Bushmaster Firearms ad from 2010

Just stop.

Stop with all the bullshit about how you support gun ownership for self-defense.

Stop with all the nonsense about the Second Amendment.

That isn’t it, and you know it.

Guns, for you, are a fetish.

Especially for the white men who own a disproportionate share of guns in this country and are the most animated defenders of the same.

Guns are what allowed you (hell, us) to conquer this land, enslave Africans, extirpate indigenous peoples, and steal half of Mexico among other things. Given that history and how central the gun has been to our existence and domination as white men, it stands to reason that we would literally have become addicted to guns; that we would now be charter members in the cult of the firearm.

Guns are, for far too many of us, an extension of our manhood; they are something without which many would feel less complete, less masculine, less virile, less alive.

And some among you will think this hyperbole. Or rather you would, if you knew the meaning of the word hyperbole. But of course you don’t, although you know a lot about guns, because knowing about guns is more important than having a well-developed vocabulary, because you can’t shoot shit with multi-syllabic nouns, so what fun are those anyway?

And yes I know, that last sentence was elitist as fuck, and what of it?

My linguistic snobbery never killed anyone and most assuredly wasn’t the danger to those kids in Parkland, Florida the other day. But guns were.

My elitism might hurt people’s feelings. So very sorry.

But the bullets fired from the mechanical phalluses people like you defend to the death?

Those rip flesh.

They destroy lives.

So when it comes down to it, the nation could probably use a little more of my snobbery and a lot less of your guns.

But like I said, they’re a fetish for you, and that’s why you can’t abandon them.

And I can prove it. Which means it isn’t just hyperbole, so you don’t even have to Google the meaning of that word anymore — not like you had any intention of doing so — because it doesn’t apply after all.

How can I prove it? Simple. Here’s a thought experiment.

Let’s say that there were a button I could push, and upon pushing it, every handgun, every high-capacity magazine firearm, every semi-automatic weapon — basically everything but a simple old-school rifle — would vaporize.

And let’s imagine there were a second button that, when pushed, would result in the eradication of the knowledge of how to make the previously vaporized firearms over again.

In other words, two buttons pushed and now no one has any gun other than a simple rifle, and those are the only weapons you can get your hands on, and no one will ever remember how to make the other ones.

How would this make you feel if it really happened? Would you celebrate this or feel cheated? Angry? Robbed of your “birthright” to own whatever gun you wanted to own?

Would the National Rifle Association celebrate the elevation of the simple rifle — ya know, that thing in their actual name — to such a central and exclusive place in this new era? Or would they be frothing at the mouth, driven to apoplexy by the mere suggestion?

Because see, I know your answer. And I certainly know theirs.

You wouldn’t celebrate such a scenario. Such a possibility would likely enrage most of you and would surely inspire no joy in the halls of the NRA.

And this is so, despite the fact that the scenario I describe would leave you more than capable of defending yourself. After all, a rifle can suffice for that purpose and since no potential home invader would have a handgun either, and since very few home invaders would try and invade your home while schlepping a rifle, you’d be more than adequately protected with such a rudimentary weapon.

Likewise, this scenario would more than protect your rights under the Constitution. Hell, when the founders wrote that Second Amendment they were thinking mostly of muskets, where you had to pack the powder down and shoot from a few feet to have any chance of hitting someone. So if anything, my hypothetical allows for far more of “muh freedoms!” than anything the framers intended.

So ya know, you’re welcome.

But that wouldn’t suffice for you would it?

Of course not. Because it was never about self-defense, or hunting, or the Constitution.

It was always about firearms as an extension of your masculinity.

Shooting things in rapid fire with lots of bullets makes you feel like more of a man. Because your manhood is fragile and pathetic and built on a foundation of sand.

And rather than deal with that, or get therapy, or redefine masculinity in a less toxic way, you — we as a culture — just keep repeating the same bullshit.

But that bullshit is slaughtering children while you sit around blathering about freedom, and your right to a gun. Because in your mind it’s all about you.

Because you aren’t the one getting shot at.

Because your kid isn’t the one dying in the hall of their high school, killed by someone else’s kid who learned to shoot his instrument of death in an NRA-funded gun program, which they (and likely you) thought would be a great way to teach gun responsibility.

Yeah, enough of that.

Your fetish is too deadly to indulge any longer. It’s time to say that your rights to whatever kind of gun you desire do not exist. It’s time to sacrifice your fragile masculinity on the altar of a more valuable humanity. Not just sacrifice it, but smash it to pieces.

It’s time for you to grow up and find other ways to define yourself as a man other than through weaponry and violence. At the very least just admit your pathology. Owning your sickness, after all, is the first step to healing.

But meanwhile, the rest of us have got work to do. You can either join us or get out of the way. But either way, your guns will not protect you now. The children have your number and they are done with your excuses. The future does not belong to you. You are an anachronism and will be left — and hopefully soon — in the dustbin of history.

And someday people will look back in amazement at the morally stunted and intellectually underdeveloped wonder that was white American manhood, and be thankful that it ultimately was forced to evolve.

Or alternately, that it went the way of the dodo bird and was replaced by something different and far more valuable.