Late-night hosts and other left-leaning comedians often clothe their snarkiest and most one-sided political attacks in humor. It can be good humor, but they can also use it as a shield to protect their fragile political views. They pretend that it makes what they say immune to criticism. Their defense is to say, “I was joking, dude. Sorry you don’t get it!” Then they act as if they’re enlightened as they treat a critic like a backward, thickheaded dunce.
Such is how some of these comedians treat our right to bear arms. They think if they can only ridicule legal gun ownership into a joke, they’ll then make it uncool to utilize and defend Second Amendment-protected freedoms.
The trouble for such comedians is the humor is so dishonest that it falls flat on its face.The trouble for such comedians is the humor is so dishonest that it falls flat on its face.
A recent article by the satirical website “The Onion” titled “The Onion’s Tips For Passing Gun Control Legislation” is a classic example of the anti-gun Left’s use of humor to cloak its one-sided agenda designed to reduce our freedom. A few of the items in their checklist:
- Write gun control legislation. Pass gun control legislation.
- Before voting on gun control bill, try, if you can, to remember any recent examples in which guns have been used to kill innocent people.
- Acknowledge that it’s going to be hard to buck the pressure of the high-powered gun lobby, but not that f------ hard, dumb---.
- Muster everything that’s left in your black, desiccated heart to do something that might actually be of service to someone other than yourself.
- Carefully assess the other side of the argument wherein mentally unstable people can buy weapons at a gun show with no problem whatsoever, and then realize there is no other side of this argument.
- Put on your stupid little suit, run a comb through your greasy hair, go to the U.S Capitol building, pick up your fancy little gold pen, and pass a f------ gun control bill.
If this profane list of ill-informed opinion from “The Onion” is really satire, then isn’t it actually mocking those who want to vote away American freedom? After all, remembering “recent examples in which guns have been used to kill innocent people” is to realize that good people are sometimes killed by criminals. As criminals manage to get guns even in the most repressive countries and in the areas of the U.S. with the strictest gun control laws, then what we’re really talking about are disarmed victims being harmed by criminals. The tragedy is, then, that innocent people weren’t allowed to defend themselves.
Also, didn’t cursing for the sake of shock in an attempt to sound cool go out with George Carlin?
As for the “high-powered gun lobby” line—a very over-used jab that gun-haters wield as a pejorative—don’t they realize that people know the so-called “gun lobby” is only as strong as its millions and millions of members and supporters?
It’s sad because they’re not trying to bring people together with humor to help make America safer.Then there's this: “Muster everything that’s left in your black, desiccated heart to do something that might actually be of service to someone other than yourself.” Have these writers ever felt what it was like to be mugged or ever been threatened? If they have never been touched by any criminal in this great nation, then do their imaginations extend far enough to understand how it would feel to face a stronger, or armed, thug without some means of protecting themselves until the police arrive? If they were bright enough to follow the logic, and honest enough to say the truth, then wouldn’t they have to admit that fighting for all of someone else’s civil rights is the real selfless act?
The ignorance displayed in the rest of the bulleted piece of “satire,” such as the line that “mentally unstable people can buy weapons at a gun show with no problem whatsoever,” is obviously designed to get support from the part of America that only gets one side of the debate—the side The New York Times takes. That is sad.
It’s sad because they’re not trying to bring people together with humor to help make America safer. No, they’re trying to shame all the people who are holding onto their freedom. To do so, they are childishly calling those who don’t agree with them names, as if that could possibly advance the discussion.
“Now, wait a second,” they’d say to my criticism. “It’s all a joke.” Don’t I have a sense of humor? Am I too dense to get their wit?
That defense of what is clearly promotion of an ignorant, anti-gun agenda doesn’t just fall flat, as all lies do when confronted with the truth. It also is harmful.
Behaving as if this snarky, profane attack on freedom is the morally superior argument obscures the real solutions, and attacks good citizens who only want to own guns to defend themselves, shoot for sport and hunt. How does childishly attacking America’s 100 million-plus gun owners and the politicians who represent them help us come together to make America safer?
Frank Miniter is the author of Kill Big Brother, a novel that shows how to keep government from infringing on our liberties. Miniter is also the author of the The New York Times' bestseller The Ultimate Man’s Survival Guide—Recovering the Lost Art of Manhood, This Will Make a Man of You and The Future of the Gun. He is a contributor to Forbes and writes for many publications. His website is FrankMiniter.com.
