I was eating lunch yesterday at one of my favorite restaurants when I saw a man wearing a t-shirt with a large outline of a handgun on the back. Underneath the gun were the words: "If guns kill people then spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat."
It's hard not to follow the logic. Here are a few more: "If guns kill people then pencils misspell words." "If guns kill people then cars make people drive drunk." Even I can think of a few of these...If guns kill people then lettuce makes Paris Hilton thin; books make people smart; hymnals make people sing. How about If guns kill people then wings make pigs fly?
The point of such slogans is to absolve guns of any responsibility for the actions of their owners. And it's true - a gun is an inanimate object that is harmless unless it comes into contact with human hands. But therein lies the problem. Often the human hands holding the gun belong to a child or a criminal, an abusive husband, a suicidal teenager or someone who is mentally ill. What then?
Because guns are lethal then we need to do all we can to keep them out of the hands of those who shouldn't have them. Rather than trying to ignore the deaths and injuries caused by guns, rather than trying to trivialize gun violence with a catchy slogan, let's do something to protect our children and loved ones from the dangers of a gun. Make sure background checks are done before any gun can be sold; make handguns childproof, ban the sale of assault weapons, and institute policies that will stop gun trafficking. Then we can have sensible slogans like "No background check? No gun!" Or, "Childproof Handguns...Because Children Aren't Bulletproof."
