If there is one thing anyone can be sure of in this country, it is that Americans love guns. Not a day goes by when you don't see a fine American citizen killing some poor, defenseless person/animal with a .50 caliber hand cannon on television, or you hear about some random act of violence (a bank robbery, a homicide, or a crazed postal worker) which involves a gun in some respect. Therefore, being a proponent of living in general, I think it's about time we as a country threw in the towel when it comes to the whole "I'm from America, and I have a God-given right to kill and spread carnage whenever I feel like it" gig and adopt a platform of life.
Nothing is more ironic than your average conservative Republican who vehemently cares about not using a couple of cells for stem cell research (that just get thrown out anyways) and claims that they care about life, but yet they have a large enough arsenal in their cellar to single-handedly occupy Paris (for purely hunting purposes only, mind you). If we are going to take this approach as a country, then every time I get a nose bleed I better call an ambulance to save the thousands of cells from dying.
The simple fact is that guns serve no tangible purpose anymore. The main reason why we created the whole Second Amendment was something along the lines of protecting ourselves back in the 1700s from the people we stole our land from; aka Native Americans, who, in my book, we should still be paying reparations to as an apology for the numerous instances of rape, theft and murder that occurred at the hands of 'true' Americans. Oh, and we can never forget the necessity of a firearm to protect your log cabin from being invaded by bears.
But wait, if we stopped having guns and if we even took it to the level of decreasing our military arsenal as well, it would be much harder for us to start wars, the classic American past time. Forget baseball, nothing makes a real American man happier than a beer in one hand, the controls to a flat screen LCD TV in the other, and the latest front line report from Fox News in front of him, fresh with depictions of carnage and massed destruction brought to you live from some country in the Middle East that we can't (or don't bother to learn to) pronounce anyways.
But hey, who cares? We as Americans are pros at conveniently blocking out death tolls from across the globe as long as the victimized masses are not 'one of us'.
Unfortunately, we do the same within our own borders as well. With gun proliferation at an all time high, people are being mowed down all across the nation in random acts of violence.
But once again no one cares - at least not until it's a cute little white girl holding a lollipop that gets killed walking down the road on her way to school. Then it's an epidemic. Then it's a crisis beyond any known to man. Then something must be done. But as long as it's the poor, undereducated, non-white segments of the population being slaughtered by the newest fresh out of the box Glock, we just plainly don't care.
If it is really that hard for one to lay down their arms and live a life of peace and prosperity, then perhaps it is due to a lack of better things to do. I have thus constructed a list of possible activities to take the place of killing in your weekly planner.
Options range from, but are not limited to: ice skating, basket weaving (a UConn specialty), planting a tree, learning to play an instrument, helping the poor, helping yourself, taking long walks on the beach, and finally, my personal favorite, survivalism taught first hand in the 21st -century epic that you and I know as "Man vs. Wild."
All of these activities not only don't involve firearms and the slaying of the innocent, but are both time consuming and recreational (or in the case of "Man vs. Wild," a stroke of pure genius).
Enough is enough. Guns kill people, and there is no reason why this should ever occur. In case you didn't get the memo, contrary to what is shown on TV, violence is not an acceptable form of conflict resolution, and the simple, little process called 'speech' is much easier and better at solving problems.
I know there are some of you who will continue to live in your sad and pathetic world of hate, and that you will laugh while reading this article when I speak of peace and a world without firearms. And I pity you, I really do.
I can tell you from personal experience, that seeing someone die is not funny; it is not a joke; and you wake up every morning and pray to God that you will never have to see something as horrible as that ever happen again.
Staff Columnist Chris Donnelly is a 5th-semester sociology and political science double major. He can be contacted at
[email protected]
