Shooting Off My Mouth

Oops, I Did It Again

Once again, I have made my position on gun control clear on Twitter and, once again, I am spending my time swatting off attacks from the gun-lover crowd. In the past day I’ve been attacked for being both Jewish and a Nazi, being racist, misogynistic, a groomer, a commie, and all manner of insults attacking my masculinity, including somebody who told me I “pee sitting down,” which seemed like a curious insult but ok.

So why do I keep doing this to myself?

On the surface it’s a pointless exercise to put yourself out there with unpopular opinions I know are going to generate this kind of hate. Particularly when that opinion – repeal the Second Amendment – is as extreme as mine. But I keep doing it for a few reasons.

The first, and most obvious reason, is because I believe in the message. We’ve got to do something about gun violence. It’s a plague. It’s destroying lives. It’s destroying a country. And it’s being propagated by a vocal and powerful minority. I’m not a legislator or a joiner or a marcher. I’m the guy who stands on the street corner and yells “The End is Nigh!” Maybe not the most effective tactic but what am I gonna do? The end happens to be nigh as fuck.

The second is to encourage other people to speak up when maybe they don’t feel confident enough to do it. If they see somebody like me out there taking hit after hit with a smile on his face, maybe they’ll speak up the next time somebody says something like “You can’t have the First without the Second,” or “If we take away the guns, only criminals will have guns.” If I’ve given you any ammunition (pun intended) to combat that kind of rhetoric, then we’ve both won.

Third, I don’t like backing down from a fight. Not a physical fight, of course. As one commentator wrote to me, “My seven-year-old could probably beat you with one arm.” To which I responded, “You’re probably right.” But when it comes to defending my position, I’m pretty relentless:

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Yes, we need to repeal the Second Amendment. It will almost certainly never happen for all the reasons you think. So what? That Overton Window isn’t going to open itself. Why do we need to repeal the Second Amendment? Because the Supreme Court has ruled (Heller, 2008, blah blah blah) that individuals have a right to bear arms for “self-defense.” It was a 5-4 decision. I don’t like it but that’s the law. And it’s that law which informs all of the subsequent, and horrendous, gun rights decisions which have followed.

Instead of nibbling around the edges with various loosey-goosey gun control laws that will almost invariably be struck down by this conservative court, why not attack the problem head-on? Sure it’s a stupid and unworkable idea, but every idea is stupid and unworkable until it isn’t. So that’s what I’m doing. I mean, it can’t be any more stupid and unworkable than what’s happening now.

Am I wasting my time? Almost certainly. Will I stop? Certainly not.