Book Him, Danno

The Guardian asks this question in a column published yesterday: "Aren't gun lovers just like book lovers -- buying the object of their affection not to use, but to enjoy being around?  Wouldn't you hate it if the government came after your books?"

Meanwhile, in reality...

(1) The government comes after books all the freaking time.  Have fun trying to find a public school that doesn't have a list of banned books, judged to be too harmful to developing minds.  Have fun trying to find a single state that allows unrestricted advertising of pornography.  The government regulates what is written, sometimes heavily.

(2) Books don't kill people.  People don't go to the trouble of acquiring books with which they can commit mass murder.  To date, there have been precisely zero mass bookings in all of human history.  No one is rushed to a hospital, requiring emergency surgery due to their encounter with a book.  Toddlers and pets don't accidentally set books off and kill and injure people.  It just doesn't happen.

(3) Gun nuts don't actually have any redeeming point.  Guns are not like books.  Guns are not like cars.  Guns are not like any other object.  They are designed to be easily-portable tools for killing.  That is what they are designed to do.  They are not designed for defense.  They are not designed to communicate ideas.  They are not designed to move you from one point to another.  Most of them are not even for hunting or for sport.  Their purpose is to kill.

All that said, I will happily grant gun nuts their collections if the guns are disabled in some permanent way.  I'd even be happy (if somewhat less so) if we restricted ammunition heavily.  (Every bullet has a $1000 tax if taken outside a licensed shooting range.)  I don't have a problem with gun collectors per se; but if there were a group of responsible, intelligent, capable collectors of radioactive material, that by itself wouldn't make me any less inclined to opine that radioactive material should be very, very heavily regulated.  (That's partly because one man's gun collection is another man's theft target.  I really think it's time to get over our collective hangups about guns, admit that all the words in the Second Amendment matter, and disarm people who refuse to be part of a well-regulated militia.  I'm sick and tired of compromising with people who think a few dozen school shootings per year is an acceptable price to pay.  But that's a whole 'nother rant.)

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