Guns versus Spoons ~ And the Best Killing Machine Is?

Deaths Caused by Gun Violence in the United States
32,000 Each Year
90 Every Day

There is an argument, unfortunately made by members of my own species, that if we are going to ban guns, which are only tools, because they are used to kill people, we should ban spoons, also tools, because people use spoons to eat too much. Please forgive my language, but what a load of shit. It stinks to high heavens. If there is a God, he/she/it is holding his/her/its nose (if indeed he/she/it has a nose). It’s so utterly embarrassing. I heard it first from a woman in California whom I choose to call Spoon Lady.

Okay, Spoon Lady, try and pay attention. It's important.

One, guns are weapons. They were invented to shoot projectiles at high speed into human beings and animals with the purpose of killing or injuring them. Guns were not invented for target practice. They were invented to kill. Spoons are utensils. They were invented to help people eat food.

Two, if you are angry at your colleagues, or your school, or whatever, and you want to cause harm, you do not go out and buy a spoon. You buy a gun (or if you are young, you do not go into your kitchen and get a spoon, you go into our father’s gun closet and get as many weapons as you can carry). Spoons make lousy weapons and guns make lousy eating utensils.

Three, if you take your spoon and eat tones of crap everyday for years and eventually kill yourself, that is very sad, but no one else will die. You can slowly kill yourself eating with a spoon, but you can’t kill anyone else eating with a spoon. A spoon is a lousy killing machine. A gun is a great killing machine.

Four, spoons and guns, though both tools, are very different things. By definition, tools have an inherent purpose. The gun’s purpose is to kill. The spoons purpose is to pick up food. A person using a gun can kill. A person using a spoon can eat. Using a spoon may make you fat, but using a gun may make you killer. Do you see the category difference? Can you understand the moral and practical distinction? Can you perceive that one of these tools can be helpful while the other can be destructive? Do you see why spoons do not divide us and guns do? Try, it’s not difficult?

Not yet? Okay, perhaps this will help. If I take away your spoon, you can easily continue overeating, but if I take away your gun I make it much more difficult for you to simply walk into a school and kill twenty children. A two year old child cannot kill his mother by playing with a spoon. Get it?

America is both a weaponised society and very violent one. If Americans didn’t go around shooting each other all the time, then our guns wouldn't be problem. People in Switzerland absolutely adore their guns. They have more guns per capita then almost all other countries on the planet. Funny thing though, they don’t’ shoot each other with them. If you lived in Switzerland you might actually think guns were invented to shoot at targets and not people. But we do. We Americans do go around shooting people all the time. At present, the number of deliberate or accidental deaths caused by guns and other weapons, while very unfortunate, is acceptable to the majority of the American people and local, regional, state, and national politicians.

I get it, or at least I think I do. I shot a Winchester rifle once and ever since I’ve wanted one. How cool would that be?! I also shot a 45 once. I get it. Power. Guns are so utterly powerful, and not because they can put a big hole in a target, but because they can put a big hole in a person. Holding a gun can make us feel powerful, certainly more powerful than holding a spoon. And, don’t forget, we’re Americans! We have a right to own a gun. I mean, what the hell would America be without guns! They’re in the second amendment for God’s sake.

Yes, Americans love guns, probably more than they love spoons. The price they pay for that love is an alarming rate of gun related deaths. Now, I can hear you protesting that you are a responsible gun owner and not a killer. I believe you, but just for the record, you can’t then claim to own a gun for protection. I mean, a man breaks into your house and threatens you and your family (it almost always is a man) and you say, “Please wait! I need to go to my safe and get my gun and then I need to go upstairs to the bedroom closet to get the bullets that I have hidden at the back of the top shelf.” It’s okay. Admit it. You have a gun in your safe because you like the gun. It’s in the safe and the bullets are hidden in the bedroom closet so your kids don’t kill each other. Though you may overeat with your spoon, you don’t lock it in your safe or keep it out of the reach of your children. Because you are responsible you don’t leave your loaded gun sitting on the kitchen table, but you do a spoon.

If some day my wife is shot dead in the movies, or in church, or sitting in a cafe, you will never hear me say, “this can’t happen again”, because it will. It will happen again. Our politicians are so gutless, so lacking in any ethical and moral integrity,  Americans are so in love with their weapons and the ideology that protects weapon ownership, and some American are so stupid when discussing gun violence (yes, Spoon Lady, I’m thinking of you), it will happen again. While individuals decided to buy or not to buy guns, and while some gun owners are responsible and others are not, gun violence in the U.S. is a social pathology.

Anyway, Spoon Lady, stop it! You’re embarrassing our entire species. How can a member of a supposedly sentient and intelligent species make such an argument? Can you imagine the humiliation we will all feel if another intelligent species somewhere in our galaxy hears about this? Please stop it. And if you’re overeating, get help.

Copyright © 2105 Dale Rominger