Comment and Opinion

National Rifle Association

Buffoonery (2/6/2001)
I occasionally get challenged about listing the National Rifle Association here. These challenges usually imply that I must know nothing about guns otherwise I would love them (both guns and the NRA). Actually, I do know a bit about guns. My government spent a large amount of money once to teach me how to kill people and I haven't felt the need to kill anyone since. One question that I am always asked, it seems, is why I have the NRA listed on the Buffoonery page. I would have thought the answer was obvious - the NRA is a pack of buffoons, so where else would I put them? If you want evidence, just think back to those pictures of loopy old Charlton Heston waving an ancient cannon over his head at the NRA annual meeting and cackling some drivel about taking it from his cold, dead hands. The word "buffoonery" seems so appropriate for the quaint madness of it.

The joy of killing (18/9/2004)
I read in the papers that the buffoons in the National Rifle Association are salivating at the news that the US ban on assault weapons and large magazines will not be renewed, thus allowing people to practise their inalienable right to use Uzis and AK-47s, set on automatic fire, to hunt such vicious animals as foxes and squirrels. Across the Atlantic they use different methods, and the British Parliament has been besieged by buffoons protesting that they are about to lose the right to hunt foxes by riding horses across other people's property following a pack of dogs that are looking for a fox to rip apart. I was cornered at a party once by some chinless wonder who regaled me with the joys of riding to hounds. I made some comment about red jackets and she immediately froze and told me that I must be of very low caste, as anyone with any class knew that the coats were Pink (with a capital "P"). I said that they looked red and she told me that of course they looked red, but they were really Pink. I excused myself and turned to a potted palm for a more intelligent conversation.

Guns Redux (2/10/2004)
Several people wrote to me about my comments about the non-renewal in the US of the ban on certain semi-automatic weapons and told me that I should not have mentioned Uzis and AK-47s because they have been illegal for years. I used those names because I had seen an interview in the paper with a gun shop owner who was holding what was obviously an assault weapon of some kind and who specifically named Uzis and AK-47s as the sort of weapons which people were now going to be able to use to protect themselves. It took me about four minutes with Google to find a place which would sell me the eight parts necessary to "legalise" an AK-47, including the pistol grip which is supposed to be still banned. The same site mentioned places to go to get other "enhancements", such as the bayonet mount. One writer mentioned that he hadn't been inconvenienced by the ten-round limit on magazines, because he could change magazines in less than a second. I once received very expensive training in how to kill people with an assault rifle, so I can only assume that he must live in a very tough neighbourhood. I would only have to reload if I was attacked by more than about nine people at once, because they usually give up and run away after you shoot the first six or seven. Just in case people think that I don't know anything about guns, here is a picture of a much younger me relaxing after some practice at killing people.

NRA moronicity (5/6/2010)
Doing the monthly check for broken and changed links I found that the National Rifle Association had changed its domain name. I always look at the sites when this happens just to make sure that what gets seen is what is expected and I found this wonderful editorial on the front page of the NRA site, written by the one of the head peanut brains in the organisation:

I very much doubt that these heavily armed Mexican pirates with their "fully automatic machine guns" are leaving fishermen alone on the US side of the border because they are worried about a few shotguns and pistols. It is far more likely (if anything about this paranoid fantasy is likely at all) that they know that killing US citizens in US territory will provoke a response from the authorities. Of course if the Vice President of the NRA wants to test the theory that a machine gun with a firing rate of 600 rounds per minute and a range of 300 metres is outmatched by a pistol with a 9 round magazine and a range of 50 metres he is welcome to go down to Lake Falcon and chase the pirates away. Idiot.