OK, this was my favorite strip to draw thus far. A lot. I was giggling like a stooge the whole way while drawing, scanning, coloring, and lettering it. Yes, I will likely do other strips after this that will become new favorites, but for now? I love this one.
It may be a cliché statement, but dammit, I do believe it: Guns do not kill people. People kill people. A recent argument led to someone saying that toasters make toast. This is incorrect. A toaster allows a person to make toast, but it’s still an inert object. It cannot just wander around the kitchen, attacking bread, making crunchy breakfast comestibles. A person has to act, and cause the toaster to make toast.
This shouldn’t even be up for debate, in my world. Screwdrivers do not magically float through the air and undo random screws. Marijuana does not force human beings to smoke it, thereby making them high. Cars do not decide to drive themselves hither and yon. Blaming the object for the outcome is to duck the responsibility of the human being wielding it.
In other news:
Guns are but a tool. I firmly believe that everyone should be trained in how to use them safely, irrespective of a country’s gun laws.
Gun laws like we have here only suppresses legal gun ownership. It doesn’t remove the illegally held guns from those who would use them for criminal acts.
My take on guns is probably different to a lot of the UK population, because I’ve been trained to use them.
“The only problem [with civil disarmament law] was this: criminals don’t obey the law. It’s more or less a requirement of the job.” -Sir Terry Pratchett (a fellow Englandistani), Night Watch.
Very perceptive is out pTerry, as well as being very funny.
Are you going to have people ‘protected’ by weapon free zone signs?
This comic strip will happen.
This is what always confuses me… There is language in the constitution that makes it hard to ban guns. There is also language that states that we can restrict a person’s rights with “due process of law” or whatever. So why has nobody thought to just make it harder for violent criminals and the severely mentally ill (aka the people most likely to do bad things with guns) to arm themselves instead of banning certain guns until the Supreme Court decides to redefine the “well-regulated” in “well-regulated militia”?
We’ve already GOT laws like that. Talk to all the state prosecutors who plea-bargain the gun charges, and the US Attorneys who can’t be bothered to prosecute the Federal charges.
Richmond, VA, put in a Federally-backed (AND NRA-supported, mind you) program called Project Exile. Basically it instituted a “No more Mr. Nice Guy” approach to stuff like felon-in-possession charges. Massively reduced the homicide rate in Richmond, in short order.
When the Brady law kicked in, the folks over at the Brady Bunch were crowing about how many thousand denials there’d been in the first couple of years. They didn’t mention that only a couple of dozen people had been prosecuted, and SEVEN convicted. This, bearing in mind that it’s a slam-dunk to convict someone who put his name, address, and identifying info down while committing the crime (in this case, lying on a 4473).
I think I will.
I looked up the stats for 2008 and 2009 at the BJS. Using the govt’s own data.
70,000+ NICS denials/yr.
Less than 200 prosecutions/yr.
In before mention of living to face new nightmares.
I think her hand is backwards…
No, she’s holding both her hands together, so her fingers are overlapping the other hand. I can see why you were confused though.
I disagree on one point Jay..
The British actually are not as backwards as to think that. Hell there are shooting clubs and gun clubs in Britain for those that actually want to own and use guns and long arms.
Just my two cents (and Matt, always good to see a fellow Invader Zim fan), never, ever, go looking for an intruder after you’ve gone to bed. Grab the gun, call 911, hold your ground in the bedroom.
Creeping around after dark merely gives an intruder (or group of intruders) a means to outflank you.
Nice stuff with the Aug btw, I’m loving Failure to Fire more and more every day. Happy Thanksgiving!
All well and good if your bedroom is the only room occupied. But I can’t very well stay in my room while an intruder has access to my kids down the hall. Thankfully my kids’ room is at the end of the hall farthest from the door; so I can engage an intruder where the dining room meets the hall way, cutting off that route. Also thankfully, my living room is the other direction from the bedrooms, and that’s hopefully where the intruder will go first, since that’s where all of the electronics and valuables are.
But it is an exceptionally good idea to have a designated saferoom; for us, it’s the bathroom, as it’s the most interior, and bathtubs offer better than expected protection from stray rounds. This came in handy when we had a break in scare a few years ago. We heard someone at the living room window, wife took the kids into the bathroom with the 870, and called 911, while I stayed at the juntion of the hallway, living and dining rooms with my pistol, to engage if the guy entered. (He got scared off by the PD chopper; turns out he was going for copper wire, not trying to enter.)
No we don’t. That’s just our public image. Part of the tourist pamphlet.
Cars do not decide to drive themselves hither and yon.
But we are getting closer.
Your move, sir.
(FTR, I think guns killing people is pretty silly. This is not an endorsement of that particular idiocy.)
Fun strip.
It’s a straw man argument though.
Nobody (not even gun control advocates) actually believe that the guns are somehow magically animated and run around killing people like the mops in Fantasia. By obsessing over a literal interpretation of their specific word choices (however poor those choices may be) you effectively avoid hearing or responding to their actual argument that guns make killing people much easier and that, if a person wants to kill someone, a gun is usually their ideal choice of method for that reason.
Do I believe that means we should outlaw gun ownership like the UK? No. Canadians own way more guns per capita than we do and have far less gun-crime – and when guns aren’t available, people use other methods, so yes, people do kill people.
But I’m not about to ignore arguments on the other side of the debate because of a semantic quirk. I prefer to address their intended argument with cogent responses (comparison to Canada for example), rather than responding to something we all know they never intended in the first place.
Oh don’t worry, fella. The strips in the next ten days are going to kick another strawman from the other side down the aisle.
I’d say that I agree that reasonable and intelligent discussion on gun control need be had, indeed. I’d also point out to you that this is a goddamned comic strip, why the hell are even trying to start a reasonable gun control argument in a comic that has dick jokes in it? My comic isn’t an argument. It’s parody. It’s humor. If you don’t like the strip, fine. Personally, I thought The Gun That Runs Around Killing People All By Itself was hilarious.
ROFL!
Pink Fuzzy Bunny Slippers!
This will keep me chuckling all day!
This and Day by Day are my new favorite comics. You, Sir, have a loyal follower.
S/F