Truesday: This Point Is No Solution Either

Heavy-handed? Perhaps. But sometimes you gotta burn the crop to kill the pestilent grubs. Because that, my friends, is what super-smartness looks like in action.

And I’ve got specific solutions to some of our world’s most celebrated pet problems:

Problem: African mass starvation

Solution: Build ships out of Velveeta bricks, fill their hollowed hulls with unwrapped Twinkies suspended in an Olympic pool of Jello which was tastefully prepared using Coors Light instead of regular ol’ water. Push them toward Africa from whatever nearby coast and viola: Africa dines happily on the exact same sources of accepted nutrients as Joe America! And that ship will have a shelf-life of like twenty goddamn years! So who cares how long it takes to get there! Velveeta Aid!

Problem: Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Solution: Proclaim all of the surface land of the Middle East (the general area, don’t be too specific about “borders” in the region) to immediately be under Russian occupation (use the word “occupation” as blatantly often as possible). Throw all the Istan countries back into that fire too. I’m not sure that this would be a real solution in the ok, is everyone-cool-now? sense which we’ve all hoped for in prior decades, but I feel fully confident that none of us would ever have to hear about any more “conflicts” in that region. In fact, I doubt we’d ever hear from that region again, period. But grant all the related mineral rights to Cuba. Trust me on this one.

Problem: Vicious sea piracy off the Malaysian and Indonesian coasts.

Solution: Airplanes.

So, I’m cooking up some Mensa-badass-type solutions in cauldrons of creativity, got some irons of cleverness in the fire, running idea-flags up poles over here, and whatnot. Thinking of all the brilliant ways I am so stupendously able to find sound-bite solutions to all the socially crippling tragedies playing out on the stage of despair that is: our world theatre. It’s really tough to make the hard calls like I do, but I do it with the unparalleled force of a textbook narcissist: nervously self-important and fucking LOUD. The less my point makes sense, the LOUDER I tend to say it. I call it “balance”.

Which brings me, quite conveniently, to my... co-problem-solvers.

Not sure if you’ve been made aware, but last week some asshole went apeshit and murdered more people than I’ve managed to sleep with in my life to date. In no way would I move toward making light of this occurrence, as it is far too grave for someone so accidentally discourteous as myself, but I do feel comfortable discussing some pet-cause pundits who’ve latched onto the tragedy for their own fucked-up gain.

I’d never heard of good ol’ Tom Plate before last week when I stumbled across this little bit of wonderment on The Cnnernet. You see, Mr. Plate was robbed at gunpoint (laser point, technically, as he doesn’t appear too familiar with guns per se, but definitely recognized the red-dot of a Hollywood-style laser sight), and has since decided that guns need to go. Such emotion always births brilliant policy recommendations.

Aside from his photo having obviously been snapped mid-flatulence, this indoor-sunglasses clad fellow has chosen our most recent massacre to be plain evidence that “far fewer guns in America would logically result in far fewer deaths from people pulling the trigger,” which is an awesome assertion because a hatchet massacre is so much more civilized, and there are no triggered hatchets openly available to the general public.

So yeah, I suppose the ratio of "trigger-related deaths” to “general homicide” would logically drop in that context.

But I’m pretty sure if you swapped out “guns” in exchange for “irrationally murderous assholes” the sentence would hold up better under scrutiny. After all, it wasn’t the gun that caused Plate to surrender his goods to the laser’d robber. I feel confident that if that dude was holding a heavy, jagged rock over his head and making the same menacing threats, the result would be the same: an exceptionally lame editorial.

Is there no public opinionist out there with a reasonable, opposing view to Plate’s? Have you nothing for me, oh all-knowing Cnnernet? Someone to step in and make the case for gun owners everywhere! Where’s the Johnny Cochran hero for my Second Amendment rights? Who will cowboy-up and bully my cause to own a collection of armor piercing assault weapons?

You know, for dove, yeti, or Godzilla huntin’ and shit.

Well it’s no surprise who arrives as our knight in (hollow-point resistant kevlar weave) shining armor. Here’s the Motor City Madman, busting out onto the Op-Ed scene to provide a reasonable counterpoint, right? That there’s a reasonable basis for owning a weapon designed solely to maim or kill other human beings, right? Something about States’ rights? The need for a people to be capable of violently overthrowing a “democratic” dictatorship if the need arose? Something? Anything even more rational? Oh, but hell no. Nugent’s… just, well, he’s standard Ted Nugent. Other than two small points, there’s not a whole lot new about the pro-gun argument in his rant.

1. Xenophobia: Second Blood. Apparently “guns don’t kill people, foreigners do,” which is good to know since there are lots and lots of foreigners in the world, to the point of America being plainly outnumbered by them. Plus there’s the extended logic which states: at one point along your family tree’s dendritic branching, YOUR forefathers were murderous foreigners too, so you should probably repent in weeks of prayer, slaughter a goat, burn a yucca plant or whatever the hell it is the people of your homeland do with their foreign, inherited guilt. I guess.

2. Guns Magically Cannot Shoot When Other Guns Are Present. If the potential victims of all well-planned handgun massacres were also armed with handguns (no “gun-free” zones), said massacres would have been over before they even started. You know, like when the Germans showed up to the French border with guns, and in a totally unanticipated twist in Napoleonic Strategy, the French ALSO had guns! Everyone was like “oh snap, they got guns too! Fuck it. Truce?” And both fictional World Wars, which the History Channel ironically exists solely to drone on about, were averted before they could even begin! It’s like saber rattling, but with guns instead! JUST like that!

Sure, Nugent and Plate make good points concerning the obvious synonymous links between guns:murderers:civilizations. Sure. But I think I have a better solution to the whole American-Gun-Massacre problem, and I believe it’s MUCH, MUCH more marketable:

Free marijuana.

Damn I’m good.