Alright so being this week’s interview guest (answering questions from readers) and having a debate with myself might seem like I’ve taken a dive off the deep end of the fuzzy line of blogger narcissism–right there I just mixed metaphors, another brazen example of cockiness–and, the big fear, having a debate with yourself will probably make you look crazy. But there’s two very good reasons I’m debating myself: 1. I am deeply divided on the issue of gun control, and feel a debate with myself is the only way I can settle it, like a glorified pros and cons list. 2. It’s become damn hard to trick fools, I mean, accomplished debaters into squaring off against me in these things. I hope to have more victims, I mean, volunteers soon, but things are tight right now.
Liberal Brody: Thanks for coming on the site centrist Brody.
Moderate Brody: Thanks, it’s great to be here. I’ve been hoping to have more of a voice on the site, and truly appreciate the opportunity to speak–
Liberal Brody: Shut the fuck up you sell out piece of garbage. Let’s get started, why are you for the killing of innocent kids due to gun violence?
Moderate Brody: That’s an over simplification on my gun control stance. I guess to please your readership I could say “Because they suck,” but that wouldn’t be–
Liberal Brody: Good, you admitted it, moving on. Why do you hate children?
Moderate Brody: I don’t. I know that kids die every year due to horribly lax safety restrictions on fire arms and careless parents that don’t do a good enough job hiding their guns. We could argue that Americans are just too comfortable around guns. That they have an easy way with them, and the culture (both media and parental) has desensitized people to guns more than it should have. Certainly desensitized them more to guns than sex. You can argue that it’s important not to expose your kids to that but I don’t think you can legislate that any more than you can the sell of guns.
Liberal Brody: That’s all well and good, but you know the stats on gun violence every year. You know that Americans are more violent than other industrialized country–
Moderate Brody: True
Liberal Brody: Have more gun violence than other industrialized country–
Moderate Brody: Also True.
Liberal Brody: And have more lax gun laws than other industrialized countries.
Moderate Brody: Damn true.
Liberal Brody: So what the hell is your problem? How are you not getting that allowing someone to buy an assault rifle isn’t good government policy?
Moderate Brody: Is gun control the sane thing to do? Yes. Is it the responsible thing to do? Absolutely. Is it the right thing morally in every instance? Without a doubt. The thing is it’s not enforceable. Every time America makes something you can build an industry off of illegal it doesn’t work, because people will make a killing out of any and every underground industry. You can’t legislate guns the same way you can’t legislate abortion.
Liberal Brody: What the whaaaaat? A gun nut who’s also for abortion? I never thought I’d see a consistent position on violence from anyone on the left or the right.
Moderate Brody: Abortions are legal because making them illegal is unenforceable and just creates another underground industry. Same as drugs. Drugs are illegal and look at how hard those are to get. A drug war hasn’t worked and a war on guns also won’t work. We have countless examples from illegal gambling to prostitution to show us examples of how prohibition doesn’t work, and guns are no different.
Liberal Brody: The big argument people like noted political scholar Ted Nugent–sarcasm dripping from keyboard–make is that we need more guns to cut down on crime. That if more people had guns, less criminals could operate. Surely you think this is stupid.
Moderate Brody: I think it’s false. They’re saying that if students carried a gun in school we wouldn’t have a school shooter, that they could stop him cold, which is ridiculous. You’d have a lot more gun violence over petty things–“I hate her, she stole my boyfriend”–than the very, very rare mass murderer, which is statistically very unlikely in schools.
What I’m saying is different. I don’t disagree that America would probably be safer with less guns, but I think you can’t enforce any bans on something people are so used to. It’s like the epic failure that was prohibition in the 1920’s for something that was ingrained in society already. Drugs have never been legal and they’re a huge underground industry, so you can just imagine what guns would be where everybody in America has gotten used to the idea they can buy a handgun if they want one. America doesn’t need anymore underground industries where we can’t see a tax profit off of it, and should be headed in the other direction of legalizing marijuana, online poker, and other gaming.
Liberal Brody: I’m torn. I do get the sense of what you’re saying, but I can’t get over those violent crime stats, and the kids killed by handgun accidents every year.
Moderate Brody: You mentioned before about violent crime. Well another statistic is that America has the largest prison percentage of any industrialized country. We don’t need to add to that by also making people that sell hand guns convicts. Making guns illegal won’t stop criminals from owning guns, but it will make gun owners criminals.
Liberal Brody: I feel a queasy truce coming on. You just keep it up with all that talk of making gambling, marijuana, and keeping abortions legal and we won’t have any problems.
Hilarious
not a bad idea for a regular post. i’d say its likely that if you cant see both sides of an issue, you probably dont really understand your own position on it.
If I have to jump through more hoops to buy cold medication than I do to buy a gun then we have a problem. I saw a gun on sale at Amazon just last night, now that is just not right. Saw guns for sale at the “Big W” store once and thought, wow, if I can buy Wonder bread, Kleenex and pick up a glock on my way out the store, then we really need to check ourselves.
Really Brody, I have see you take your Mum down with more ferocity. You went too easy on Moderate Brody, frankly I demand a rematch. You let MB do a snow job on you with magic words like “Keep abortion legal” and liberal holy words like “marijuana”. You must be stronger than that.
But still keep up the good work.