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Laugh all you want, but the assumption these movies are based on -- that we can fix evil if we throw enough bullets at the problem -- is one that our entire culture still revolves around. We have mentioned elsewhere that the reason our generation is obsessed with zombies is because they are simple: This is an enemy you can only fight by killing. No negotiation, no compromise, no guilt. And every man's dream is to have a problem whose only solution is murder.

So while lots of you laugh when the NRA guy says, "The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun," we still completely agree with him on a fundamental level -- even heroes who abstain from killing, like Batman, are still all about violencing the problem away. Bruce Wayne defeats crime because he is so much better at violence than the bad guys that he doesn't have to kill them. We still want to see him beat the shit out of the Joker and his crew, rather than see economic conditions and mental illness intervention improve to the point that the Joker doesn't exist at all.

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"So, what, you're saying you don't believe in evil? That all the bad guys need is a hug and a therapist?" No, imaginary person who is objecting to my article. I agree that the Nazis were evil, and I hope Osama bin Laden's body got eaten by a shark, then shit out and eaten again by a shit-eating squid. But we're at the point where, if we are denied the chance to whip out the guns, we get pissed.

We just want so badly for what worked in RoboCop to work in real life, to be able to exterminate evil as if it were a bedbug infestation. But holy shit, would life be simple if you could actually solve problems this way. We'd have rid society of evil like 10,000 years ago. And it's not for lack of trying -- we went to war against the infidels, drowned the witches, and burned the heretics, and thousands of years later we're still saying, "Well, shit, maybe we just didn't kill the right people? Or kill them hard enough?" If you suggest that maybe that basic method is flawed, then you're weak. Soft.