Do you remember what happened back in 2008, during the Presidential campaign, and just following the election? Do you remember how the price of guns and ammo skyrocketed as people rushed to stockpile their own personal arsenals? Just in case, let’s start with a quick refresher...
You see, y’all were afraid of Obama. You believed he would take away your guns. The more reasonable of you believed there might be some additional gun regulations in the future. The less reasonable believed it would be the first step in a fascist junta, or part of a nefarious plot to kill all white people.
“It's going to happen,” you believed, “any day now.”
Why? Well, it was mainly because of an answer Obama gave on a decades-old, mostly multiple-choice questionnaire. Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? I saw it on your website.
Some people believed this questionnaire was proof positive that the end of the Second Amendment (and by extension, all freedom) was mere months away. Thus, you and your friends began hoarding weaponry, and prices for guns and ammo skyrocketed; up and up and up.
How'd that work out for ya? Still waiting for the apocalypse? Or did you just forget about that whole thing? I suspect you got busy worrying about Obama taking away your right to make other people pay for your emergency room visits, and forgot about how you knew for a fact he was going to take away your guns any day now.
Even though I’m laughing at you, I hope you won’t assume this is just a kneejerk anti-gun letter. For the record, I am not against guns and responsible gun ownership. I am against overzealous idiots whose first and only response to any inconvenience or perceived slight is to shoot something. You know the people I mean. Someone tried to steal your stereo? Shoot 'em. Someone at a bar questioned your interpretation of the Second Amendment? Shoot 'em. Car won't start in the morning? Shoot it.
Some of my friends think that these overzealous idiots are constantly afraid; that they feel they must carry a gun every moment of the day for fear that someone is going to jump out of the bushes with an uzi. Perhaps some really are that afraid, but I suspect the rest have a different image in mind.
A masochist is, in the words of Alfred E. Neuman, someone who paints themselves into a corner, and then applies a second coat. The thing about being cornered is that it makes any living creature substantially more dangerous and unpredictable. I submit to you that these overzealous jackasses are merely spending their lives with their backs to the wall, daring someone to come along and “corner” them.
I call it a Custer fetish. You know, “going down in a blaze of glory”, and all that.
Anyway, I’m also against paranoia, stupidity, and convenient amnesia. There is no excuse for the collective amnesia we’re seeing from many gun owners as we gear up for another election. Many who pretended to Godlike omniscience ("it will happen precisely six weeks after he takes office...") are now pretending they never said it, or are pretending the day was just moved back a bit.
In other words, half the “Obama’s gonna getcha guns” rhetoric has all but ceased. The other half continues from those who act exactly like the religious nuts who keep re-predicting the world will end even though their last twelve predictions were completely wrong (but this time it’s for sure, I just know it!) Perhaps these doomsayers of the gun apocalypse think Obama just had a temporary setback, or that maybe we were saved by the intervening force of some heroic warrior for liberty (probably in the guise of a mild-mannered White House intern!)
I’ve got news for them: If you say "Today is January 1, 2046" every single day from now on, eventually you'll be right. That doesn't mean you aren't a gullible idiot.
Why does this amnesia annoy me so much? Because you're going to use the same paranoid, fear-mongering argument again this time. Admit it -- someday soon, you’ll “have just now discovered a nefarious Orwellian plot to destroy liberty” in the guise of trigger locks or rules against arming preschoolers.
The simple truth is you and your friends got ripped off. You panicked, and you paid for it. You seem likely to do this again soon, and I think it's hilarious.
Remember the old adage about the fool and his money?