The Velociraptor and Guns

Jonathan R Taylor
[email protected]

Exclusive to TLE

           OK, I admit it -- I still have the childish fascination with dinosaurs. The 'raptors were always my favorites, too. They were fast, smart(as smart as one can be when one's brain is the size of a walnut), and absolutely vicious. And they had that really cool toenail looking thing that they used to rip stuff open. Some people had violent movies, I had the Discovery Channel. One thing I always wondered, though? Did anyone -- say, a really, really, precocious Triceratops -- ever run around and cut the claws off of them? Pull their teeth?
           Do sharks run around, and pull the teeth out of other sharks? I don't think they would, even if they could comprehend the idea, and had hands, but that's neither here nor there. Wolves don't play dentist. Nor tigers. Only human kind feels the need to disarm its own species.
           Now, this may seem grossly irrelevant and even silly, because none of these animals have the thought process that humans do -- they can't build civilization, therefore there's no need to be civilized. But that's precisely the reason why the question is important. A human being, when you look at its natural, god given ability to defend itself, is somewhere between a chipmunk and a milk cow. We have two legs, we're slow. We're below average climbers. We have no claws or fangs to speak of. All these things, though, technology and civilization have made up for. We can design weapons -- swords, knives, guns, staves. We can use tools and design strategies. In some cases, we can get in a car and drive away from whatever is threatening us, or simply get indoors. All of these are unique abilities to man (with the debatable exception of using tools). With them, we're even a match for a pack of velociraptors. Without them, we taste just like chicken. So why remove our one inherent defense mechanism - our brain and the fruits of its labors?
           Proponents of gun control claim that if the guns were all done away with, there would be less killing because knives and swords are harder to kill with. Oh, yeah? Odd, I recall a lot of wars claiming a lot of lives before the gun became a common tool of the battlefield. But we won't hold that against them, because that's not what they really mean by the statement. If, somehow, all the guns in the US were rounded up and dumped into the depths of Lake Superior, I'm sure of two things. One, killing would still occur. The majority of victims know their killers. That means the person could more than likely get within distance to use a knife. "Gang violence" and "drive by shootings" would be replaced by massive brawls of people wielding knives and chains, which are most definitely deadly. The human animal instincts would still be present. Second, I'm sure that the malevolent presence of guns would rise up out of the lake, a la H.P. Lovecraft, and come upon the shores of our towns, spitting a deadly leaden phlegm upon whoever was closest, and sacrificing the blood that is spilt upon the ground to their infernal master (upon whose identity I refuse to speculate, but I will say I think we may be related) before returning to the murky depths, their thirst for blood slaked until the next sacrifice is demanded. Especially the assault weapons, whose bloodlust knows only the bounds of their magazine well. No, what gun control advocates really mean is something much easier to come to grips with, that's possibly more true, and is certainly much more in keeping with the laws of nature I discussed above.
           What they really mean is that if they can kill from hundreds of yards away, but we can only kill at close range, they will better be able to enforce their will. Most everything follows laws of nature, if you look and think hard enough, and this is no different than establishing the proverbial pecking order. Gun control advocates aren't so silly as to think that suddenly man will have no further need of technology to defend himself - they just want to be sure they sit at the top. They're not attempting to declaw the other wolves, merely to cripple them enough that they're no longer a threat to the Alpha (or perhaps I should say Delta?). Human kind, in its effort to disarm itself, is not circumventing the laws of nature in some noble attempt to be better than the common animals, but rather obeying the very laws it claims to be above.
           How did Man survive? With these weak natural skills and our soft skin, how did we reach what is thus far the pinnacle of evolution? Technology - everything from a spear, to a sling, to a bow, to a firearm. Therefore, what's the most obvious way to be sure you sit at the top of the top? You take away that which makes man superior, or, at the least, you control it, license it, and make sure that only you have it. This was something the founders of our country understood, for while their technology was inferior to ours, the government and the citizens were at least on equal footing with each other. Hence the second amendment. If people all across the country carry the same weapons the United States infantry does (Or comparable for those with a distrust for the 9mm or the .223) then there is no pecking order, because any attempt to enforce it would be disastrous. Without such a balance between governors and governed, there is a clear distinction, and one that allows those on the top end of it, those with the superior technology, to take whatever they want from those without it. If the velociraptors were still around today, I'm sure they'd love it.

Jonathan Taylor is a student at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. [He is not the editor of TLE, though he is related by blood -- a circumstance which may or may not be a source of pride to him. It certainly is to me. -- TLE]

From Joe Farah:

"... a doctor, on average, is 1,600 times more deadly than any given firearm."

Source: www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_btl/19990816_xcbtl_is_it_time.shtml

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