BANG! It's Halloween. (It sings so much better than "BOO," don't you think?)
Sometime around the first of October I usually start looking around my neighborhood for something REALLY scary to head and inspire my Halloween post. This year that wasn’t necessary. I found my “scares me shitless shot” way back in June, just south of Milledgeville GA, on U.S. Highway 441. Fishing Creek Outfitters is offering FREE GUNS. (Was then, still is.)
Granted, it wasn’t hard to find something that sends shivers down the spine in what has been a very scary year, what with the economy, the health care crisis, Sarah Palin (still), and a bat-shit crazy landlord who has totally gone off the farm, but, putting all that aside, or, even more to the point, with all that in mind, the one thing none of us needs right now is a free gun.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those peacenik anti-gun nuts running around advocating confiscating everybody’s weapons. (OK, I am a pacifist, but I try not to let it get in the way of reality.) I don’t have a problem with anybody having a gun for hunting. I even lease property in the homeland to a hunting club so they can kill all the Bambi Mammas they can catch. And I’m not really worried about those who feel they need a personal weapon to protect home and hearth from harm, (although I do contend the second amendment is overrated and misinterpreted, but that’s another post). No, I’m most concerned about the God and guns, Lock ‘n Load Jesus crowd --
those folks who think it’s their God-given right to own as much firepower as they can afford, beg, borrow or steal.
Frankly I just don’t think everybody needs a gun, and almost nobody needs an automatic weapon or an assault rifle. Least of all this chick.
Or this one either. (Can I say I find all this scantily clad women and guns imagery really scary in itself?)
I mean they’re not likely to be calling up a state militia anytime soon, regardless of what you think. And let’s face it; if Satan’s on your tail, you’re going to need a lot more than an AK-47 to bring him down.
And that Uzi won’t be much help against a herd of flesh eating zombies either.
Might as well get down on your knees and pray, for all the good it’ll do.
If it weren’t for my inherent loathing of firearms, I could totally get behind a gun. I can recall any number of occasions, thousands perhaps, conservatively speaking, when I would’ve just loved to have been packin’. There was that asshole in the Range Rover who cut me off as I was entering the I-10 at LaCienega back in January, and then flipped me off when I blew the horn. If only for one moment would that horn had been the trigger of a Beretta Tomcat .32.
(I would’ve aimed for the finger, but I’d likely have missed.) Then some skinny blonde bitch in a Cadillac with a poodle and a cigarette just about runs me down in the Petco parking lot as I struggled to load 20 pounds of kitty litter into my car. Fumbling in my purse for my keys, I fantasized finding a little Lady Derringer with personalized ivory cameo grips inside.
At the very least I would’ve shot out her tires, or her eyes.
This summer, when a Starline Tours bus full of German tourists ripped the bumper off the husband’s BMW in the CBS parking lot? Well, if he'd had a Luger semiautomatic loaded with 9mm cartridges, he would've shot the driver for sure, and probably a few of the tourists, at least the ones who had gotten off the bus and were taking photos.
I can’t count the number of occasions when we’re on the road and the hubby turns to me and says’ “You forgot the Glock again, didn’t you, Honey?" Joking, sure, but who’s kidding whom?
That Iranian jerk from across the street who brings his big drooling mongrel over here to defecate on our lawn and doesn’t pooper scoop, the loud, obnoxious co-worker who listens to death metal on iTunes and eats fish tacos at his desk every day for lunch, the pinched faced little Korean twit at the dry cleaners who lost my leopard-print cashmere sweater when I was PMSing, the Jack-In-The-Box drive-up clown? All gone. As would be the Earthlink tech support guy, “Stephen,” who left me on hold for 20 minutes while he “consulted his supervisor “ about my problem and then told me I’d have to call Microsoft, (except I’d probably be cooled off by them time I got to Delhi). Same with the prissy queen in the shoe department at Nordstrom's who suggested that the silver Jimmy Choo slingbacks I was looking at might be a bit much for the "more mature foot," and maybe the parking attendant at Café Sushi, who I’m fairly certain dinged my left front fender back in '04. My husband’s ex-wife for sure. Hell, my husband isn’t always safe!
I’m telling you true. The state of California would be littered with bodies, and additional carcasses scattered throughout the continual U.S. and parts of Canada and Western Europe. And there are a whole lot of people like me out there. We’re not particularly mean or violent, certainly not evil, and not likely to harbor more than one or two grudges worth killin’ for, but we’re decidedly short-fused, a little edgy before we’ve had our coffee, and maybe off our meds. We should not, under any circumstances, have guns. Good thing is, for me anyway, actually having to go out and spend money on an object the primary purpose of which is to end another life just didn't seem worth it. But if said object of death and destruction was FREE, hey, that opens up a whole new firing range.
Which brings me back to Milledgeville and Fishing Creek Outfitters, where a benign enough sounding young man answered the phone and explained that for every $25 you spend you get one chance in their once-a-month drawing for a free gun. That’s right, they give away twelve free guns a year, presumably to anybody whose name get’s pulled out of the chamber. Could be you, could be me, could be a serial killer named Dave, or a hamster named Pete. But this month I'm betting on myself. The mister and I don't camp, (I like to say my idea of roughing it is the Holiday Inn Express.), but someday we might, and, if we do, we'll be well equipped. Tent, check. Sleeping bags, check. Coleman stove, check. battery lanterns, check. His and hers portable latrines, check. Mail order, don't forget the drawing tickets. If it doesn't work out for Halloween, Thanksgiving's coming and I may want to take up scuba diving, or maybe fly fishing for Christmas. Sooner or later, me or somebody like me. It's just a matter of time. And it won't be pretty.
So that’s why the notion of FREE GUNS scares me to death, pun totally intended, and why it should scare you too. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
