Full confession: I don’t like guns. Except for the one and only time that I held a gun in my life, when suddenly I completely loved guns. I was over at my friend’s house, and he owned a gun, and he handed me his fully-loaded .44 Magnum (the most powerful handgun in the world), and suddenly my brain said to me: “Ohmigod this is so great and let’s go shoot something right now! Let’s shoot something! Anything! EVERYTHING!” The gun was heavy and metal and oiled and this is all sort of becoming weirdly sexual so I’ll stop now, but — ANY-way, the experience of holding a fully loaded weapon in my hands for seven seconds was totally rad.
Apart from that one experience, though, I totally disapprove of guns. For one thing, guns are generally used to kill people, and — oh, brothers and sisters, can’t we just stop? Am I right? …Who’s with me? Let’s put less effort into killing people and more effort into not killing people. …Am I right? Yeah. You know that I’m right.
But now, the gun-lovers among you are stirring in your chairs and coughing and saying something like: “…But hunting.” Yeah. Okay. I hear you. I get you. Hunting, fine. Look, I grew up in rural Pennsylvania. Deer-land. I am the only person in my family who hasn’t crashed his car into a deer, and that’s not because the people in my family are bad drivers, but because — jeez, there are so many deer in Pennsylvania. And I understand; I understand. Without hunters to, say, keep the deer population down, then deer would become prevalent. Highly prevalent. We’d be brushing off deer on our way to the bathroom in the morning and shoveling deer off our driveways and when we opened up a cereal box and shook it over an empty bowl, nothing but deer would come tumbling out. There’d be a hundred and fifty channels on TV and nothing but deer on them, for example.
So, fine. Hunting, I get that. Rifles should be allowed for hunting and then be kept locked up at all times when not used for hunting. Especially since the whole 2nd Amendment “guns are so great” argument is probably based on nothing more than a misunderstanding of the 18th century use of commas.
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So, but that’s just me, and I don’t like guns. But some people really do like them. Take, for example, the friendly gentleman to our left. His name is William Kostric and he really likes guns. He likes them so much, in fact, that he felt the need to share his love with others. Specifically, he decided to share his love with the people attending a health care town-hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And more specifically, Mr. Kostric decided to share his gun-love with our President, Barack Obama, who was also at the town-hall meeting. So — as we can see from the photo to the left — he loaded a pistol, strapped it to his leg, and went off to hang out with the President.
Now, you or I might think that bringing a loaded gun to a public event featuring the President might send… the wrong message. Like, maybe — I dunno — the idea that you might want to shoot the President or something. Especially when you’re waving a sign that says “IT IS TIME TO WATER THE TREE OF LIBERTY.” (A reference to the quote by Thomas Jefferson, which runs, in full: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots.”) So, okay. Thomas Jefferson: good guy. Guns: okay-ish. Handmade signs advocating violent rebellion: sometimes a little sketchy. …But put all three of these things in combination, and some people might start to think that Gee, maybe you want to shoot the President.
But not so, says Mr. Kostric! Far from it, in fact. …And here, live on MSNBC, William Kostric explains his motivation for bringing a loaded weapon to a presidential event, while also having a super-fun-time conversation with the relentlessly blow-dried and overbearing Chris Matthews. Please to enjoy:
So many things… to like about this conversation. First of all, I love love love Mr. Kostric’s assertion that he only brought along the gun to “remind Americans of their 2nd Amendment rights.” I know! Man, I do stuff like that all the time, whenever I go anywhere. Like, whenever I head to the supermarket, I’m always packing heat. But I don’t stop there, unlike lazy, lazy Mr. Kostric. For instance, say I’m going to my friend’s house. Number one, I’m gonna be drunk, to remind everyone that the 21st Amendment repealed the prohibition of alcohol. “TWENTY-FIRST AMENDMENT BITCHES!!” I drunkenly shout, once I arrive.
But I don’t stop there! Number two, I’m just SHOUTING THE WHOLE TIME I’M ANYWHERE OUT IN PUBLIC — to remind people of that most sacred right, our Freedom of Speech. And other things I do when I’m at public events include:
1) Blasphemy.
2) Gathering huge crowds of people around me.
3) Telling the King of England to f–ck off.
4) Abolishing slavery.
5) Giving continual interviews to members of the press.
6) Petitioning members of Congress.
7) Incriminating myself, by shouting things like, “JESUS OLIVER, YOU ARE WAY TOO DRUNK RIGHT NOW… 21ST AMENDMENT, WHOOOOOOOOO!”
8) Seizing public land, while screaming, “EMINENT DOMAIN, BITCHES!! …WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
9) And so on and so forth…
All of which Mr. William Kostric is apparently too lazy to do. What’s the problem, Mr. Kostric? Don’t you love our freedoms? Don’t you love our Constitution? …Because as we know, if we all aren’t constantly exercising all of our rights all of the time, then these things will wither away and die, like an atrophied muscle, or like a foreign language that you studied for a while in high school.
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…The second thing to love about the MSNBC interview is William Kostric’s assertion that it would have been “safer” if “everyone at the town-hall meeting was carrying a gun.” I know! That’d be so safe! Like, the end of “Reservoir Dogs” level safe! A thousand angry Republicans and a thousand angry Democrats, all packed into a tiny space, all carrying guns. Oh, the feeling of safety!
But honestly, I have always loved the gun-nut assertion that the world would be a much better and less violent place if only everyone was fully armed all the time. It’s a great argument — because not only is it based on an approximately 0% understanding of human nature, but it also gives me the excuse to post a link to this cartoon, which I love.
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….And the final thing to like about the interview is Mr. Kostric’s half-heartedly mumbled assertion that, no, he totally has nothing to do with those “Birthers” or with any wacky paranoid groups like that.
But sadly, this is not the case. According to research done by Salon Magazine, Kostric is a member of “We the People” — a far-right Birther group that has filed lawsuits claiming that Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen. Among the other causes that Kostric supports is the right of states to secede from the Union, the abolition of the income tax, and the right to shoot nosy police officers if they enter your house — as revealed in a comment that he left on a website message board; a comment defending the right of drug dealers to shoot cops who “violate” their “rights”:
If people can’t wake up and see why it’s immoral to trespass and destroy someones property, kidnap and lock them in a cage for growing a plant in their backyard then perhaps a body count is what’s required for change.
I personally feel zero sympathy for those cops. I reserve my sympathy for the victims of the nonsense they initiate.
Fun stuff. But oh, Mr. Kostric, you disappoint me. I thought that you were at least… original. But no. It’s just always the same complaints about “Socialism” and the same half-baked, faux-“Libertarian” crapola over and over again… isn’t it?
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Further information about Mr. Kostric comes from his MySpace page, where he lists his heroes as being Ayn Rand (duh), Ron Paul (double-duh), Thomas Jefferson (fine), and… Randy Weaver, the white supremacist arms-dealer who took part in a shoot-out with federal agents.¹
William Kostric’s MySpace page also includes the following quote, in the “About Me” section:
“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.”
A nice quote. Although a perhaps a little disturbing given the context of a man who thinks it’s okay to bring along a gun when meeting the President, and who says that “perhaps a body count is required for a change.”
Unfortunately, the quote is from the novelist Jack London, who was… a Socialist. And so, congrats, Mr. Kostric. You spent your time on MSNBC whining and moaning about “Socialism.” You have, apparently, spent your whole life opposing “Socialism” in all its non-existent forms. And yet, the first person you quote on your MySpace page is… a Socialist.
Reading Comprehension Fail. Gun-Nut Fail. Libertarian Fail. Ayn Rand Fail. Town-Hall Fail. MySpace Fail. MSNBC Fail. Socialism Fail. 2nd Amendment Fail. …Everything FAIL.
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Footnotes/Update:
¹ I received an email from… William Kostric (of all people), informing me that Randy Weaver is a White Separatist, not a White Supremacist. So. A vitally important difference, apparently. Anyway, I’m willing to take Mr. Kostric’s word on this, and I apologize for getting my different types of crazy people mixed up.
² That is all.
Oliver Miller
Oliver Miller writes for Thought Catalog, and writes a second column for The Faster Times. ...
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More on these topics:
Barack Obama, Birthers, Breaking Story, Chris Matthews, Gun Nut, MSNBC, William Kostric
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