Gun Ownership Counts as Masturbation, Judge Finds

Gun owners, gun rights’ groups, legal theorists, conservative politicians, and the American Civil Liberties Union joined in an unlikely alliance on Thursday to express outrage over a judge’s ruling that gun ownership can be considered a form of masturbation.

 

“This is utterly preposterous,” declared Wayne LaPuta, president of the National Rifle Association. “This insanely PC decision shows that the left will stop at nothing to take away our guns, lawnmowers, sports nights, cigar cutters, and little blue pills. I could say lots more, but you’ll have to see the secretary about a payment plan. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s feeding time for some of my senators.” 

 

Jackson Nadmost, controversial author of the 2018 best-seller Who To Shoot: An Illustrated Guide, was quick to agree. “The reasoning in this case is egregiously strained,” he told the Soy City Tattler. “I mean, if you’re going to call gun ownership a form of masturbation, nearly everything else belongs in that category too. We may be looking at a future in which a harsh stigma attaches to things like flower arranging, guitar playing, or even such admittedly sensuous but innocent acts as peeling a banana.” 

 

The ACLU cited more technical, academic reasons in its demurrer. “The core analogy here is interesting,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “But the case law presented was not really applicable. Counsel made a gripping appeal to Bentone v. Reacher, but in the end that was a narrow case, focused on the difference between “shaking” and “playing.” Choking v. Chicken is really a far more compelling precedent, and Spanking v. Puppy could have been applied to explosive effect. The failure of counsel to invoke either leaves us frankly disappointed and unfulfilled.” 

 

At the heart of the storm was Judge Brigham Smith’s decision in Splitting v. Splitting, a divorce case heard recently in Moroni, Utah. The case turned on an obscure 1851 Utah law, rarely invoked, that divorce attorneys sometimes call the Onan Exemption. Conservative Utah courts have historically been reluctant to grant divorces for such vague grounds as “mental cruelty” and “irreconcilable differences.” The statute defines masturbation by married persons as a “marital criminality” equivalent to infidelity, hence grounds for an automatic divorce. 

 

According to legal analyst Liam Majorly, “When a Utah judge goes all foot-dragging and ‘think of the children’ and so forth, that’s when you pull an Onan.” 

 

In her complaint seeking dissolution of the marriage, alimony, the couple's house, and custody of their seven Pit Bulls, Wanda Splitting contended that the failure of the marriage stemmed from her husband’s gun-collecting hobby. “We managed to deal with our difficulties over the Glocks, the Remington, and even the two little grenades,” Ms. Splitting told the judge. “But once he bought that Bushmaster, things really got out of hand.

 

“He was out there in the garage at all hours of the day and night, oiling his weapons and thumbing through copies of Guns and Ammo,” said Ms. Splitting. “And I’m just thirty-five, you know, and not all that hard to look at.”

 

All marital relations ceased at that point, according to the plaintiff.

 

Judge Smith’s decision in Ms. Smith’s favor cited “the unexpected but substantial relevance” of the 1851 statute.

 

“While it’s true that masturbation does not comprehend gun ownership under ordinary definitions,” Smith explained, “the two activities show striking parallels.”

 

“First, both are motivated by intense but intensely unrealistic fantasies, such as taking out a SWAT team in the one case or pounding Bo Derek in the other. Second, both are completely useless except for the rather lonely pleasure afforded the practitioner. Third, both often require special clothes and other fetishes. Fourth, both can be hard on the eyesight. 

 

“But above all, as plaintiff has amply shown, in this case guns lay at the heart of both parties’ sexual unfulfillment. In effect, by the logic of the Onan rule, defendant was cheating plaintiff with a whole range of rivals, from his small handguns to his big assault rifles. Gee, I wish I’d known about it at the time,” Judge Smith concluded, with a wink at Ms. Splitting that some observers found disconcerting.

 

But perhaps the last word for now belongs to William Swiftly, attorney for Arnold Splitting. “In my two and a half years as a lawyer, I’ve never seen anything more ridiculous,” he told the Deseret News. “We will appeal this all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. The NRA is already begging to pay my bills. The question is what the judge was smoking, not whether my client fiddled with a few triggers and had a bang doing it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go see my eye doctor, I’ve been having a lot of trouble.”