In the motion picture made from Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep” Humphrey Bogart takes a gun off of a vicious hoodlum and says, "You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail." And so it goes. Guns make us real, make us whole, makes us right, make us strong, make us superior to our fellows. Thus, everyone and everything that trips our trigger finger is fair game – young men wearing hoodies and armed with dangerous bags of skittles, women, children, dogs, cats, rabbits, Girl Scouts selling cookies, your mechanic, the mailman, circus performers in makeup are all fair game. This is the world we live in, a swelling and soulless wasteland of our own making.
Those of you who know me well know that I am a UFO nut. I study them. I research them. I believe in them and in the implication of extraterrestrial visitation they imply. People meeting me for the first time often ask if I truly, absolutely and without question believe in the existence of intelligent life in the universe other than us. I answer, “Yes, I believe in the existence of intelligent life in the universe, excepting us.”
We forfeit our claim to intelligence whenever a child is killed in the street by a lunatic with a gun where his brain should be. We forfeit our claim to intelligence whenever we elect some NRA/gun lobby slut to the House or the Senate who propagates the idea that the 2nd Amendment is the only amendment that matters – shattering the graceful reciprocity of the Bill of Rights, indeed the Constitution itself, with every shot fired. We forfeit our claim to intelligence whenever we allow some moronic governor to sign into law a bill that shields homicide behind the mantle of self-defense. We forfeit our claim to intelligence whenever we accept as individuals or as a nation the proposition that a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.
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