It’s just a fancy candle holder, what’s the big deal?
Guns get a bad rap. After all, it’s people who kill people—with guns. But that last part isn’t important. Because it’s people. Bad people. Terrible people. Maybe even people you know. But definitely not people you know, actually, just other people, who are bad people. The point is, guns aren’t to blame.
People always ask me, a liberal Californian college student and thus representative of gun owners of the U.S., why do I need so many guns? But that’s a stupid question. Why did you even ask that question?
There are plenty of reasons to own a gun that do not involve murdering someone. Like a paperweight. And that’s the subject of the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) latest campaign.
It’s called Guns for Good. (I pitched Weapons for Welfare and Sexy Rifles but apparently, they weren’t taking suggestions.)
Tell me more about guns? Stop rushing me. It’s my article. If you stopped interrupting me, I could get on with this.
Anyway, do you remember after the Cambridge Analytica debacle (excuse my language) when Facebook ran that huge ad campaign like everyone would just forget about what happened and then everyone did seem to sort of forget what happened? It’s like that. For guns.
Aren’t people more likely to use guns accidentally or to die by suicide than in self-defense? Enough rhetoric. It’s time for some gun appreciation. Gunprecciation, if you will, and you won’t, which is fair enough.
Reusable straw. Back scratcher. Shot glass. (Haha, “shot” glass.) Hockey stick. Guns can do all sorts of things. They can be the best man at your wedding.
So if you see subway poster ads of a Winchester rifle being used as a tulip vase, don’t assume it’s Banksy’s newest era. It’s just the NRA showing us one of the plentiful non-violent ways guns can be used every day. And they’ve got all sorts of catchy taglines.
“Sure, some people use unregulated guns to do some terrible stuff. But others use them to remove the cobwebs in their ceiling corners,” reads a recent NRA Instagram ad. “And that cancels out, we think.” Golden. It’s a masterclass in PR.
After all, what’s there to worry about gun violence when you consider the aesthetic of hanging an ATI Crusader in the nursery? Plus, guns deter criminals. Who would rob people crazy enough to mount a double-barrel shotgun above their two-year-old? (Is this bordering on slander?)
We can all marvel at the utterly unproblematic, pseudo-patriotic American devotion to firearms.
Written by: Annabel Marshall — almarshall@ucdavis.edu
Disclaimer: (This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
