Illustration by Hawk Krall

On The Radar

Putting the mass in massacre.

by Steven Wells

Liberals are often sucker-punched by the gun lobby’s killer argument that if we restrict the right to bear arms, America will inevitably be seized by a genocidal dictatorship. Or aliens. Or zombies. Or space apes from the future.

As has happened in Sweden, the U.K., Australia and all the other countries where they don’t let semiliterate gangs of knuckle-dragging neo-Nazi animal rapists traipse around the woods acting out their Waffen SS fantasies with real guns.

Seriously, the biggest threat to democracy in America comes from the lunatic right. Who’ve all got guns. So why don’t we amend the Second Amendment to read: “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. Unless you’re a chronically impotent Hitler-worshipping nutjob, in which case you can fuck off. No guns for you, fascist scum.”

But that doesn’t solve the almost uniquely American problem of school shootings, which on the whole tend to be carried out not by groin-clutching fascist inadequates but by bullied nerds.

One solution suggested by the gun dealer who sold ammo to the shooters at both Virginia Tech (33 dead) and Northern Illinois (six dead) is that students follow the lead of the 22,000-strong Students for Concealed Carry on Campus and pack heat. It’s an awesome idea and one that, if executed, all but guarantees that school shootings (despite being more frequent and bloodier) will be much, much fairer.

We need to remember it’s not guns that kill students—it’s God. I know this because the American Family Association video The Day They Kicked God out of the Schools starts with a “concerned student” asking God why he didn’t save the kids in 17 U.S. school shootings. God replies, “I am not allowed in schools. Sincerely, God.”

Bottom line: All-powerful God makes American kids kill other American kids because he hates the U.S. Constitution’s separation of church and state.

This leaves us with two choices: Give into God’s anti-American terrorist blackmail, or stretch every sinew of our scientific know-how so we can arm every American student with a weapon capable of killing God. Like a Super Soaker water rifle filled with anti-holy water perhaps.

In the play Peter Pan, every time a child says: “I don’t believe in fairies,” a fairy dies. Using the same impeccable metaphysical logic, perhaps if we start every school day with an anti-prayer where students repeatedly chant, “I don’t believe in Jesus,” Jehovah would weaken so much that he wouldn’t have enough magical energy left to make massacres happen.

But whatever we do, let’s do it soon. Before he kills again.