Dear Editor

[This was my completely tasteless response to the mass shooting in Oregon, a couple of years back, so many mass shootings ago that no one remembers anymore. The paper didn’t print it then, no doubt because they found it nasty, divisive, unconstructive, and unfair. But some things are so terrible that utter negativity is really the most constructive response possible. Yesterday’s slaughter in Florida belongs in that category, IMHO. Anyway, here it is. —  J.K.]

Dear Editor,  

In the wake of our most recent mass shooting, out in Oregon, I want to commend the National Rifle Association for their good work in the area of population control.

For many years now, the NRA has fought back even the mildest attempts to curb Americans’ proud freedom to own and use firearms. The NRA does not merely pay lip service to the Second Amendment; its lobbyists go out onto the free market and actually buy legislators, who then courageously vote down gun control bills of every kind, no matter what their constituents think. If legislators hold out and vote the wrong way, the NRA then targets them and pours money into their districts to defeat them in the next election. So far the NRA has not actually shot any non-cooperating lawmakers, but their resourceful, pro-active tactics have had much the same effect.  

Partly as a result of the NRA’s good work, America continues to have an exceptionally robust tradition of gun violence. Shootings now cause roughly thirty thousand deaths a year, putting the US on a par with places like Iraq and the Congo. Thirty thousand: that’s roughly a Korean War every year, a Vietnam every two years. Could there be a better program for curbing overpopulation?

In marked contrast to the US are countries like England and Australia, where draconian gun control has limited yearly fatalities to a tiny fraction of ours. Such policies put these countries, if they would only think about it, in grave ecological peril. In Australia particularly, recent legislation has brought the yearly kill down very sharply and unmistakably. You would not want to be an Australian in the twenty-second century: it is going to be CROWDED there. But America will continue to be the land of wide open spaces, if the NRA has anything to say about it.

A special advantage of Second Amendment fundamentalism, as a means of population control, is that it is so democratic and fair. You never know exactly when or where the next thrill-killer will strike (though you know for certain it will be somewhere). Thus everyone shares some of the risk, and some of the burden of relieving overpopulation.

Of course, gun control fanatics complain that too many of America’s shooting victims are children. It’s hard to get used to the idea of toddlers getting shot, as so often happens in homes that keep guns for protection of the family. But you have to consider that, from an ecological point of view, the younger the victims, the better. Shoot an eighty year-old, and you have decreased the population for only five to ten years. But shooting a youngster can lessen ecological pressure on the habitat for sixty, seventy, eighty years, or even more! As a solution to overcrowding and resource depletion, it just makes sense.

The National Rifle Association. Freedom to get shot. At random. Anywhere, any time. Join with me in applauding this proud old organization.