Thursday, December 17, 2015

Nutshell: A Civilian Disarmament Poem

This is intended as light-hearted fun. Any serious attempt to explicate the poem means you're taking it far more seriously I did when I wrote it on a boring Friday afternoon.

While sitting on a fence,
I pondered a problem that was immense.
How can I be sure
That my gun buyer’s intentions be pure?
By looking deeply into his eyes?
(Though they often tell lies).
If is his voice does shake,
Was it the law he did break?
But what can be a guarantee?
I know, I found the key.
I’ll check his history!
Quickly, the computer spat out the answer to my mystery.

His name came back shining and clear,
So I had nothing to fear.
Of felonies and misdemeanors there were none,
So clearly he was not scum.
All the records they did check
And found not even a speck!
With no more than a phone call,
Thanks to that law we did install,
My suspicion it did allay
With scarcely a delay.
All that time I pondered in suspense,
When it’s just common sense!

Happily we departed with a smile.
How was I to know that I he would beguile?
Murder the stories in the papers said,
That filled me full of dread.
It was with the latest tech,
That we ran that background check!
Never did it enter my head,
That his ex-wife he soon would make dead!
Oh how the reports grew worse!
All these killings were perverse.
His shootings at work did abound,
If only something was in his background,
None of those people would have been shot
And perhaps his evil plans we would have caught.
According to the initiative,
The results should have been definitive.
I could not understand why the process didn’t work,
As I trusted the man from New York.
A detective said the past we could only chart,
And not see the intent of the heart.

For the gun violence delusion,
It seemed like such a solution.
Should all gun sales go through a dealer,
Our streets would grow less meaner.
Still those terrorists didn’t listen,
Even though our laws began to stiffen.
With many guns they did rampage,
Though the victims’ lives the police did assuage.
Background checks terrorists ignored,
For laws and America they abhorred.

By checking to whom guns were sold,
Murder we assumed we controlled.
Crime we thought we fought,
Only to find it was for naught!
Guns bad guys did acquire,
Just no one checked the buyer.
The smugglers ran no checks,
And stolen guns continued to vex.
How did guns get into the hands of crooks?
Easy, they bought them off the books.
On purchase forms girlfriends lied,
It was their boyfriends they supplied.

At gun owners Washington was upset,
Sure that criminals we did abet.
Because murders and guns they couldn’t stem,
Citizens they did condemn.
“You’re still selling them behind our backs
And making possible these attacks!
We don’t know where from the guns came
So we can’t apportion the blame.
Illegal sellers we must identify
And thereby end the killers’ gun supply.
So we’ll turn to legislation
To mandate registration.”
Good intentions pave the road to hell,
And that's gun control in a nutshell.

So a gun registry they did undertake
And tread upon a rattlesnake.
Crime and mass murder they did not end,
But civil rights they did upend.
The least of their worries was re-election;
For safety they feared due to disaffection.
Their only reply was a decree;
“Confiscation must proceed!”
Off the job did many cops walk.
Marching troops came as a shock.
Our guns they wanted for collection,
So we contemplated insurrection.

What other option did they give us?
In the face of death they left us helpless.
Streets did the soldiers occupy
When we refused to comply.
Criminals we now became,
Leaving our cities aflame.
None of us wanted war,
But freedom we did adore.
They pushed us to the brink,
So tyranny we made them rethink.
                    
Once again we learned about reality,
When they challenged guns’ legality.
We should have known better
To read the initiative’s every letter.
On deception they sold us gun control
To close every loophole.
If they had only stopped at that!
In the end, our only redress was combat.
When it was all said and done,
We finally knew the power of the gun.
Once civility had returned,
We understood the costly lesson we learned.
So gullible were we,
We had traded liberty for security.


 -G. C.

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