Me and my "weapon"

Who better to fisk this jackass I share a name with than me. Countertop – I got your back.

Me and My Weapon

Ok. Rings a little bit of Full Metal Jacket, but whatever floats your boat, guy.

Today's the day I take my weapons test at Chico Rod & Gun Club, and I don't want to come up short on rounds. The test is the first step toward getting a Concealed Carry Weapons (CCW) permit, a little slip of paper that will allow me to carry a loaded gun almost anywhere in California, and the thought of strapping on a piece and walking down the street has me giddy with anticipation.

Did you really just write “giddy with anticipation?” At the thought of “strapping on” a “piece?” The thought of you carrying a loaded gun in California makes me reach for mine.

Huntington's is a pretty average gun shop, as far as I know. The walls are lined with the heads of deer and badgers and whatever else people shoot around here. I'm not into shooting animals, so I always feel a little out of place in these stores. I'm not the average customer here, and it shows.

You mean you’re a nancy boy? Ok, point granted. Not the average customer…meaning…you can’t tell your ass from your head, then you are again correct. Ok, what kind of gun are you buying ammo for?

[A] gun that my wife's cousin gave me--a little Derringer-style two-shooter that he bought from some mountain man when he was a teenager.

Probably not on the DOJ approved list then, eh? How do you plan on getting that listed on your CC card? And qualifying with a second hand derringer you’ve never fired and don’t even know the chambering of? “Where’d ya learn that, Cheech – drug school?”

Why would I want to carry a gun around? Honestly, I don't know. As a white, middle-class male in my early 30s, I have very little reason to go packin'. Yet for a number of reasons, more and more people--I assume at least a few people like myself--are carrying guns around lately.

I don’t know why you would, either. Seems to me you’re liable to shoot yourself in the dick with that little hideout gun of yours. And your assumption about carry demographics is waaaaay off – most people that legally carry are middle-class males between 25-50. What – you think bloods and crips apply for CCW’s?

"It's kind of wild West," [Sgt. Barrow, Chico PD] said. "Licensed or unlicensed, I don't like it. I can remember doing vehicle stops and seeing a weapon or a holster. It really makes you nervous. You know, we [officers] are very well trained in firearms and most civilians are not."

Emphasis mine. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Say it with me – “We’re the only ones professional enough.” You must be a real shitkicker if seeing a holster makes you crap your pants.

Although gun-rights people will always try to tell you it is hard to get a gun and almost impossible to get a concealed carry permit in California, I personally found it almost ridiculously easy.

I don’t have anything to say to that aside from “fuuuuuuck you, cockbreath.” I deserve that permit about 30 billion times more than you.

The application is pretty much what you would expect--straightforward questions about criminal background, drug use, citizenship and the like. The one that stumped me was "What is your reason for applying for a CCW? "Jackass that I am, I wanted to write something like "Motherfuckers be all up in my grill" or "I am a poet of annihilation and bullets are my words," or even the cryptic but currently fashionable "I refuse to be a victim." Somehow I thought they'd pick up on that, so I left it blank. At the Sheriff's Office, the ladies at the front desk took my picture and thumbprint and helped me fill in my incomplete application. I had to list all my aliases, which gave them a good laugh. They made me fill in the part about why I wanted a CCW, so I wrote that sometimes the stories I write make people mad enough to threaten my life--which is absolutely true, although I try not to take that stuff too seriously.

There is a true statement in there – you are a jackass. And you just publicly admitted to lying on a document that allows you to carry a weapon in public. I’ll be contacting the Chico PD in a few minutes.

So I let a few months slip by without really thinking about it. Once I finally got the nerve to holster my piece and step outside, I realized that the feeling of power I had originally expected was usurped by a nagging sense of anxiety that stayed with me all day, until I brought the gun home and shoved it into its safe.

Pansy. The stress of all that personal responsibility getting to you? Better call your nanny.

But I do wonder about the true motivations for some of these publications. Does advocating for more gun ownership actually stem from concern for the 2nd Amendment and the safety of Americans or does it come, at least partly, from the fact that there's a lot of money to be made in playing off people's fears--getting them to buy weapons, weapons accessories, magazines about weapons, and classes on how not to kill yourself with all the weapons you've bought?

Ummm...actually, no. Had you managed to do any freakin' research about the issue, you'd notice that most gun sellers and manufacturers operate on thin margins and there really isn't a whole lot of money to be made unless you land a gov't contract.

Pro-gun groups also generate tons of money for political causes and candidates, with the National Rifle Association giving almost $1 million a year, mostly to Republicans.

WHAT?!?! NO SHIT?!?! A COOL $1,000,000 dollars - TO REPUBLICANS...and pro-2A democrats, whichever the case may be. That just makes Soros' millions and millions pale in comparison, huh?

I'm no economist, but I have to wonder about Lott's premise. Why, for instance, does Kern County, which issues the most CCWs of any county in California, have such a higher percentage of violent crime than Butte County does? Kern, with a population roughly three times that of Butte, regularly issues three times as many CCWs. Yet when you break it down to a percentage, an average Kern County resident is almost twice as likely to be a victim of violent crime. (These figures come from the CDOJ's statistics division.)

You're obviously no statistician either. But calculators can be useful so let me see. If Kern County issues three times as many CCW's as Butte, which has 1/3 the population, then...they issue corresponding numbers of permits. If they issue three times the permits with three times the population, whats the problem?

Conservatives like to pretend that all liberals are out to take their guns away, a ridiculous notion considering that, according to the General Social Science Survey, about 30 percent of people who consider themselves liberal already own guns themselves. And liberals like to portray gun-rights advocates as a bunch of tobacco-chawing xenophobes who are trying to compensate for the tiny size of their wieners.

WTF did you just say? Did you even make a point there? Guy, step away from the bong. A minority of self-identified liberals own guns and that means what? What is the political leaning of the VPC, the Brady Bunch, etc etc ad infinitum...??? STFU and sit down, hippy. And stop thinking about my dick.

The 2nd Amendment presumably gives me the right to keep and bear arms, yet it qualifies that right with a vague statement about "a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state." I'm not sure how I qualify as my own militia. I may be regular (I drink a lot of coffee), but I don't know that I'm all that well regulated. Do the Branch Davidians qualify as a militia? How about the Crips or the KKK?

Do you plan on finishing that thought? What is a militia? According to Webster, its a group of citizens organized to military service in an emergency. When the framers drafted the Constitution, it encompassed everyone that fought in the Revolutionary War - basically, everyone that could hold and fire a gun. Take that, hippy.

Do the gun-rights folks really want someone like me--a left-leaning, antisocial, misfit with an attitude--carrying a gun around? Or do they think that I, along with the rest of the freaks out there, am too stupid, too scared or too poor to arm myself?

You're damn right I don't want you carrying a gun. In fact, since you lied (Chico should be contacting me back soon) on your CCW app, you should never be allowed to own one. And you never got training. You are a danger to yourself and others. There is no reason for you to carry a gun since you'll likely get shot with it before you could shoot and attacker. But - BUT - I respect the Constitution. It says that you have a right to bear arms. Therefore, you may exercise that right to your hearts content. Enjoy it, you pencil dicked motherfucker.

The irony is that, by using the gun lobby's own logic, if anyone has a right to arm themselves, it is the black population. After all, a black man in the United States is nine times more likely to be shot and killed than a white man. Blacks are also disproportionately affected by crime, much of it at the hands of gun-wielding crooks who also happen to be black. Yet in most black neighborhoods guns are considered, at least among law-abiding folks, as more of a menace than a solution.

You contradict yourself right before you answer your own question...interesting use of reasoning there, "Tex." How likely is it that a black gang member will attack a black community member if that member is allowed to be armed? Not that likely, not after a few tries. But since it is near impossible to be armed outside of the home, there is a disparity of violence caused by people who are breaking the law - both by unlawfully carrying a weapon and using it against innocnet people. You hear that "whoosh"-ing sound? That's logic going right over your head.

But hell, maybe I should just get over that. With the country as divided as it is, any common ground might be better than none at all, even if it means we all have to be armed in order to get along with each other.

The first rational thing you said, even if it was tongue-in-cheek, you pompous ass.

Just read it for yourself.