Objectivity vs. Obscenities

Recently, I had to write an argumentative essay for English Mastery. When the prof said "argumentative", she meant I had to convince the reader to accept my point of view on a subject of my liking, doing so as objectively as possible. Because I was low on inspiration, I chose a subject that is always a heck of an ice breaker (and eventually a face breaker): the American laws on gun control. While writing, my words had to remain as politically correct as possible. But since this is the internet, I can just throw all my bile into this post, which I shall do. So let's get started, shall we?

At first, I was optimistic, and thought the essay would write itself. Soon enough, this subject almost proved to be more saddening, frightening and rage-inducing than I could handle.

I looked for sources to cite, and soon stumbled upon the National Rifle Association's website. Words cannot describe the disgust that overwhelmed me. Basically, they portray themselves as a family-friendly organisation (they even have a boyscout-ish youth division!), while being focused on firearms. All over the site were photos of shiny happy people, holding their side-arms in their hands with sheepish smiles, with captions saying that if it weren't for the NRA, they would have lost their right to bear arms, and logically, everything else in their lives. As I glanced over their blog, I saw announcements like one that basically said: "Come to our barbecue at this weekend's gun show! Bring your whole family! If you take part in our raffle, you may even win this camo-painted, high-calibre, scoped hunting rifle!"

Fun for the whole family, guaranteed.

Not only do they inform their members about ongoing events in Gunland, they also have a store with a whole array of items ranging from fashionable jackets made specifically with concealed carry in mind, to tasteful mantelpiece clocks with a hidden case where you can store your revolver. Everything the psychotic and the paranoid could ever need!

I don't get the fascination some people have with hunting. I begrudgingly admit knowing that the numbers of certain animals must be kept in check, for the sake of nature's balance, but some hunters are so proud of what they do... I don't believe any of their hunting stories. What happens most of the time is that they hide in the bushes and shoot a defenceless animal from yards away. The poor creature doesn't have any chance to escape of fight back. Afterwards, as to prove his virility, the hunter hangs the remnants of the beast on the wall above his fireplace, as a trophy.

Still, no one has decorations like Gaston.

Moving away from the mind-numbing website, I searched for more... varied sources. That's when I came across an interview with college students, concerning gun laws, and was flabbergasted to read that some of them wanted to be allowed to carry concealed weapons on the university grounds. Because they'd feel safer if everyone had a device specifically designed for dispensing death tucked away in their pockets.

From that point on, I had to restrain myself and try to not condense my essay into a single page with the phrase "Americans are completely and utterly batshit insane" in big, bold letters all across it. Studies show that an average of 30,000 people are shot to death in the United States every year. And how do the NRA and its consorts react? By merrily pointing out that the number of gun homicides went down by 8% between 2008 and 2009. Oh, fantastic, that means only around 27,000 died in that period of time. Gee, we really all went overboard with that whole "guns kill people stuff", didn't we? Our most sincere apologies, by all means, just keep handing out military-style semi-automatic weapons to convicted felons and the dangerously mentally ill.

As a last resort, the pro-gun people bring up the big one, the argument that can't be countered: it's in the Constitution. Every citizen has the freedom to bear arms, and that liberty can't be taken away. It's every American's God-given right to pursue happiness, and it's the government's job to defend that right, not to take it away (?). You may think I'm exaggerating about this last non-sequitur, but it's one of the rebuttals a firearm aficionado gave during a gun law debate that I heard.

When America was founded, such liberal firearm laws were logical. As a newly-founded country, it could use all the armed people it could spare, in case the King of England suddenly decided to stick his sceptre up the yank's collective rear and invade them. Nowadays, their passion for guns it nothing more than a massive, collective Freudian issue, methinks.