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Look, I’m a little sensitive about my snubby, okay?

Weasel's S&W 686 revolver

Whoa! What’re the odds? That’s Enas Yorl and his brand new Smith & Wesson 686 onscreen in the background there, me and mine in the foreground…turns out Mr Minority has one and McGoo has one, too.

This is my bedside cannon. My “holy shit, lady, you aren’t kidding!” piece. It is very big and shiny. It makes an extremely loud bang. I suspect it would make exceedingly large holes in bad guys, but happily I’ve never had to test this theory.

When I moved to Rhode Island, I arrived unarmed and stayed that way for twenty years. I knew the rules were more restrictive up here in Yanquiland and I figured buying a gun wasn’t worth the trouble.

But then I bought a house on a corner lot. Sound travels funny here. Somebody slams a car door, it sounds like bad guys moving around in the basement. One night, I found myself creeping down the stairs clutching a tack hammer like Conan the Ovarian, and I thought, “this is too stupid.”

Turns out, while it’s nearly impossible to get a concealed carry permit in Rhode Island, all you need is a “blue card” to buy a gun and keep it in your home. To earn your blue card, you need to pass a background check and a written exam.

I am now going to tell you how to pass the written exam. Ready? Here’s the secret: there is no condition under which any gun can ever be considered unloaded. None whatever. Just fired six rounds out of a six shooter? Still loaded. Just completely disassembled your pistol into its umpty-ump constituent parts? Still loaded. Crushed it flat with a backhoe? Loaded. Aliens blew our lovely blue earth to smithereens and just as your lungs collapse in the cold nothingness of outer space a molten glob of metal that might possibly once have been your favorite revolver sails past your ear into the void? Count on it, it’s loaded.

Yup. See, they took the old common-sense recommendation that it’s safest to regard every gun as loaded and morphed it into a nonsensical declaration that every gun really is loaded all the time. Put your hand on your heart and say something stupid, and we’ll give you that blue card.

I wonder how many rosy-necked sons of the soil were too proud to say something that dumb to earn their papers?

November 29, 2007 — 5:45 pm
Comments: 69