither paranoid nor delusional, I harbor no fear of the Federal Government's black helicopters coming to get me. When finding disagreement with an office holder I will exercise my right to vote, in conjunction with those rights enumerated in the First Amendment, not the Second."

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No doubt, most will think this pointless, feckless folly and the product of a mind who took one too many trips to Amsterdam. But, the seemingly, easy willingness of too many in this country to accept the occasional Columbine, Sandy Hook or Aurora; to sacrifice the lives of so many, including children, at the altar of the NRA, the gun manufacturers that they are paid to prostitute for, and in the supposed defense of freedoms and liberties that are not endangered is an indescribable obscenity. We are far too great a country and a society to accede to the Road Warrior, dystopian future outlined by those looking to profit from fear.

As Elvis Costello asks, (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?