I watched a GOP Congressman interviewed on TV yesterday who was explaining to the reporter why he supported legislation that legalized noise suppressors (i.e., “silencers”) for firearms. His reasoning (and I swear I am not making this up) was that many legitimate sportsmen, hunters, homeowners protecting their houses and match shooters needed hearing protection. He further declared that these devices were widely in use in Europe for that purpose. This is the same Europe, I suppose, where firearms ownership is rare, and strictly controlled. You know, the same Europe where jack-booted Socialist tyrannies confiscated everybody’s gun.

The sheer audacity of these people is simply breathtaking. Anybody who supports firearm ownership for all those reasons (like me!) knows this is bullshit. It is simply doubletalk designed to flummox those that the gun lobby feels are ignorant little pansies who aren’t men enough to fantasize about killing strangers at a distance. Yes, that is how they characterize anyone who disagrees with them.

To begin with, silencers (let’s not resort to craven euphemisms on this issue), have a negative affect on the ballistic performance of a bullet, which means they reduce the effectiveness. Anyone involved in competitive shooting sports, hunting, home defense, police work etc has no interest in weakening the accuracy, stopping power, mechanical cycling or penetration of a bullet. In fact, gun users go to great lengths to optimize the cartridge they use for the application they intend it. As for hearing protection, every single range I have ever shot at requires shooters to have approved hearing protection, and anyone who shoots frequently owns these hearing protection devices. I do.

There is one and only one reason to have a silencer on a gun: to kill someone and have a greater chance of getting away with it. Anyone who is knowledgeable about guns knows this. Only criminals, assassins and James Bond need this capability to kill and then sneak away unnoticed.

Why is it necessary to legalize military firepower and these devices (like bump stocks and high capacity magazines and full auto sears)? The first is financial. Gun and accessory manufacturers make money selling this stuff, the NRA supports them and they lobby for their widespread use. Its that simple. And the GOP is all about corporate welfare.

But more important are the customers. They are either criminals or assassins, or they are pathetic little racist pigfuckers who justify their obsession with things that go bang by fantasizing themselves as patriotic Minutemen, ready to oppose Communist tyrannies and invading armies, and gangs of roving blacks, Mexicans and Arabs rioting in the streets and raping their wimmen. Its all about race and sex, America’s original sins: slavery and Puritanism. If you need any convincing, take the time one day to browse through the gun porn that line the magazine stands at your local supermarket. Or just talk to these people; once they think you’re one of them, they’ll open up and tell you exactly what they think.

Its a self-fulfilling prophecy, of course. The more guns and deadly accoutrements are on the street, the more these peckerheads feel the need to upgrade their arsenals. They are not just arming themselves, they are arming their potential enemies as well. Its an arms race that has long since spiraled out of control. Heaven help America if fully widespread civil unrest or insurrection ever breaks out. It will be even more of a bloodbath than we have now.

As a gun owner and hobbyist, I used to believe that reasonable, commonsense legislation would allow us to exercise our freedom to own firearms and still avoid the excesses of criminal and gun pervs. But I now think that this problem is more fundamental than that. The American mentality, like that of a psychopathic child, simply cannot be trusted with this kind of power to inflict violence at a distance on others.

Guns need to be banned. All of them. And those who still have them need to be severely punished. Unfortunately, we already know it is too late to do this, it will never work. There are simply too many people out there who have this desire to hurt people they have never met. And we have a fascist political movement that panders to them, courts and encourages them, because they are so easily mobilized (for other reasons, of course) using this issue.