“Conservative” is one thing. “Republican” is another. Sometimes it’s a strain, but I still avoid making broad generalizations. I’m not attacking all of you. This is not about that.

But more often that not, when somebody comes on my Facebook page and accelerates straight from zero to invading Poland in less than fifteen seconds, calling all the liberals names, attacking people on a personal basis, and proclaiming themselves the farthest possible thing from bigots, when I then investigate their own page, I find within my first thirty seconds of looking a meme in which a gun is pointed at the observer, and some gleeful celebration of being able to shoot somebody who comes to take their stuff.

This isn’t about the Second Amendment. This isn’t about plinking bottles or paper targets or animals that you can then have for dinner. This is about how, inevitably, when you encounter one of these rage monsters, one of the most prominent images on their pages is always, always, that gun pointed at the observer, and some clever way of saying that sooner or later they’ll get to pump lead into the chest of some bad guy. In extreme cases it’s about pumping lead into “libs” or “Muslims” or “Hillary,” or anybody who votes the wrong way, or “the government,” but we’re avoiding tarring everybody with the excesses of the extremists, so we’ll put those iterations aside, and concentrate on the more general fantasy, that of sooner or later being able to make red rose blossoms appear on the chests of bad men.

Whenever I investigate one of these rage monsters, it’s one of the first images I see.

They define themselves as the guys who can shoot you.

I know liberals who have guns. I know non-rage monsters, liberal and conservatives,  who have guns. They don’t all put bumper stickers on their cars saying, “WARNING CRIMINALS, I HAVE A GUN.” They don’t all use their Facebook pages to post images of some fierce-looking fantasy construct aiming the barrel at the observer. They don’t all lead with promises of deadly violence against the first person who messes with them. But these guys I reference, it’s an important part of their self-image. They live their lives fetishizing their guns and plotting to get more so they can fight off the armies marching to take away the guns they already have. They open-carry in places where only a jackass who gets aroused from intimidating strangers would open-carry. They fantasize, and share their fantasies, of the consummation that marks itself with a pool of blood.

Human beings celebrate their ids. I get that. It’s the same reason why so many cars bear that bootleg, unauthorized image of Calvin from CALVIN AND HOBBES pissing on the ground with an evil look on his face. I don’t claim to be immune to that. I’m a wordsmith; I take pleasure in the verbal evisceration of the deserving. But human beings celebrate other things too. They celebrate climbing mountains, doing their friends favors, meeting someone wonderful.  You can even celebrate a skill, like marksmanship. As I have said: I am taking ridiculous pains to not make this a simplistic screed against guns. Marksmanship is something to celebrate. But to separate from the vast spectrum of human experience, and render primary, the savage rush of being able to promise people you don’t like that you can punch holes in them, to present this as an important thing about yourself, to take pleasure and pride in the prospect, to make this emblematic of your being, you really must have stacked your pleasures in the wrong order: a deeply unpleasant and hate-fueled order. You have begun to look forward to killing, to dream about it, to hope for the opportunity to make it happen. That makes you a toxin on the face of the planet.

Every single time I encounter one of these rage-monsters, that’s the image I see. I swear. Every single goddamned time.

Tags: Facebook, Gun Control, Hillary Clinton, Politics, Violence. Second Amendment | Category Commentary, Life Wisdom, Politics