October 21, 2014

The NRA is hoping they can "Demystify Guns" in their new video from Bill Johnson because of the many "dust ups" as he calls them, over the new open carry laws that wingnut states have been passing recently. The problem isn't the guns that people use to kill thousands of people a year, but the idea that we're blaming the guns for the violence around them when they are nothing more than a few bits of plastic and metal, no scarier than your vacuum cleaner or lawnmower.

In an October 20 video, NRA News commentator Billy Johnson took on open carry critics, stating, "Somehow we have completely dehumanized gun violence, and have instead humanized guns. Guns kill. Guns strike fear. Guns intimidate. Seriously? They're just bits of plastic and metal." Johnson also apparently defended the controversial practice of open carrying firearms in Michigan public schools.

Johnson concluded with his hope that the next time public debate occurs over open carry firearms "we can have a civic debate over something other than those intimidating, scary, pesky things we call guns."

Although he declined to "get into the details," the "dust-up" Johnson was presumably talking about is the controversy over pro-gun activists openly carrying firearms into public schools in Traverse City, Michigan. (Johnson owns a tactical gear company that is based in Traverse City.)

I didn't know that vacuum cleaners can hurl projectiles at a sufficient speed to blow somebody's head clean off, did you? Or, if I'm armed with a lawnmower, I could protect my house under siege by a gang of marauding black youths. Just think what would have happened if George Zimmerman was armed with a cordless Dustbuster instead of a gun.

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