The Great Gun Hard-On

I usually don't get blatantly sexual with my posts, but today is different.

Let's get honest for a minute.  If you listen closely to the rhetoric around the idea of an assault weapon ban, you hear a lot of hyperbole and just plain silly arguments on both sides.  But to be honest, the underlying love affair with assault weapons comes down to sex and more specifically "machismo".

I have been to a few gun shows in my time and when I see people, specifically men,  handling weapons like the AR-15 I see their whole body language change.  For me their stance gets wider, they stand taller and display a noticeable swagger.

Their speech is also a give-away.  You never hear a guy describe an assault rifle as "well balanced", "precision" or even "well designed".  The first words are usually "awesome", "bitchin" or "day-um". They speak of these guns with emotional terms and that tells a lot.  The assault rifles are not guns to them as much as they are big, deadly extensions of their manhood.  I have even heard the phrase, "who's the man?" when someone handles these guns.

America's love affair with semi-automatic weapons is driven by marketing, popular media and the gun lobby who equate powerful weaponry with manhood.  They might as well say, "it takes a big dick to handle this gun!"  America has a hard-on for deadly weapons. 

This mental erection has no basis in statistics.  The facts are that since semi-automatic weapons were legalized, the country has become less safe.  Gun deaths continue to climb and no one seems willing to state the obvious except Bill Moyers when he stated that America seeks no, "redemption from its fetish with guns, its romance with the free market of violence."

The whole argument about assault weapons and the 2nd Amendment are a diversion.  Americans want these guns so they can feel potent and "manly".  It is just a manifestation of the whole machismo thing and the price is the deaths of thousands of people a year.  It's time for this to stop.

It's high time we got honest and found another way to bolster our national case of penis envy.  A country that cannot talk in an adult and mature way about sex, finds other outlets.  We have chosen guns, lots and lots of guns.  My suspicion is that if we had a healthier attitude toward sex, and could honestly talk about it with each other, then showing off our big guns would have less meaning.

If you don't believe me, go to a gun show and watch for a while.  You will soon understand and be as appalled as I am.