It's a Gun, Not a Condom 2 - Gun's can't "protect" you, so stop being stupid

Just a reminder: I'm not anti-gun; I'm anti-stupid. It's a VERY important distinction, and will prevent you from jumping to the wrong assumptions about my message.

Look, I get the point of meme.  Really, I do. The idea is that "With a Gun, you magically have the power to Fight Back and thus to magically 'protect' yourself."  For guns are magical devices, after all.  Gosh, they do make us feel strong and powerful, don't they?  Bit like Viagra-for-everyone.

Except for that little part about "How quickly can you get the gun from wherever-the-fuck-you-left-it" into your hand and pointing at whomever is attacking you.

Really.  Even if you always carry it stuffed under your armpit, that doesn't mean you'll be able to get to it before someone has punched you in the face, or hit you with a baseball bat, or stabbed you with a knife.

Guns are not shields. They are not body armor.  Guns are not magical things that magically empower you to always be safe.

For fuck's sake. I Googled "pro-gun memes" and very nearly all of them completely fail the "does that even fucking make sense?" test.  They're all very emotionally evocative and provocative, and many of them contain black-men-as-the-bad-guys (imagine that).

I'm not "anti-gun" - I'm "anti-stupid."  This poor woman in this meme won't "protect" herself from violent attack - her only option - the only option provided by guns - is to counter-offensive.  That means she might chase her attacker away, or she might kill her attacker (woo-hoo! now you're a murderer, even if you don't go to jail), or she might just piss her attacker off more and turn what might have been a beating into her being killed. (Especially if this is a domestic violence situation, which I'm sure this meme is supposed to invoke, and if she's in that situation in the first place, chances are she's too emotionally muddled to point the gun, and then leave, and never return. Hello, reality calling!).

Yes, I'm all for empowering people to be able to fight back.  But, damnit, let's at least have a reasonable and intelligent conversation about guns - and handguns are devices meant only-for-killing-humans - and make some decent choices about the real world, and not some fantasy "let's all be afraid, because fear leads to stupid decisions, and guns-have-magical-powers" world.

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Oh, and finally, just in case you think I'm being unfair about comparing guns to magical powers, here is another pro-gun meme for you to consider - here is Harry Potter mispronouncing the unstoppable Killer Curse. See, the magical message is that guns can't be stopped. Oh, but wait, doesn't that conflict with the original meme, above, which is supposed to suggest that guns are  magical shields, even from guns...  See, that makes this one funny in three ways: 1) guns are magical and unstoppable, 2) it totally contradicts the "guns as protection" premise used to sell guns, and 3) it's totally fucking spelled wrong. (OMG, people, take a frickin' moment to spellcheck before trying to act smarmy).

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