Got A Gun...In Fact I've Got Two - But That's Okay, Man, 'Cause I Love God!

From time to time, but not all that often anymore, I pop into the comic book shop and have a look around. It used to be a weekly thing, until I bought a new car a couple of years ago. That plus gas prices going up meant comics go bye-bye. Ah, well. I do still stop in at Vinatge Phoenix every time I go to Bloomington, though, because it’s the best comic book shop I’ve ever been to, other than Midtown Comics in Manhattan.

Today I popped into the comic book shop and had a look around. When shopping for comics in this little burg, I prefer Downtown Comics to Comic Carnival, pretty much for one reason: alphabetical order, something Comic Carnival does not embrace. Also, they have a store downtown, and since I most often stop by on my days off while I’m downtown on walkabout, it’s convenient. Today the mission was just to get boards, but I also picked up the third issue of Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born, a seven-issue mini based on the Stephen King novels and detailing the early days of Roland. It’s written by Peter David with Jae Lee pencils and is, in a word, amazing; and I also picked up the newest issue of Simpsons Comics, an ongoing series that is just as much fun as you’d think it would be.

I also picked up the current issue of Wizard, a comics magazine that has come a long way from its early days, when all it seemed able to do was glorify Image Comics and the geniuses that were Rob Liefeld and Todd McFarlane. As it turned out, only McFarlane was a genius. Rob Liefeld was just a crappy artist. Anyway...I flipped through the price guide portion at the end of the magazine, just for yucks, and found that Action Comics #1, which was published in 1938 and contains the first appearance of Superman, is worth, in Near Mint condition (NM), $520,000.

No typos there. I’m fastidious when it comes to commas, and most other punctuation marks, when you get right down to it. Half a million bucks and change for a comic book. Anybody got one of those? I don’t. I have seven long boxes full of comics up in my attic, and none of them are Action Comics #1. One of the reasons it’s worth so much is that not many still exist. You can’t just walk into a comic book shop and buy a copy of Action Comics #1 in NM.

Would that the same could be said for guns. How’s that for a segue? A spoonful of context will help it go down better - Shane has a post here (you’ll have to scroll down a bit) that mentions, briefly, the shootings at Virginia Tech, and makes the following assertion:

“Video games ARE NOT TO BLAME! Music IS NOT to blame. People make choices. Movies, music, video games DO NOT teach them to do that.”

This is correct. People make choices - and a lot of them choose to be members of the National Rifle Association, an organization with a lot of money and a lot of influence on politicians. Especially Republicans. Why Republicans more than Democrats? Because one of the tentpoles of Republican politics (and one of the reasons that the party is so attractive to inbred, uneducated people who have to look north to find the Mason-Dixon Line) is the concept of smaller government - less governmental control over the day-to-day business of those they govern.

In the abstract, this is a good idea. But it forgets the fact that Americans are getting stupider every day - and video games are partly to blame for this, as is television. One of the sad facts of life in America in the twilight of this once-great republic is that we need better-educated people to clock in at the Capitol each morning and work on creating laws that will at least temporarily keep us from destroying ourselves.

We need gun laws and speed limits and nutrition labels and ratings on movies and video games because we don’t know enough to make good decisions for ourselves. Evidence? The 2000 general election results from the state of Florida, where five-hundred-odd people marked their ballots incorrectly and helped the Supreme Court to decide that George Bush should be our President instead of Al Gore. Had they had the good sense to pay attention to what they were doing in the voting booth, the most important decision Geroge Bush would have to make this spring would be whether or not to try to get A-Rod back from the Yankees. Al Gore would be in the last two years of his presidency, and John Edwards would be a shoo-in to be the next President.* Also, the United States would be signed on to the Kyoto Protocols. I'm just saying...

So who needs a semi-automatic weapon...a 9-mm Glock 19, say? Nobody - no civilian, at any rate. How did Cho Seung-hui get one? Because the NRA pressures politicians to turn a blind eye to gun violence in this country and wants guns to be available to anyone who wants one, as long as they aren’t a convicted felon. Gun laws vary from state to state, of course, but some of the flimsiest, oddly, are in Virginia. Evidence? Click.

The gun nuts will argue that we need guns to defend ourselves against these people, the ones who go on rampages. Nope. That kind of stupid thinking leads to shit like the Cuban Missile Crisis. Then they’ll argue about other weapons, like knives. “What are you going to do, make it illegal to have a knife?”

Who the fuck ever heard of a semi-automatic knife? What are the chances someone in that classroom would have stopped Cho if he had been using a knife - or even knives! - instead of guns?

+30. Or so.

(Interestingly, those are the same odds that Atlanta Falcons runningback Michael Vick will finally learn how to throw a pass this year, thereby giving the Falcons a chance to contend against the Saints in the abysmal NFC South.)

(And yes, I know that Michael Vick, technically, is a quarterback. It’s one of those bad-taste jokes. In order for it to make any kind of sense, you would have to know where Michael Vick went to college. The answer is Virginia Tech.)

* Also interestingly, John Edwards will be our next President. I’m not going to get into why right now, but that’s my call. Edwards wins in 2008. One of the reasons (but not the only one, nor the most significant) will be that Americans are not ready to elect a Mormon as President.