So Las Vegas happened. Yeah that was a thing. Although Alex Jones is already screaming "false flag" because, of course he is, it won't take long for other people who actually live on planet Earth to start looking at the idea of guns, the ownership of guns, the use of guns, and the availability of Guns. But in all that, there is going to be one term that keeps getting mentioned I'm sure; "Gun-Culture" and the thing is, you can't really have that without the need to include the concept of "guns-in-culture" along with it.
Pay attention. This is very important.
I actually just realized she's got one eye totally covered and the other one 90% closed... how she gonna hit anything like that?
I actually just realized she's got one eye totally covered and the other one 90% closed... how she gonna hit anything like that?
I think everyone who grew up in the 80's or 90's knows that one kid who's mom wouldn't let them play with any type of toy gun or gun-like object and if she caught them watching The A-Team there would be hell to pay. These were the days of Dr. Spockian absolutisms of hippy-dippy child rearing and Mel Leveneish notions that literally everything in the environment a young person is in will have some sort of indelible impact on someone growing up, even if it is an abstract concept. Yep, the baby boomers believed that if you just shielded your child from anything negative, then they would grow up to be perfect little conformers to your specific set of values. ...You go ask the Mormons how well that actually works. One of the first aspects of popular entertainment this phenomenon was that moment when you realize G.I. Joe went from being good to sucking ass.
Real guns and explosions on the left... this ridiculousness and "lasers" that move so slow you can dodge them on the right.
But you kept watching it... and you know why.
Yeah, you know why
Fast-forward to post-Columbine and all of a sudden it's; Leather duster jackets are potential warning signhs! Mortal Kombat did this, quick get Hillary Clinton and Captain Kangaroo (no seriously he was a part of that insane shit) they will ban them there vidja games! Schools need more security than airports and every student is guilty until proven innocent! Marylin Manson! ZERO TOLERANCE! ...oh and people shouldn't keep loaded guns where victims of prolonged sanctioned bullying who may show signs of mental illness can get them ...ya know, just maybe.
Did entertainment media get less violent as a result? I'd say not really. What happened was the kind of person who was "allowed" access to it was changed. And it was based on age. The generation that said "never trust anyone over 30," smoked weed in public but then embraced the war on drugs, and would gladly give a blowjob to Holden Caulfield because he was just the best, does a 180. All of a sudden there was now a wrong kind of music. A wrong kind of clothing style. A wrong kind of media entertainment. And they are the ones who knew everything (I mean they totally changed the world, man!) so you will obey them and do what they say. They declared a straight up war on cultural evolution. A war they would eventually lose, in part thanks to anime and manga being so out there and so under the radar and shared through technology they did not understand, that they didn't know they were supposed to hate it until it was too late. Even before you could download anything, in my college anime club running days I had a VHS trading network that reached from Canada to Bolivia and it was all arranged online (yes I am that old). But the "guns-in-culture" problem popped up in that "zero-tolerance" zealotry. So kids; Bring a 1 inch plastic accessory gun held by an action figure to school? Oh, you criminal scum! Wear a clip in your hair that might have a gun-like image as part of it? You're aiding terrorism! Bite a pop-tart in the shape of a gun? IT'S CARLOS THE JACKAL! And Big Brother is always watching. Even when you think he isn't. That has unfortunately more or less continued and will probably keep happening for another 10 years until the kids who ended up on the business end of that retarded retardedness get their hands on the wheel.
If you are under 18 in America today, you have no rights. ...sorry kids
So, like I said, now Las Vegas happened. And what are we going to get? First we're going to get people asking for motive, and the NRA going into full head-up-ass damage control mode. Some people are going to say we should ban all guns, some people are going to say we should ban some kinds of guns, and some people will say from my cold dead hands. The thing is, the weapon used in the video of the event which is widely circulating is clearly a fully automatic machine gun or sub-machine gun and those have been banned and prohibited for decades.... It is not one of these. So what are you gonna do, give them super secret double probation banning or something? Guns are a Constitutional issue and as such will take a Constitutional level action to change the question of availability.
*Edit as of 2017-10-08: I did not know what a bump-stock was when I wrote this and now I do know. I also find that disconcerting.
But actual Constitutional Legislation is not not what I am here to talk about. What I am here to talk about is the entirely different universes that "gun otaku" live in between the USA and Japan. In Japan, a gun-otaku may not even like anime, but loves a certain aspect of firearms, that being the engineering (in most cases... I am sure there a few weirdos out there that do sex-stuff regarding them). But that's the engineering of every part, from the action to the aesthetics, so "looks cool" is a big part of why someone might favor a type of gun. The thing is, gun-otaku in Japan really aren't considered dangerous because being a gun-otaku there is like being an F1-otaku here in the USA. You are never going to own an F1 car (deal with it). In Japan, thanks to one of the most intense firearm prohibition policies in the world, coupled with the geography of the country making enforcement of said policies highly effective, it is inconceivable that there would be a proliferation of firearms. Not so much so in the USA, where you can go get one at Wal-Mart while you buy bananas and underpants, and then potentially modify them to have illegal rates of fire (the gun... not the underpants bananas). So since anime are Japanese productions gun violence is treated something akin to wizard-magic in other American forms of entertainment. A scenario so fantastic that it is unrealistic both in the idea that it could ever motivate someone to engage in such a thing for real, and in the way it is even portrayed as happening.
Annoyingly, this is not an actual thing that happens
So for Japanese audiences, in anime, guns might as well be light-sabers, because there is an equal chance of the average person getting their hands on either. In the USA you get all into violent gun anime and then combine that with the fact that you can buy them from vending machines more or less, the impression is that you now pose a danger to public safety, just as much as that F1-otaku could if they actually got their hands on an F1 car and maybe decided to take it for a spin around the neighborhood. And that makes guns, gun-otaku, and entertainment (anime included) with guns in it something that will be subject to such sensitivities now in the USA. This could potentially cause a rift in the number of and type of anime that become licensed by companies here. But I think such an effect would be minimal if it happened at all.
Whole new meaning now aint it...?
What are we going to see? It is too early to tell. Is it possible that people will become hostile to media that features the use of guns and all kinds of murdery murder even if it is clearly fiction? Is Netflix never going to stream Smokin Aces again? (movie would have made a better anime anyway). Are people under 18 going to be given even harsher punishments and treated like criminals for owning a copy of Gunslinger Girl or watching something like Kite? Will just having an image of Upotte as the background on your pc get you abducted and sent to a "rehabilitation" camp when in reality all you wanted was a Pepsi (just one Pepsi), but your parents have bought into the fearvertizing of for-profit teen crisis programs that don't give a flying fuck how they keep their beds full? Maybe it will happen. I think because the guy who did it is apparently one himself, the baby boomers will do everything they can to point attention away from that fact, and whenever they need a scapegoat, the come for the millennials. They are going to really need a scapegoat now, since this guy isn't around to talk, and so said scapegoat is going to be the information we consume. It will be the entertainment media we seek out that the boomers do not, which they will culturally and politically denounce the heresy of, and those youngins who perpetuate its continued cultural consumption, are going to get treated like like they started the fucking Reichstag Fire. Our generation doesn't have as much control of the steering wheel as we think we do (yeah, we have to do the boomers homework for them because they can barely work anything more than a calculator... but George McFly did Biff's homework all the time and who was runnin that school? Wasn't Georgie).
One foreseeable yet inevitable problem is that the ADD addled mind of most of us who exist in a world where not being able to stream a show for an hour because you're in another time zone or something will have you lose your shit, is that this will quickly develop into some gasoline on the Alt-Right vs Antifa mess we normies have to walk around in our everyday lives like compost piles no one had permission to set up in public. And most of the people I know are going to say it's all the alt-right's fault because "the left" doesn't do the guns thing. Well... ya know.
Except when they totally do I guess.
The NYC, subway. A line with the newer cars you can move freely between. A team of 4 (but can be done with two) with two in the extreme front of the first car and two in extreme back the last. Do this latter half of morning rush-hour, when the train is packed and wait a river crossing (ideal lines are 4/5, A/C, L, or F, they have the longest tunnels with curves that make them go slower... except the L, but when does that thing ever NOT move slow, ammiright?). Wait for the train to get half way through and then have someone hit the emergency break. That break takes 20 minutes to reset. Once the train stops, both teams start shooting moving towards the center of the train. Use 9mm semi-autos and carry extra magazines. Make sure one person on the team keeps firing when the other has to reload (reloading is how they stopped Colin Ferguson). You are not going to hit everyone so don't try, and don't fire too fast like the shooting up in the air scene in Point Break that's worthless. You will most likely not have to worry about anyone else on the train who is armed because even if they are, gun-control laws in NYC mean it wouldn't be many people, cops drive to work because they don't actually live in NYC (sorry Staten Island doesn't count as NYC and everyone knows it) and on a rush-hour train, the panic that will immediately set in will have a stampede of people running away from you pushing, knocking down, or at least blocking, anyone who could stop you from continuing to fire. Do this on a rainy day, so that people have umbrellas to trip over but also because you can wear large rain ponchos and no one will see what you have under there. Make sure you get on early on the train line so you can get in position and pick a shitty neighborhood because they won't be doing bag searches there. Once you've done enough damage or run out of ammo you can ditch the ponchos and disappear into the panic and since you have an all new outfit on, no one will know it was you. Do with with 6 people with 2 in the middle and holy shit! ...most of you will probably get caught though.
There, I just gave you a freebie. See? That's what's gonna happen when these polarized idiot morons, in a country under a really shitty President who thinks playing golf is literally part of his job, prevent real things from getting done. ...Jesus now that I go read that back that sounds like an insane and psychopathic...
Miss Dynamite. Great series by Canadian writer, illustrator, cartoonist and all around artist of amazing amazingness, Sirkowski.
Oh wait... someone is at the door...
Oh shit... Well, wouldn't be the first time... Seriously, it wouldn't. If they send anyone I hope the cute one comes back. Oh shit I just realized I totally fit "the profile" for this kind of thing too... Goodnight Everybody. Ah, they know I'm an f-ing joke. Actually if they're reading this, they should be happy about it because I just gave them something they should have been worrying about anyway.
...wonder if they're hiring
...wonder if they're hiring
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1 comment:
Great writing, from an anime blog no less
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