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They wouldn’t do it after the Las Vegas massacre. They wouldn’t do it after Gabby Giffords was shot. They wouldn’t even do it after Sandy Hook. Maybe there is no one who can break the toxic romance that America has with guns ...


I bet black people could.

You know we have to do all the hard shit. We picked all the cotton. We created every iota of American music, dance and culture. We made this country an economic superpower. We fight disproportionately in every war. A black man gave this country universal health care. We invented the modern air conditioner. If it wasn’t for black people, this country would still consist of poor, backward hillbillies ballroom-dancing to Appalachian bluegrass tunes and sweating their asses off while coughing up phlegm.


You’re welcome, white people.

Since we have to do everything around here, I guess I’ll get up tomorrow and solve this whole gun issue. Here’s how I plan to do it.

1. Get lots of black people to buy guns.

I know it seems antithetical, but if black people started purchasing semi-automatic weapons legally and in large numbers, congressional Republicans would pass a gun-owner safety bill faster than white people’s fucking tempo.


We wouldn’t even have to actually purchase guns—all we’d have to do is get black people to join the National Rifle Association en masse. We could just make all strip clubs free before midnight with an NRA membership card. I already came up with a slogan:

The National Rifle Association: Make dat ass and your guns clap! (OK, I admit it needs work.)


I bet if Jay-Z gave away a free subscription to the NRA with his next album, we could stage a takeover (see what I did there?).

I mean, it’s gotta be worth more than a subscription to Tidal, right?

2. Call gun ownership a form of resistance.

We need to figure out a way to make the GOP believe that buying guns is a form of protest, because whether it’s black fists at the Olympics, sitting in an empty bus seat, walking across a bridge, sitting down at a lunch counter, marching, kneeling or even saying the words “Black lives matter,” white America has never approved of any form of black protest.


Does anyone have Colin Kaepernick’s number?

3. Make it cool.

If black people made mandatory waiting periods or universal background checks cool, white people would appropriate it like they did jazz, rock ’n’ roll, hip-hop, our dances, our style, our vernacular and everything except our poultry-seasoning techniques.


If we could get Rihanna to Snapchat herself calling a congressman, you know Kim Kardashian would be on Instagram tomorrow dialing up a senator while wearing a thong and pasties. Then Kendall Jenner would make a commercial featuring her interrupting a class to hand a Mr. Pibb to a white boy in a trench coat about to go on a school shooting spree, thereby saving the day. (For some reason, Pepsi passed on the idea.)

Then Taylor Swift could make a song called “Control My Love” about how her body is a gun that needs controlling before she explodes. I know that’s a shitty, unfunny analogy ...


Which is exactly why it will be a No. 1 hit for Taylor Swift.

4. We might have to threaten the animals.

The only thing white people love more than their guns is their pets. They could give a fraction of a fuck about actual human lives, but they will jump in front of a speeding train for a puppy. You literally have to fill out more paperwork to buy a Yorkshire terrier from a pet store than you do to purchase an AK-47 from a gun show.


I’m sure there’s some kind of statistic about how many pets are killed by gunfire every year. Instead of talking about human deaths, we need to focus on pets.

We need to make one of those sad “Arms of an Angel” commercials showing puppies shot* by people who didn’t undergo the mandatory background checks (don’t worry, it’s all makeup and CGI), but you know white America would go into hysterics if we showed a puppy being harmed.




Black boys, not so much.

*No animals were harmed in the writing of this article.

I’ve learned that troglodyte, middle-American conservatives will believe anything if you say it loud enough and frequently enough. Somehow, fake facts seep into their porous brains, no matter how ridiculous it sounds.


Perhaps we could pay Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly to join our cause. Those bastards would do anything for money. They could tell their followers there is a little-known clause in Obamacare that allows people to trade abortions for banana clips. Maybe we could fool those idiots into putting their guns down by playing on their racism and fear of black dicks. We could just mention that there was a recent study that shows gunpowder makes white women prefer black penis, or tell them that every time someone uses the gun-show loophole, a black penis grows an inch.

It shouldn’t be that hard to bamboozle a group of people who believe that Fox News is “fair and balanced”; climate change is a hoax; an international pedophile ring operates out of a basement under a Washington, D.C., pizza shop; universal health care is bad; or a low-IQ, repeatedly bankrupt, billionaire trust fund bullshit artist with a toupee made out of golden retriever hair and dryer lint would rescue poor, white hillbillies from poverty.


You’re welcome, white people.

You’re welcome.