Likes and Guns

I liked a thing on facebook. It was Obama, wearing a dunce’s hat and repeatedly writing Criminals Don’t Register Guns on a blackboard. I liked it because I found it vaguely amusing. It conjured images of pro gun lobbyists lecturing the well educated and thoughtful Obama and that amused me; because they are right, criminals don’t register guns; neither do they dress in black and white stripes or carry swag bags.

Incidentally I like Obama; I understand that what I see of him is a carefully crafted media persona, however he strikes me as an intelligent, well meaning, principled individual, with very little power to make any real difference.

I don’t like guns, though I guess I appreciate them, they are sunk fast into popular culture; Sarah Connor had a massive stash of them in Terminator 2, they were in The Avengers with John Steed and Emma Peel, they’re in paintings, photos, songs and I have a great selection of them in FallOut 4.

I thought about it and came to the conclusion that NO ONE needs a gun. No one at all. But that’s not going to happen because of The Criminals. The arguments always the same; no point in banning alcohol because production will go underground and The Criminals will take charge, like what happens with drugs.

So I get to wondering about those law breakers. In the case of guns I’m wondering how many criminals use guns. There are lots of laws and you don’t necessarily need a gun to break the law, think of for example; identify theft. Then I’m wondering what constitutes a gun crime, daft I know; until you realize that when the definition of what constitutes a knife was adjusted the figures for knife crime fell in the UK.

I’m thinking if you had a gun then I should have one too, just to make it; balanced. I’m still not sure how I feel about guns and I’m usually an all or nothing kind of girl.

It seems Obama is proposing only minor adjustments to the gun laws but minor adjustments very much annoy me; for example, no smoking in enclosed public spaces, in bus shelters, in cars, before long in your own garden shed, if it’s that bad why not ban it altogether? Make the selling of tobacco illegal, don’t make minor adjustments. Oh you can’t do that because of criminals. We certainly give a lot of consideration to those criminals don’t we? I don’t like that we do that.

I guess that’s the problem with the liking thing, I’ve never been very fond of the word like, it’s sort of insipid, not one thing or the other, who wants to be liked? Loved? Adored? Worshiped; even bloody hated, but not liked.

Tomorrow I will post on Facebook that I’ve written a blog about Likes and Guns; some friends will Like it, that doesn’t mean they will read it, just like my liking that facebook thing doesn’t mean I’m pro gun, it doesn’t mean I’m anti gun. The like button doesn’t mean anything at all.