And so, the gun control debate has come to this. D. Watkins, an NPR and CNN contributor, has run to Salon (where liberals really get to emote) to advocate for a rather draconian form of gun control:

As a teen I watched Chris Rock brilliantly address America’s gun problem during his Bigger and Blacker stand up. “We don’t need gun control,” Rock pleaded to a packed house, “We need bullet control––if bullets were $5000, people would think before they shot some one! You gotta really piss someone off for them to dump $50,000 worth of bullets in to you!” And just like the crowd, my brother, some friends and I erupted in laughter. Rock was definitely on point, $5000 bullets would be great but I’d take it a step further––I believe that being shot should be requirement for gun ownership in America. It’s very simple. You need to have gun, like taking selfies with pistols, can’t live with out it? Then take a bullet and you will be granted the right to purchase the firearm of your choice.


We’ve officially reached the stage of the debate where some on the Left are essentially in competition to see who can express the most disgust for guns or — more precisely — gun owners. Australia? Confiscation? That’s yesterday’s argument. Now the cool people actually want to shoot those gun-owning SOB’s. Never mind that the people who seek to lawfully purchase and carry handguns commit crimes at extraordinarily low rates, they are the people who need to be punished. They are the people who need to be mocked. But that mockery comes from ignorance. Here’s Watkins again:

Other than giving a coward the heart to stand tall, what’s the positive part of gun ownership? Other than the people in rural areas who use them to hunt for food, I have only seen them destroy, both in the suburbs and in our inner cities.

Every human being enjoys the inherent right of self-defense, and the “positive” part of gun ownership comes when the law-abiding citizen can exercise that right meaningfully and effectively. The “positive” part of gun ownership comes through the preservation of a free and independent people. But don’t tell that to Mr. Watkins, he can only imagine the caricature, and he hates that caricature so very, very much:

Gun praisers are just like the people who were in favor of slavery back in the day–– the elite, lazy and ignorant who weren’t being beaten, raped or in the field doing the work so they were perfectly okay with involuntary servitude, which is a problem and why I think gun owners need to feel more–– they need a taste of the other side. So if you love guns, if they make you feel safe, if you hold and cuddle with them at night, then you need to be shot. You need to feel a bullet rip through your flesh, and if you survive and enjoy the feeling­­––then the right to bear arms will be all yours.


I’m not sure I even know what to do with his slavery analogy, which is so incoherent that one suspects he threw it in the piece just to add that extra little seasoning of racial demagoguery that every far-Left essay needs. But really, Watkins makes everybody a winner. He gets to moralize, his fans get to enjoy their two minutes hate, and law-abiding gun owners are reminded, once again, at how poorly they’re understood and how much they’re despised.