Showing posts with label gun control. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gun control. Show all posts

Debate: Gun Control

By Jake and Glenn

Recently, some deranged individual, completely disconnected from our society and not at all influenced by it, decided to take justice into his own hands against Sandy Hook Elementary School.  He killed 27 people, including 20 children.  While the whole world tries to piece together the details (like what music, video games and movies caused him to do this), we are perpetually told that this is not the time to talk about gun control.  Are they right?  Does an act of perverse gun violence make it the right time , should we wait until the next malicious act of gun violence, or is there some sort of ideal “in between” period?

Jake:  Do we even care about gun control anymore?  The Sandy Hook school shooting seems like it happened a year ago and I care much more about Justin Bieber smoking pot at this point in time.  Maybe we can have marijuana control instead of gun control.  Let’s keep our pop stars safe.  Let’s face it, like smoking, guns are pretty cool.  You can use them to shoot people like Osama bin Laden and Trayvon Martin.  Real villains.  Maybe on occasion a “good guy” takes a fatal bullet, but isn’t it worth the “collateral damage” to keep our streets safe from terrorist attacks and Skittles?  Let’s get back to the war on drugs!  If we wanted to have a war on guns what would we use to fight it?  Karate?  You need guns for a war!


Glenn: The only good thing a gun has ever been used for is when Amy Fisher shot Joey Buttafuoco’s wife in the face.  In the light of these repeated mass shootings (and all of the other accidental/purposeful gun deaths the Jewish media refuses to cover) it is time to consider some sensible gun regulation.  For example, I think it should be illegal for someone to use any sort of gun to kill a human beings and animals, but legal to kill sentient robotic creatures.  When we get to the point that cyborgs exist in our society the current Congress can decide their fate.  Also hall monitors, class presidents, et cetera should not be armed in schools.  I was almost senior class president and if I had been armed as the “defender” of my classmates it’s more likely I would have ended up shooting all the girls who emasculated me.  

Jake: The second amendment of the United States Constitution says that we can “totally shoot people if we want.”  Why do you want to crumple up the Bill of Rights and throw it in the trash next to the missing votes from said high school presidential election, that would have seen your election?  Your antisemitism is nothing more than a plea to conservatives, and I find it sickening.  Not the prejudice, but the pandering.  You will never sway a conservative when it comes to armed murder.  They may be “pro-life” when it comes to goo gestating inside of a harlot’s uterus, but they are “pro-murder” when it comes to the doctors that suck out that glop or a young boy who wants nothing more than  to “taste the rainbow.”  To quote a famous song: “Gun are cool/You should always take them to school/Shoot the girls that you adore/And the jocks that you abhor.”  That song--”Imagine” by John Lennon.


Glenn: I think you might be confusing John Lennon with TI or another rapper who speaks of violence in a congratulatory manner.  The true John Lennon quote to paraphrase is “Death is what happens because someone else made gun plans.”  Lennon himself was killed by gun violence and right after he was President Reagan declared authoritatively, like my opponent does today, “now is not the time for gun control!”  It took Reagan being assassinated by Jodie Foster’s boyfriend, and Vice President Bush, and the rest of the cabinet before President-elect Oliver North was willing to sign into law the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.  Now is the time to act!  We cannot let President Obama’s blood-ridden body, slumped over an electric car powered by bankrupt failed green battery company A123, be the smoking gun.  

Jake:  If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.  Then what are we going to do?  Arrest everybody with a gun?  That seems like some sort of bizarro universe Quinn Mallory and Rembrandt would slide into in the later seasons of “Sliders.”  And much like that episode, this real-life scenario would end with millions of conservatives racing toward a closing wormhole to leave this nightmarish landscape you dreamed up behind.  This country was built on guns.  We used them to shoot people we didn’t like, whether they be the indigenous people, the British, or people trying to enjoy a film.  My house is built out of guns.  If you outlaw guns I will be homeless and will have to rebuild my house out of knives or Super Soaker 50s.  You’re damning me to this life and I hate you for it.


Glenn:  If murders are outlawed, only murderers will be in prison.  If public intoxication is outlawed, people will stay inside their homes abusing their families.  If you ban guns, then we’ll stop killing each other.  We’ve heard all of these platitudes before but only the last one is worth staking our entire political process on.  The National Men’s Rights Rifle Association is the single worst advocacy group in the United States.  They say now, and always, is the wrong time to talk about gun control.  They oppose all restrictions and dress like someone held a gun to their head and made them shop the sale rack at Ross or Gadzook’s in the mall.  These are people I would not want fashion advice from, let alone public safety standards.  They and my opponent us want us all to develop a urgent, passionate affair with guns - not like what you see in the movie 9 ½ weeks.  But once you have all of these guns around you realize there’s no good use for them.  So you think about killing people.  And that’s where this debate ends and we all go outside, armed, ready to “defend ourselves” from a bunch of other people ready to “defend themselves.”

One Week in Entertainment with Glenn

By Glenn

It's been about two years since I last stood behind the high powered rifle of the weekly entertainment column.  Like any mentally unstable person who is free to buy guns in the United States, I will now proceed to take aim at many popular figures and institutions of the entertainment industry.  Please sit back, enjoy and be sure not to lobby Congress for sensible gun laws.

Tabloid Trash

ROSIE ON HER HEART ATTACK: I ALMOST DIED - AND THAT'S A FACT
Rosie O'Donnell, former host of a hit talk show where she pretend to be heterosexually attracted to pretend heterosexual Tom Cruise, had a heart attack and claims her almost dying is a "fact."  Rosie, I have five boys - I'm used to people trying to tell me something's true when it isn't.  You had a heart attack but you were never close to dying because while the good die young, evil is immortal.  I've been practicing that zinger for months.


DARRYL HANNAH ARRESTED PROTESTING KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE IN TEXAS

I actually got arrested the same day as Darryl Hannah last year, protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline in front of the rebuilt White House.  She was arrested again this week, and kudos to her for putting her dwindling celebrity status to good use instead of the usual self-debasement on terrible contest show.  She should be celebrated for this and for her starring role in the remake of Splash due out in 2013.  I can't find a picture of her the day but I found this one online - that is definitely the same motherfucker who put a zip tie on my beautiful thin wrists.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? SBTB'S LARK VOORHIES
People magazine did a photo shoot recently featuring five of the seven original SBTB cast members (Dustin Diamond choose not to participate and Dennis Haskins had a list of several marriage proposal calls to make that afternoon).  They did a "where are they now?" piece and Lark Voorhies's creator/mother said that Lark has bipolar disorder.  Lark denied it but later admitted it was true.  Then denied it again later.

Books

NEW BOOK: 'IN SUNLIGHT AND IN SHADOW' BY MARK HELPRIN
Mark Halperin, famous political hack and "journalist" currently employed by Time Magazine, has a new book.  Hopefully it is as insider and superficial as his last novel "Gamechange."

#2 ON THE BEST SELLER LIST: WAGING PEACE BY NEIL YOUNG
Everyone's favorite Manitoban has written a book about having a son with developmental disabilities and what it was like to predict Barack Obama's ascendancy in 2005.  Young said he wrote the book because he needs more money, which also explains why he wanted regular, hard working, white Americans to pay $18.99 for a CD full of old timey songs earlier this year.

Movies

TAKEN 2 - As someone said, the novelty of seeing Liam Neeson in action movies has worn off.  In this sequel, more things are taken from him.


PITCH PERFECT - Cute as a button Anna Kendrick stars in what looks to be an atrocious movie about singing with not a single full frontal shot of nudity.  For what it's worth (not much), she is actually pretty funny on Twitter compared to what I thought she'd be like.  You can follow her here.

THE HOUSE I LIVE IN - from awesome director Eugene Jarecki, who also did the fantastic but maybe a bit long Why We Fight, comes a new film about the drug war.  Jarecki tackles the issue by telling the stories of everyone from prison guards to recreational users.  By the end if  you will agree that we need to escalate the drug war even if it comes at the cost of destroying our own society.

Matthew Perry Watch

While I like Matthew Perry, I do not think he is the "greatest actor and greatest human being of all time" to quote OYIT's Jake.  I watched the pilot of his new goon show and didn't like it, though subsequent episodes have been better.  It is better than the awful Mr. Sunshine that fortunately died an early death like Monica and Chandler's stillborn child on Friends.

This week MP revealed he was an Oakland Athletics fans on Twitter:



Thank you for reading and I may or may not be back next week.

Tuesday Debate: Guns

By Jake and Ingrid

There is not a more controversial debate topic than Guns. Some of us love to use them to murder people we hate, and some of us don't use them at all. This debate will help you realize which type of person you are. This debate may change your life.




Jake: Look, having guns in public is a Constitutional right that we must protect at all costs, even if that cost is human lives. What if a police officer is lurking in your bushes, waiting to pounce on you when you're cleaning out your tobacco bong? He comes into your house, taser in hand. He sneaks up behind you, ready to kill you with a deadly level of electricity? What do you do? You turn around, say something clever and unload 41 bullets into his chest. What are the drawbacks? Nothing, except you're not dead and you have blood all over your kitchen floor. but your tobacco bong has never been cleaner. What if a rapist is trying to rape you to death? You can shoot him to death in the dick. There are no draw backs to having a gun and if you think there are then you are the biggest jerk in the entire world and deserve to be shot with a gun.

Ingrid: In the immortal words of Matthew McConaughey in the hit comedy film “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days”: Bullshit, Jake. Bullshit. Let’s say your ridiculous hypothetical situation, in which a cop busts into your house ready to taze you for possessing a tobacco bong, actually does occur: saying something clever and unloading 41 bullets into the poor dude’s chest is definitely more cinematic than, say, holding up your hands and bursting into tears (which is how I react every time I see a cop). It is also super illegal and will put you in the big house for 90 or 100 years. Also, it’s a bit reactionary to just shoot as soon as you are accosted. What if the poor dude just wanted some? Haven't you ever seen a bromance starring Seth Rogan or Whats-his-face Franco?? Even cops need to take a load off now and then, and those who are watching their weight do it with drugs, same as the rest of us. Let me get to my real point here: the reason I am against carrying concealed weapons is because with guns it's all about the element of surprise. It doesn't have much to do with skill, really, or at least not in most situations in which a pro-gun person would argue you'd most need one. It has to do with surprise. Let's look at a REAL event to illustrate this issue: after a school shooting such as the one at Virginia Tech, many pro-gun people were like "See?! If just a handful of those VT students had been carrying guns with them to class, they could've stopped the murderer from killing innocents!" But this is simply not true, because before anyone knew what was going on, the victims were already dead and the murderer had killed himself, too. Do you right-wing wackos think you could've stopped 9/11 if you had been carrying a concealed weapon? NO! It wouldn't have made a damn difference. Even if all of the hillbillies in MO had been transported to ground zero on that particular day for some sort of hillbilly gun conference, they couldn't have stopped it. The terrorists had the element of surprise, and they had done their dastardly deeds before anyone would've had time to react.

Jake: If I was on that 9/11 plane and had a gun, I would have shot all of those terrorist baffoons right in their towel covered skulls. Does this make me a racist? No, it makes me a patriotic American citizen who is not afraid to be politically incorrect to make a point in a debate for a comedy website on the internet. Regardless, shooting people is not about surprise, it's about stopping them cold in their raping or plane-flying-into-a-building tracks. Like I said in my first point, the only real downside of shooting somebody is the bloody mess it leaves. I'm a bit of a neat freak, so it's a problem to me, but may not be to you. Another problem is that they may wrongfully imprison you for merely acting out your Constitutional right. If there was a piece of paper that said I could clear cut every forest in the world would I do it? You bet your ass I would. I would probably make toothpicks or boards to build everybody a sweet deck in their backyards. Let's set the scene for another instance you might want a gun for: you're on a cruise ship, and it sinks. You're left stranded on an uninhabited island. You have no way to get food, but there's all these ducks and shit on this island, but not many vegetables or fruits. What are you going to do? You shoot some ducks and eat those fuckers. Now you're still alive thanks to having a gun. You don't want guns? Then you're going to die after you eat all the veggies like a first rate rube.

Ingrid: Haven't you ever read "Life of Pi"? Everyone knows that if you are on a cruise (first of all, fuck you for being on a cruise: who can afford a cruise these days??) and it sinks, you catch fish with a handmade net, and then you almost die from too much protein. But if you are on an island with ducks, and you are really desperate, I'm pretty sure you could catch one with your bare hands and/or drop a coconut on one's head to kill it. I mean, it's not hard to outwit a duck: ducks are pretty dumb. Another question to consider is would you even want to survive long in this situation? If the only person I had to talk to was a duck, I would just want to die. I would wade out into the water and melodramatically drown myself as the ducks looked on, slightly offended but otherwise indifferent. This is so far off topic, though. I am offended that you would bring the debate down to this level (like I said, most Americans can't afford cruises and would never find themselves in your Duck Island scenario). I'm going to assume that you are dumbing it down because I'm a female, and I'm going to go ahead and assume that means you are sexist. Therefore, every point you try to make from this moment on is null and void, my friend.

Jake: No, I have not read the Tao of Pooh, and why would I? I don't give a shit about your Eastern philosophy silliness. Your point had nothing to do with the topic at hand, and if we were going to sit here and debate ducks, islands or drowning ourselves, then I think this debate would have a much different tone. As I see it, you're trying to deflect by discussing ducks at length and calling me sexist, when you know that I'm not. Guns are a right, and just because I can discharge that right into a rapist's genitals does not make it any less important than freedom of speech or women's suffrage. Women's suffrage has never stopped a rapist from attacking you in the bathroom of a Denny's, but a gun has. Several times, in fact. I know, you could just stop going to Denny's, but where are you going to score a Moons Over My Hammy? You'd never know the pleasure of that greasy, but hilariously named dish. Guns help people, and if you are against guns then you're against helping people.

Ingrid Hey, listen, buster: I'm all for the right to own guns -- the right to own a gun is clearly outlined in the Constitution, a document which I frequently try to abide by. However, I believe there should be tight restrictions so nutcases like VT's Seung-Hui Cho can't get their mentally ill fingers on a semi-automatic without going through some red tape first, and I also believe people shouldn't be able to carry concealed guns. What is this, the old West? Put 'em on a hunting rack, I always say. Or in a locked case with the key hidden where your five yr old can't get to it. With the proper restrictions and safe guards, I support gun ownership, although I will still sniff at you smugly in my snobbish, progressive, middle class way. You keep bringing up this rapist scenario, so let me focus on that for a moment. In self-defense courses they often tell you specifically NOT to try to use a gun or other weapon against an assailant unless you are well trained, because the attacker can easily use your weapon against you before you can use it against him or her. Again, the element of surprise comes into play here. If a rapist burst in on me while I was peeing in the women's restroom at Denny's, and we both had guns, who do you think would be more likely to win in a close-range gunfight? Definitely not me, because I'm sitting there, utterly surprised, with my pants around my ankles and my hypothetical gun in my purse. Would the guy wait for me to wipe, flush, pull up my pants, reapply my lip balm, search for my gun (I can never find anything in my stupid purse), and then participate in a clean duel? No, he would burst in and hold his gun to my head before I even have a chance to say, "Sorry, this one's occupied!" If someone tried to rape me, I would have more success clawing his eyes out, twisting his balls off, and ripping out his hair than I would drawing a gun and firing.

Jake: In every rape scenario I have presented, the victim is very well trained with a hand gun and is an incredibly quick draw. That alone is enough to invalidate your entire argument, but I will still humor you and continue to shoot holes into it. Your point seems to thrive on urination and ball twisting, which in my book is a bit crass. I will look beyond this to your idea of turning the world back into the wild wild West. This would be great and go off without a hitch like in the movie West World. In this film Yuel Brenner portrays a lonely robot who helps young men become more manly. If you want to castrate our nation's men, then yes, let's take all of the guns and melt them into rainbows or whatever the fuck you want to do. If I was allowed to shoot rapists with a cannon I would do it so fast that their torsos would be rubble by the time I finished typing this sentence. I do not want to live in your world where rapists are free to have their "balls twisted" in acts of perverse bondage. I want to live in a world where my gun shoots hot lead at them reducing them to flowing rivers of lava, which form beautiful rocks where we can have lovely picnics with our unraped families. The overly-raped world you want to live in is a bleak one indeed.

Ingrid: Whatever, Jake. You are so absurd. I just want to close by saying that, yes, owning guns is all right with the proper restrictions in place but, no, I do not think that it is necessary to carry a gun with you at all times. Gunfire isn't the best solution in most situations. In most cases of rape, sinking cruise ships, and terrorism, the average person with a gun is not going to come out on top, and in cases where some wacko attacks random bystanders with no warning, you are basically dead anyway. Assailants and murderers are usually crazy survivalist-types or unmedicated schizophrenics who are obsessed with guns and know how to use them, and by the time they barge into the lady's restroom at Denny's, guns a'blazing, they already have a plan and will execute said plan before any of the potential victims have the chance to fumble for their own weapon.