When that bastion of alternative quackery, NaturalNews decides to offer up its two-cents worth of opinion about something like gun control, you can be almost assured that the loon-o-meter will be dialed way up; all the way past eleven, in this case.
Behold the rantings of the self-styled ‘Health Ranger’ of NaturalNews. Read, brave people, and learn all about how Obama’s ’23 executive orders on gun control‘ will turn gun ownership into ‘a disease’ and and anyone who owns guns into mentally ill pariahs. Of course this is classic, bullshit fear mongering of the most pathetic sort, but no one has ever accused the readership of NaturalNews of being paragons of critical thought.
Listen, Americans: I know that the topic of gun control is a thorny subject in your country. I get that the right to bear arms is enshrined in your constitution and I understand the historical reasons for it. But here’s the blunt truth: no amount of patriotic gun collecting will allow everyday Americans to stand up to their government should it decide to turn tyrannical. The American military juggernaut is the single most powerful collection of destructive force in the history of the human species. Period. Your collection of scoped and suppressed AR-15s and laser sight-enabled glock 9 milimetres aren’t going to do much against that. Your ‘don’t tread on me’ flags and union-jack mud-flaps don’t warn anyone of anything other than the high probability that you’re a real buzz-kill at parties. The ultimate irony of this mentality of course is that in their rush to show their love of guns, god, and liberty, many self-styled ‘patriots’ end up voting for politicians who take as an article of faith that the military needs to be ever more powerful, and thereby ever more able to quash any attempts on the part of anti-tyranny freedom fighters to stand up against their federal overlords.
The counter-argument I often hear when I present such a point is that that while its true that individual patriots may not accomplish much, together they can succeed in bringing down a tyrannical government. My response to this is again rather simple: if you can rally together sufficient numbers to be able to realistically challenge the might of the American state, then you no longer need to rely on weapons to force change. The power present in such a show of solidarity rests in the sheer weight of numbers – on the fact that such a gathering can serve to shut down economies and effectively sabotage the day-to-day activities of even the more authoritarian regime. At that point, guns don’t matter, because they’re not the source – or even the primary tool – of power. Of course at this point, our fearless patriots would begin to realize that they’ve enacted a ‘people’s revolution’ of sorts, and so have become filthy socialists and therefore need to neutralize themselves…
What I’m getting at is this: Gun control enacted at the federal level, while regulating some citizens’ access to guns, and perhaps limiting the specific types of guns available for purchase (as well as regulating how those weapons are purchased in the first place), isn’t really infringing on a person’s right to ‘bear arms’. The second amendment doesn’t specify what types of weaponry a person ought to be able to access, and any attempt to interpret the meaning of the amendment amounts to nothing more than idle speculation. You think the Second Amendment affords you the right to own a belt-fed 20mm rotary autocannon? Fine. I think it entitles you to a blunderbuss. At least my speculation has the advantage of being more or less historically accurate.
When sites like NaturalNews decide to wade into the waters of a subject like gun control, you can be almost certain to find tragic comedy of Shakespearean proportions. NaturalNews is a shitty source of information about health – which is its entire raison d’etre; it’s hardly surprising that it’s even more pathetic at ‘informing’ its readership about anything else.
For anyone who’s interested, here’s the link to the White House’s position on the subject of gun control.
Question 1: Humour
Question 2: No one, that was the point of my “straw man”
Question 3: When they sang “give up your guns, stop war, make peace/love”, or something to that effect.
Sorry I missed your humour. Sometimes this stuff doesn’t translate well into a written medium.
This is true. But I never made much of a stand-up…
What would including ‘fuck’ into my blog accomplish?
Also, who the hell is arguing that Americans need to give up their guns? Certainly not me. And how did Woodstock ‘make evident’ that Americans need to give up their guns? I’m a little confused by your post.