Written by BILL HICKS
(undated)
Listen to the audio text of this article HERE.
I was reading the ‘Letters to the Editor’ section of Rolling Stone Magazine the other day. In it were letters in response to an article that appeared in the magazine the week before about gun control. Judging from the points of view expressed in the letters, the article had presented the usual two sides you hear regarding this issue, insuring that nothing would be resolved and the argument would rage on and on ad infinitum until we all wished someone would just shoot us so we wouldn’t have to hear it anymore.
The two points of view that are allowable in the narrow spectrum of debate in America regarding gun control are these: first, those people who believe it is our constitutional right to bear arms (these are the ‘you’ll get my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers’ bunch – the National Rifle Association, and basically every yahoo goober you’ll ever meet in America), then there are those who believe it is our constitutional right to bear arms, but only after a one week waiting period before being able to purchase a gun, and/or psychiatric and criminal records check. In other words, they feel some type of gun control measure should be enacted so it’s just a little harder to purchase a gun, while not infringing on our ‘Guaranteed Constitutional Right to Bear Arms.’ (There is a third point of view on the gun control issue, those who I refer to as THE VICTIMS, but they remain strangely silent and unorganized.)
Well, here I was again reading these letters, these pathetic attempts at logic from tiny-brained, right-wing fearmongers (i.e. ‘if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns’, and ‘Guns don’t kill people, people kill people’) and letters from the timid, cowering ‘left’ having the gall to suggest that ‘while it is people who kill people, they do it much more readily and handily with guns than without them’, and ‘while outlawing guns would leave only outlaws with guns’ doesn’t take into account the fact that many of the victims of guns are children shot by other children – outlaws neither one. And, of course, there was no acceptance of the statistical correlation between the number of deaths caused by handguns (over ten thousand just this year alone) in America, where guns are readily available, compared to the paltry number of deaths caused by handguns in England (22!) where guns are not so readily available. The simple fact that where there are lots of guns – there are lots of people dying from guns, and where there aren’t a lot of guns – not many people die from guns, is an equation the bloodthirsty, hate mongering horde of gun freaks that maintain it is their ‘constitutional right to bear arms’ don’t understand is more than a little frightening. Shouldn’t you be able to comprehend simple leaps of logic before being able to purchase a gun? ‘No!’ they cry. ‘It is our right!’ And so they believe.
Well, I took it upon myself to peruse a copy of the Bill of Rights to find out exactly what this article in the constitution states. What I discovered shocked me quite profoundly, for two reasons. First because I realized what level of ignorance I was dealing with here – pre-school at best, and second, because what I found so easily in Article Two of the Bill of Rights has never been mentioned before (as far as I know) in this never-ending debate.
I’ll quote Article Two of the Bill of Rights first, then present my simple realization and perhaps, God willing, this ludicrous issue can be resolved once and for all. (Yeah, right . . .) Here goes: ‘A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ (!) As far as I can tell, that’s one sentence. This issue doesn’t need to be debated by constitutional lawyers. This whole debate could be cleared up by my first grade English teacher, Mrs. Farmer. Article Two says, essentially, that: ‘In order to maintain a free state a well-regulated militia (the National Guard) is necessary, and to that end only (at least according to the grammatic content of the sentence) people (the National Guard) have the ‘right to bear arms’. If you reverse the two parts of the sentence it becomes even more crystal clear: ‘The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, in order to maintain a well-regulated militia.’
This sentence, this one idea, this complete thought in and of itself does not say every Floyd, Clem, or Burl has the right to bear arms. It does not say every psychopathic yahoo in the country should be able to own a gun. It doesn’t say that at all, and anyone with an education higher than the first grade should be able to comprehend this. Again, I believe people should be able to glean the true meaning of a simple sentence before we even begin to discuss their owning automatic weapons for ‘hunting purposes.’
I can’t help but wonder why the simple and obvious meaning of this sentence has never been mentioned before. Perhaps this is old news to the gun control debaters, but that still doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence. Are gun rights advocates arguing that roving gangs of young people shooting innocent bystanders constitutes a ‘well-regulated militia’? Or that Clem shooting Burl because he mistook him in the dark for a ‘nigra’ constitutes a ‘secure and free state’? What, exactly, is their argument based on? Because it is not based on any ‘guaranteed right’ in the constitution. A child could explain this to you if he or she wasn’t busy ducking for cover, or being strip-searched on the way into their grade school.
Here is the problem as I see it – a lot of very fearful and confused people in this world are heading towards realizing their own self-fulfilling prophecy. They’re advocating a right that does not exist (at least constitutionally, as we’ve seen) to arm themselves to the teeth and ‘protect’ themselves from unnamed predators who, they believe, want nothing more than to break into their homes, rape their fat wives, and then steal all their bowling trophies.
They want to ‘defend’ themselves against some giant social war that appears to them to be breaking out everywhere, threatening their very existence itself. And just who are these poor and twisted souls that flap helplessly in the winds of change like a klansman’s sheet rustling against his legs as he chases a ‘nigra child’ in the night? They are . . . you guessed it! . . . Christians!
Fundamentalist Christians to be exact. Uh-oh! Dial 911 and call the logic police – this is an emergency! Turn your phazer to your own head and press ‘stun’. Slip into some bib-overalls, put a corn stalk between your teeth and pull up a stump, because you are about to experience philosophical thinking at its best! These are some deep, deep thinkers here. They’ve left more than one man stuttering in amazement, silenced by their swift grasp of ‘THE TRUTH’! which is stated so clearly in the Holy Bible, which is the literal word of God’. Watch as every sane and logical argument falls helplessly against their wall of faith. Their beady little pig eyes flare red with fear and hate when the ‘Good Book’ is held up to the Light of Reason. Watch out! Those Christians might bite! After all, they’ve got God on their side, and there’s no question in their little cracker minds about that. I guess they assume they’re forgiven for every form of grievous persecution they’ve committed against ‘non-believers’ over the centuries. Be careful! There’s nothing more dangerous than an angry Christian. With that lethal combination of ignorance combined with self-righteousness! Keep your hands in the car at all times, and no petting. It’s Christian Country safari, or as it’s more popularly known in this, the latter part of the twentieth century as – Amerikkka.
Now don’t get me wrong. Some Christians are fun. Take the Pope for instance – why, he’s a downright hoot! I could watch him for hours bouncing around in his little POPE MOBILE, surrounded by three feet of bazooka-proof plexiglass that I guess we’re supposed to believe was forged in Heaven by the angel Gabriel to protect the Pope from Satan’s Assassins. Now, there’s FAITH IN ACTION!
No, I’m speaking more specifically about right-wing, fundamentalist Christians – those who believe the Bible is the ‘literal word of God’. These are the folks that frighten me, being as they are, in the equivalent of spiritual kindergarten, while also holding positions in the highest levels of the US Government. (Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton come to mind, just off the top of my head.)
How can the Bible be the ‘exact and literal word of God’, when in the first four chapters alone God is already stumbling about and placing his claim of omniscience in a very suspicious light? In chapter two of Genesis, we read that ‘God formed man out of dust from the ground’ and this man’s name was Adam. Also in chapter two, we’re told that ‘God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man then took one of his ribs and fashioned a woman from the rib’, and this woman’s name was Eve. (Now remember, I’m not questioning the miraculous power of God, only the claim by fundamentalists that the Bible is ‘the exact and literal word of God.’) In chapter three, we learn of Adam and Eve’s fall of grace from EDEN. Now, in chapter four, Adam and Eve have ‘relations’ and Eve gives birth to a son – Cain. Next she gives birth to Cain’s brother Abel. Cain kills his brother Abel and Cain then ‘went out from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the Land of Nod, east of Eden.’ Then, in the next verse we’re told ‘and Cain had relations with his wife . . .’ Whoa! Hold on here. His wife? Where the hell did she come from? How does this work? You see, the Bible may be the ‘literal word of God’, but apparently it’s not the ‘complete works of God’. (That’ll be out this Christmas along with the Led Zeppelin 16-disc box set.)
When posed with these obvious questions of veracity, fundamentalists will then start backpedaling and offering up their pseudo-intellectual philosophies to ‘fill in the gaps’ so to speak of God’s ‘exact and literal word’. (You won’t find people more presumptuous than Christians.) They’ll say that Adam and Eve had other children besides Cain and Abel, daughters, who aren’t mentioned in the Bible. Already we’re open to interpretation, and assumption, and, I might add, if it’s true – INCEST! You would think the ‘exact and literal word of God’ would be clearer and more understandable and not so open to anyone and everyone’s assumptions and interpretations which have kept even fellow Christians at each other’s throats, not to mention the vast chain of guilt, shame, condemnation, and religious persecution they’ve imposed upon others since the Prince of Peace was first born.
As for me, I believe that God is Love, and that he created us, and that we are his beloved children. I believe his love is unconditional, and that there’s nothing we could do to ever change that. I believe it is our own misperceptions of who we really are that leads to every self-created hell you’ll find in this world. I also believe forgiveness is the key to healing our perceptions and allowing us to remember God and his everlasting love for us.
Whatever other dogma or rhetoric you want to add to that simple belief is your business I guess. Or however you wish to interpret it. Like gun control and fundamentalism – these are the nature of the problems that arise in a country of people who are seventy per cent functionally illiterate. I just pray you’ll let my own form of practice be my business and keep your little fearful hands off the weapons for a while. I for one am going to take what Terence McKenna refers to as an ‘heroic dose’ of psilocybin ‘MAGIC mushrooms with my friends and head for the woods, where the word of God can be heard quite effortlessly and quite clear and without the ‘thee’s and thou’s.’ Hopefully, just before we leave, we’ll catch a shot of the Pope bouncing around in his little Pope Mobile on the news. That’ll give us something to giggle about for the first forty minutes before God starts speaking and we hush in silent reverie, and bask in his never-ending, holy love.
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