Not many people in America give a shit about anything but continuing to live more or less as they did yesterday in America. And that’s not a bad thing. We live in a country that’s wonderful more because of its people than because of its government, and who wouldn’t want to keep the government off our backs if that’s the thing that blows about this country?

You can go into any general store in Alabama, any mall in Pennsylvania, and you’ll meet people with whom you may not agree at all, but who would probably give blood for you if you needed it. Some would go further and give you a kidney if you needed it. That’s a wonderful thing, having people like that as your compatriots.

Many of the people you’d meet might well own guns. They might like to do skeet, or hunt turkeys, or they might even have it for self-protection. All that is perfectly understandable, and it is perfectly legal. But I’d wager you’d know for sure if any of those good people were members of the National Rifle Association. The NRA is sort of like an advanced stage of illness: at some point, it becomes all you can talk about, it becomes your life. You not only buy the T-shirt, but you wear the hat, the jacket, the gloves, probably the underwear, all Official NRA stuff, of course. And you proselytize, and you harangue, and you fulminate against a phantom menace that threatens to take away your guns: of course, that’s a big part of it, the threat of becoming a gun-eunuch. Left with nothing but a straw for a pea-shooter, your manhood won’t allow such nonsense, no! You’re gonna wear that NRA patch proudly wherever you roam. And you’re gonna push it in my face when I’m at that store, you and your goddamn 2nd Amendment bullshit, as if you have a right to submachine guns, hand grenades, and intercontinental ballistic missiles. 

Here’s where the NRA guy would stop me. “Nobody’s asking for ICBMs, you idiot!” he says. “Wayne isn’t asking for that; nobody ever asked for that.” Well, no, but what if they did? What if they did? What do you want to bet that you’d use the same 2nd Amendment to defend such a claim? Well, since neither machine guns, ICBMs, high-powered rifles, pistols with clips holding 10 jacketed bullets, nor hand grenades were around when the drafters wrote the Constitution, it’s unclear, and it’s pointless to speculate about the founders’ thinking when it involves things that did not happen in their lifetimes. So, in effect, nothing you own is protected…or else, everything that is a weapon is protected. There is nowhere to logically draw a line. If you have a right to weapons, then it is an unimpeachable right to own nuclear weapons. You cannot distinguish how to grade the shades of weaponry, and you don’t admit it’s possible; that’s because you won’t admit that you adjust that slider yourself simply to avoid the argument of where to stop with the acquisition of weapons.

It’s a great country, but man, there are some fucked up people out there. But even they would give you their blood if you needed it.