“This is an awful book. And that has nothing whatsoever to do with politics.
Well, okay. The book is terrible, and I’d like to have a separate discussion of its politics.
The Book Itself:
The authors said they wrote this book because there was a dearth of books featuring Open Carry families (Open Carry being all about wearing a gun on your hip, in the open, basically). Which is probably accurate. I don’t specifically remember any Sneetches carrying guns. Nor did Pop from Hop On Pop. Although maybe if he had, there would have been less hopping on him.
But is filling an unfilled niche enough to justify a book?
After reading this, I would answer that question with a confident Fuck No. Because as a book, as a narrative, it’s shit.
Allow me to quote the opening of the book. Keep in mind, this is meant to be a book for children. You know, young humans who are interested in action and situations they can relate to?
Quote:
The Strong family consists of Richard Strong, his wife Bea and their 13 year old daughter, Brenna. The Strong family live in a modest home in a medium-sized town in the Midwest.
Off to a good start. I really appreciate the use of words like “consists” and “modest”, two of my favorite words as a child that are still quite useful today. This is a simple story of an economically unremarkable family that is made up of multiple individual units.
The Strong Parents- okay, let’s stop. Strong family? Is that really the best name they could come up with for a fake family? Strong? How about the Armstrong family, or maybe the Gunsters? Although I just realized that Richard Strong may have been known as Dick Strong in his college days, so maybe I’m cool with this now.
Dick Strong has a bunch of run-ins with people where he basically reads the constitution out loud to them, and then the Strongs surprise their daughter. They’re driving towards a gun range, but they’ve been there a million times. What kind of surprise is that?
The dumbest of the dumbs will be shocked and amused when Brenna gets her own gun.
Oh, and I feel obligated to mention that the art is also horrific.
This is probably my favorite picture, Mr. Strong appearing to give his daughter the old Dick Strong Strong Arm, which is the name he invented for putting his hand on his daughter’s butt in a calming, yet molesty fashion.
Now, before we get into the ridiculousness of the politics here, I would like to talk about some factual errors in the book OUTSIDE of the gun politics.
At the grocery store, Brenna’s mom is describing the health benefits of FRESH spinach, and later an old man agrees that she is right, however he mentions CANNED spinach. This may just be a continuity error, but it is the obligation of this reader to point out that canned spinach is third place behind fresh and frozen (frozen foods generally being frozen almost immediately, at which point their composition is arrested, whereas canned still goes through a lot of travel and processing first).
And that’s pretty much where we have to get into gun politics, but I think it’s important to point out this bit of incorrect health information, or rather that 100% of the health information in this book is less correct than it could be.
So I guess now we have to talk a bit about the politics.
In the interest of full disclosure, just so you know what an idiot you’re dealing with here, I’ll let everyone in on my gun opinions.
They’re fun.
Like driving a car really fast or smashing something, shooting a gun can be pretty fun.
Also like driving a car really fast, I think it’s an activity that belongs in a controlled environment. And the fun of it fades quickly the moment someone is seriously hurt.
My opinion on Open Carry (laws that permit a person to wear a gun on a holster, in the open) is that it’s for scared people. They may say that they are exercising a right or contributing to public safety, but deep down I think every one of those people is just plain scared.
This book supposedly has a story, but what it really consists of (see, I can use those flourish-y, flower-y writer words too!) is a series of conversations between Dick Strong and people he encounters as he goes about his day, shopping for groceries and going to the bookstore to peruse CD’s and Books, as we all do. In 1997.
It’s a bit of a fantasy. It’s a lot of a fantasy. What happens is various people confront Mr. Strong, everyone from a vet who is super thankful that the Strongs are using the rights he fought so hard for to a woman who feels Open Carry is a bad idea, to a man who carries a gun, but does so in concealed fashion and would like to know more about Open Carry. You know, your typical cross-section of America where every character you encounter is defined by their stance on a single issue.
I’d like to take a moment to respond to the ideas posed in this book, simply because they are ideas as opposed to facts.
Idea: People wear seatbelts and have fire extinguishers. They hope to never need them, but it’s best to be prepared, I always say.
Sure. Although I’ve yet to kill anyone with a seatbelt. And a seatbelt pretty much stays in the car, the place where it’s used. I don’t bring it into the books and CD store from 1997 with me. And as far as a fire extinguisher goes, the only death that results from shooting somebody with one of those is the death of BORING for that afternoon. Seriously, it’s hilarious, and ANYONE can buy a fire extinguisher at your local place where they have those.
Idea: Brenna’s dad stated that yes, guns are dangerous and should be handled with care, but so should cars, chain saws, and many other tools that people use every day to make their lives better.
Have you ever tried to bring a chainsaw into a Subway sandwich outlet? Because they get very uppity. I mean, I feel like the point of this book is about Open Carry, but that’s really more of an argument for guns in general, right? Or are we saying that we should be allowed to carry chainsaws too? Because if that’s the case, I’ve seen Army of Darkness enough times that I’m all for it. Or maybe just a drill…
Idea: He went on to say guns save more lives than they take.
This is a super common pro-gun slogan. Well, let me illuminate something. This slogan is based on a study from the early 90’s. Yes, I often don’t consider 1993 to be a long time ago, but if this stat was born in 1994, it would be old enough to drink. If you took my stats at birth and then applied them to me at 21, you would be one confused dummy. In addition, the stats were extrapolated from a study that asked about guns being used in “self-defense.” However, the term “self-defense” is pretty shoddy, and could include things like someone grabbing a gun to investigate a noise outside only to find nothing had happened. So did this really prevent a crime? Further, one could report a YES for self-defense when defending himself against THE POLICE. In that case, perhaps 5 people used guns, one criminal and 4 officers, and all were using them in what we would call self-defense. The study makes no distinction between criminal or legally-protected use, and it’s just flawed in so many ways it’s hard to even discuss rationally. If you see the stat that starts with 2.5 million, just know that it’s utter bullshit. (http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/30/opinion/frum-guns-safer/)
Idea: In fact, he stated that merely displaying a gun can deter a crime from happening – which is why he carries his gun in the open.
Whenever someone uses this very flawed form of logic, I always think back to The Simpsons, who explained this form of reasoning better than I ever could after they instituted a Bear Patrol to deter bears from entering the city:
Idea: When seconds count, the police are minutes away.
Ooh, that’s some good bumper sticker shit right there.
The problem with this logic is that, well, you would be able to wait a couple minutes if the person committing the crime didn’t ALSO have a gun.
Comedian Mike Drucker tweeted it best:
Fun Fact: I had a gun pulled on me in high school. At the time, I didn’t wish I also had a gun; I wished that he did not have one.
Idea: The old man explained that he had fought in WWII to protect all of our rights, and he wished more people understood what freedom was.
Interesting.
I would think we could also say that democracy is one of the big things we fought for, yes?
So how do we reconcile the fact that, according to one CNN report, the minority of people own the majority of guns? In fact, only 32% of households owned guns in 2010. Male gun ownership has gone down 20%, and only 1 in 10 women own guns. (http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/31/politics/gun-ownership-declining/index.html)
If we’re voting through our actions, it would seem to me that we’ve voted guns out of our own homes.
Idea: He said the 2nd Amendment was spelled out to protect the people from a tyrannical government.
Well, that’s factually true. However, I think we can agree that things have changes a fuckton since 1776.
What we don’t seem able to agree upon is whether guns would stop something like a takeover today, and the most common comparison we see here is Nazi Germany under Hitler. New laws took away the rights of Jews to own guns. Wouldn’t gun ownership have given them a fighting chance?
Short answer, almost certainly not. We’re talking about 2% of the population fighting 98%. And in addition, gun laws were much looser under the new regime, provided you weren’t a Jew. To simplify the Holocaust by saying it could have been prevented with a couple of Doc Holliday’s is a pretty horrible perversion of history (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/hitler-gun-control_n_2939511.html).
I’m only a third of the way through this, but I’m tired.
The book just goes on and on, so let me just say this.
If you’re not really into guns, this is not the book for you. Obviously.
But if you ARE into guns, you shouldn’t buy this book either. Because all it does is spew nonsense, non-facts, and only confirms what I, as a non-gun guy, think about you: that you’re all a bunch of nuts. Because seriously, this was written by wackos. These are not the people who you want representing your cause, believe me. I think I could be convinced about the positives of gun ownership, but not by this horseshit. Explain to me how they can be fun. Explain to me how you plan to regulate things to keep guns away from people who will use them in criminal acts.
And for god’s sake, keep your hands off your daughters’ butts.
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