American lawmakers appear to once again consider it their patriotic duty to try and put the writers at satirical news outlets like the Onion, Daily Show or SNL’s Weekend Update out of business.
Just months after the U.S. Senate stood their ground and shot down a proposal by American president Barack Obama in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre — supported by nine out of 10 citizens, no less — that doing background checks on people who want to buy machine guns might be a good idea, the state of Iowa has taken America’s itchy trigger finger to the next level by passing legislation that allows blind people to bear arms.
Blind author and Iowa resident Stephen Kuusisto, whose memoir Planet of the Blind was a recent New York Times bestseller, probably summed it up best on his blog with this nod to Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Spokesman in the World: “I don’t always shoot guns when I’m blind, but when I do, I do it in Iowa. Stay loaded, my friends.”
Now, nobody thinks there is anything funny about being visually impaired any more (exhibit A: the dismal four per cent approval rating given to the locally shot Mr. Magoo starring the late Leslie Neilson on RottenTomatoes.com) and everyone knows blind people are perfectly capable of overcoming their disability in all kinds of different ways. But we truly can’t see the logic behind this law, or most gun laws in the U.S. for that matter.
Even notorious blind badasses like Daredevil, Zatoichi the Samurai and Starfleet officer Geordi La Forge know better than to start spraying bullets (or phaser blasts) around and instead stick to things like billy clubs, katana swords and/or distracting outfits to defend themselves.
It’s an example we, and lawmakers everywhere, can follow. Because here’s the bottom line: Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. And the easy, widespread availability of guns makes that killing much easier and more likely to happen.
