I am sorely tempted to show up outside one of these idiotic “town hall” meetings with my firearm, wearing a cute skirt and an Obama ‘08 button. Female, liberal, gun owner—I can hear the gears grinding and pinging in their tiny Rethug brains already.
I never thought I would own a gun, but right now I live in out in the country by myself, and this spring I acquired a sociopath neighbor, whose proximity would make ANYONE rethink their position on the right to bear arms.
My therapist had been encouraging me to buy a shotgun for years, because he didn’t like my living out here without some form of protection. (You KNOW you are doing okay, mental-health-wise, when your therapist is urging you to buy a gun.) So now my home security system is loaded and under the bed, just as my father’s was when I was growing up.
My shotgun is a .410 NEF Pardner (youth model, because my arms are not that long). When I went to pick it up from Hunter’s Hollow in Oxford, I was surprised by what an attractive object it actually is, with its dark wood stock and graceful lines.
You can snicker at its small size, but loaded with 000 buckshot, it should serve my needs just fine, unless wild elephants overrun Mississippi. (“Pretty lethal!” said my therapist gleefully.)
When I first brought the Pardner home, my main concern was not to become a FARK headline by Darwinning myself with it. It was the first gun I’d touched in my life, except for Dad’s, which I discovered under the bed while looking for the kitty (OOPS COLD METAL NOT KITTY). Now I’m comfortable with it being here, know how to handle it, and am not scared of it.
I wouldn’t think much about people bringing a Pardner or another shotgun to a public event … these are sporting guns which do double duty for home defense. But when someone brings an AR-15 or some other gun expressly meant to MAKE HOLES IN LOTS OF PEOPLE, FAST—well, I have a problem with that. Let me tell you, the authors of the Bill of Rights were NOT talking about f**king AR-15s when they drafted the Second Amendment. They had guns like my little Pardner—single shot, so it had best be a well-aimed one.
I’d write more, but it’d turn into a rant, and I don’t want to go there today. Still the temptation to attend one of those meetings is great. It might be almost as much fun as it was to go up to the Westboro Baptist Church bigots in New Orleans and say, “God must love gay people, She made so many of them!”
That horrible grinding sound? It’s a paradigm shifting without a clutch.
