Any of you don't regularly read Pharyngula, you *should*!! For
example:
Sex and Guns
by PZ Myers <http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/> at 02:46 PM April 20
2006
In the discussion about the Minnesota GOP platform, this comment from
Molly
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/04/good_ol_mngop.php made me
think
about what it would be like if Republicans were consistent in their
attitudes towards sex and guns.
If Republicans taught gun safety like they do sex education, they
would:
* allow everyone to own a gun (even more, they'd require it:
gunlessness is an abomination), but they'd insist that kids could
never,
ever take them out of their holster, sheath or gun rack
* it would be illegal to expose your weapon or even talk about it
* exposing a gun on TV would outrage viewers, who would deluge the
network with complaining phone calls
* blanks, trigger locks, and even safeties would be forbidden
* there would be accidental discharges every night in every
teenager's
home, but no one would ever talk about it
* it would be a shameful sin to go off by yourself and practice
shooting at targets
* the only acceptable use would be to kill something, although it
would be OK to miss if you were sincerely trying to kill something
* most hunters would be desperately hoping to miss every time they
went hunting, and would try to contrive situations in which they could
fire
their guns without actually hitting anything
It seems like a useful analogy to me. If it's common sense gun
ownership to
know how to clean and maintain the thing, to practice sensible gun
safety
rules, and to treat it as a responsibility that demands knowledge and
care
and good understanding of its operation, why not expect the same of
people
who own a penis or vagina? There's nothing about knowing how something
works
that is antithetical to the idea that one should refrain from using it
for
its intended purpose, whether that is killing something or getting it
pregnant, and in fact, we know that understanding in detail how
something
works is the best way to prevent it from going off inadvertently.
As it is, they're in a situation where they are tacitly favoring
accidental,
unplanned accidents over the possibility that kids will intentionally
practice safe operation of their equipment.
.
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