I really doubt this is going to foster solidarity with the kind of people who oppose gun control, Mr. President.
If you only see in black and white, you may as well be blind. When I was in the fifth grade, a kid in our school had a sore throat and his parents wouldn’t let him stay home. They were dumb enough to send him on his way with a handful of cough drops, and thanks to our elementary’s “Zero Tolerance” policy toward drugs, that half of a half of a half of a gram of menthol may as well have been a pound of uncut Colombian blow. That kid was suspended for three days for bringing “stimulants” to class, when what he had in his lunchbox was probably less mind-altering than the espresso shots in the teacher’s macchiato. (I thank God for this- he probably had enough to share with the class, and we all know Ricola is a gateway drug. If it hadn’t have been for the principal’s swift action, I might be sucking a cock for crack right now.) These stories aren’t even uncommon- you hear all the time about students getting detention for drawing a gun or bringing a butter knife to lunch because of a “Zero Tolerance” policy toward weapons, too. A policy that’s all or nothing is going to have a lot of casualties- and these casualties will be literal if that policy is a zealous pro-gun stance. The NRA and Americans in favor of the second Amendment hold way too hard a line, especially in the face of the recent Sandy Hook Tragedy. There are some arguments I respect and some I don’t, and the opinion that all Americans should have easy access to unnecessarily powerful murder weapons after twenty children were killed by them definitely fits into the latter category. There’s room for some debate on the second amendment and guns, but sorry, rights to home assault rifles aren’t on the table. Unfortunately, there are some who take a “Zero Tolerance” stance on being rational, like Ben Howe, the subject of this week’s Sam West Writes This Presents: Annotative Mockery. I will mark up Ben’s unbelievable article, “Gun Control: WWJD?” to attempt to gain insight into the mind of the uncompromising gun nut.
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