Tuesday Debate: Guns

By Jake and Ingrid

There is not a more controversial debate topic than Guns. Some of us love to use them to murder people we hate, and some of us don't use them at all. This debate will help you realize which type of person you are. This debate may change your life.




Jake: Look, having guns in public is a Constitutional right that we must protect at all costs, even if that cost is human lives. What if a police officer is lurking in your bushes, waiting to pounce on you when you're cleaning out your tobacco bong? He comes into your house, taser in hand. He sneaks up behind you, ready to kill you with a deadly level of electricity? What do you do? You turn around, say something clever and unload 41 bullets into his chest. What are the drawbacks? Nothing, except you're not dead and you have blood all over your kitchen floor. but your tobacco bong has never been cleaner. What if a rapist is trying to rape you to death? You can shoot him to death in the dick. There are no draw backs to having a gun and if you think there are then you are the biggest jerk in the entire world and deserve to be shot with a gun.

Ingrid: In the immortal words of Matthew McConaughey in the hit comedy film “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days”: Bullshit, Jake. Bullshit. Let’s say your ridiculous hypothetical situation, in which a cop busts into your house ready to taze you for possessing a tobacco bong, actually does occur: saying something clever and unloading 41 bullets into the poor dude’s chest is definitely more cinematic than, say, holding up your hands and bursting into tears (which is how I react every time I see a cop). It is also super illegal and will put you in the big house for 90 or 100 years. Also, it’s a bit reactionary to just shoot as soon as you are accosted. What if the poor dude just wanted some? Haven't you ever seen a bromance starring Seth Rogan or Whats-his-face Franco?? Even cops need to take a load off now and then, and those who are watching their weight do it with drugs, same as the rest of us. Let me get to my real point here: the reason I am against carrying concealed weapons is because with guns it's all about the element of surprise. It doesn't have much to do with skill, really, or at least not in most situations in which a pro-gun person would argue you'd most need one. It has to do with surprise. Let's look at a REAL event to illustrate this issue: after a school shooting such as the one at Virginia Tech, many pro-gun people were like "See?! If just a handful of those VT students had been carrying guns with them to class, they could've stopped the murderer from killing innocents!" But this is simply not true, because before anyone knew what was going on, the victims were already dead and the murderer had killed himself, too. Do you right-wing wackos think you could've stopped 9/11 if you had been carrying a concealed weapon? NO! It wouldn't have made a damn difference. Even if all of the hillbillies in MO had been transported to ground zero on that particular day for some sort of hillbilly gun conference, they couldn't have stopped it. The terrorists had the element of surprise, and they had done their dastardly deeds before anyone would've had time to react.

Jake: If I was on that 9/11 plane and had a gun, I would have shot all of those terrorist baffoons right in their towel covered skulls. Does this make me a racist? No, it makes me a patriotic American citizen who is not afraid to be politically incorrect to make a point in a debate for a comedy website on the internet. Regardless, shooting people is not about surprise, it's about stopping them cold in their raping or plane-flying-into-a-building tracks. Like I said in my first point, the only real downside of shooting somebody is the bloody mess it leaves. I'm a bit of a neat freak, so it's a problem to me, but may not be to you. Another problem is that they may wrongfully imprison you for merely acting out your Constitutional right. If there was a piece of paper that said I could clear cut every forest in the world would I do it? You bet your ass I would. I would probably make toothpicks or boards to build everybody a sweet deck in their backyards. Let's set the scene for another instance you might want a gun for: you're on a cruise ship, and it sinks. You're left stranded on an uninhabited island. You have no way to get food, but there's all these ducks and shit on this island, but not many vegetables or fruits. What are you going to do? You shoot some ducks and eat those fuckers. Now you're still alive thanks to having a gun. You don't want guns? Then you're going to die after you eat all the veggies like a first rate rube.

Ingrid: Haven't you ever read "Life of Pi"? Everyone knows that if you are on a cruise (first of all, fuck you for being on a cruise: who can afford a cruise these days??) and it sinks, you catch fish with a handmade net, and then you almost die from too much protein. But if you are on an island with ducks, and you are really desperate, I'm pretty sure you could catch one with your bare hands and/or drop a coconut on one's head to kill it. I mean, it's not hard to outwit a duck: ducks are pretty dumb. Another question to consider is would you even want to survive long in this situation? If the only person I had to talk to was a duck, I would just want to die. I would wade out into the water and melodramatically drown myself as the ducks looked on, slightly offended but otherwise indifferent. This is so far off topic, though. I am offended that you would bring the debate down to this level (like I said, most Americans can't afford cruises and would never find themselves in your Duck Island scenario). I'm going to assume that you are dumbing it down because I'm a female, and I'm going to go ahead and assume that means you are sexist. Therefore, every point you try to make from this moment on is null and void, my friend.

Jake: No, I have not read the Tao of Pooh, and why would I? I don't give a shit about your Eastern philosophy silliness. Your point had nothing to do with the topic at hand, and if we were going to sit here and debate ducks, islands or drowning ourselves, then I think this debate would have a much different tone. As I see it, you're trying to deflect by discussing ducks at length and calling me sexist, when you know that I'm not. Guns are a right, and just because I can discharge that right into a rapist's genitals does not make it any less important than freedom of speech or women's suffrage. Women's suffrage has never stopped a rapist from attacking you in the bathroom of a Denny's, but a gun has. Several times, in fact. I know, you could just stop going to Denny's, but where are you going to score a Moons Over My Hammy? You'd never know the pleasure of that greasy, but hilariously named dish. Guns help people, and if you are against guns then you're against helping people.

Ingrid Hey, listen, buster: I'm all for the right to own guns -- the right to own a gun is clearly outlined in the Constitution, a document which I frequently try to abide by. However, I believe there should be tight restrictions so nutcases like VT's Seung-Hui Cho can't get their mentally ill fingers on a semi-automatic without going through some red tape first, and I also believe people shouldn't be able to carry concealed guns. What is this, the old West? Put 'em on a hunting rack, I always say. Or in a locked case with the key hidden where your five yr old can't get to it. With the proper restrictions and safe guards, I support gun ownership, although I will still sniff at you smugly in my snobbish, progressive, middle class way. You keep bringing up this rapist scenario, so let me focus on that for a moment. In self-defense courses they often tell you specifically NOT to try to use a gun or other weapon against an assailant unless you are well trained, because the attacker can easily use your weapon against you before you can use it against him or her. Again, the element of surprise comes into play here. If a rapist burst in on me while I was peeing in the women's restroom at Denny's, and we both had guns, who do you think would be more likely to win in a close-range gunfight? Definitely not me, because I'm sitting there, utterly surprised, with my pants around my ankles and my hypothetical gun in my purse. Would the guy wait for me to wipe, flush, pull up my pants, reapply my lip balm, search for my gun (I can never find anything in my stupid purse), and then participate in a clean duel? No, he would burst in and hold his gun to my head before I even have a chance to say, "Sorry, this one's occupied!" If someone tried to rape me, I would have more success clawing his eyes out, twisting his balls off, and ripping out his hair than I would drawing a gun and firing.

Jake: In every rape scenario I have presented, the victim is very well trained with a hand gun and is an incredibly quick draw. That alone is enough to invalidate your entire argument, but I will still humor you and continue to shoot holes into it. Your point seems to thrive on urination and ball twisting, which in my book is a bit crass. I will look beyond this to your idea of turning the world back into the wild wild West. This would be great and go off without a hitch like in the movie West World. In this film Yuel Brenner portrays a lonely robot who helps young men become more manly. If you want to castrate our nation's men, then yes, let's take all of the guns and melt them into rainbows or whatever the fuck you want to do. If I was allowed to shoot rapists with a cannon I would do it so fast that their torsos would be rubble by the time I finished typing this sentence. I do not want to live in your world where rapists are free to have their "balls twisted" in acts of perverse bondage. I want to live in a world where my gun shoots hot lead at them reducing them to flowing rivers of lava, which form beautiful rocks where we can have lovely picnics with our unraped families. The overly-raped world you want to live in is a bleak one indeed.

Ingrid: Whatever, Jake. You are so absurd. I just want to close by saying that, yes, owning guns is all right with the proper restrictions in place but, no, I do not think that it is necessary to carry a gun with you at all times. Gunfire isn't the best solution in most situations. In most cases of rape, sinking cruise ships, and terrorism, the average person with a gun is not going to come out on top, and in cases where some wacko attacks random bystanders with no warning, you are basically dead anyway. Assailants and murderers are usually crazy survivalist-types or unmedicated schizophrenics who are obsessed with guns and know how to use them, and by the time they barge into the lady's restroom at Denny's, guns a'blazing, they already have a plan and will execute said plan before any of the potential victims have the chance to fumble for their own weapon.