Keep your damn guns. Just stop using them to shoot people.

I’ll make a confession. I’m pretty anti-gun. I watched G.I. Joe and other violent TV shows as a kid and I’ve spent hours playing violent first person shooters, but I’ve never been in the military and guns in real life terrify me. I can honestly say that I have never touched a gun, never wanted to, and will hopefully never have to be within 50 feet of one. And it shocks and appalls me how resistant we are as a country to controlling the ownership of weapons. We only have to look across the ocean to see other countries that don’t allow the possession of firearms and see the decrease in violent crimes.

My personal opinion of guns aligns with the Eddie Izzard bit on “the gun thing” — “‘Guns don’t kill people, people kill people’…But I think the gun helps…”

I also know that because guns are part of the foundation upon which this country was built, we will never, ever be a country that does not allow the possession of firearms. Ever. And I accept that.

None of that matters, though. Because I’m through fighting the gun thing.

You can have your fucking guns. Just stop killing people.

The right to own and carry firearms does not give you the right to walk into a fucking place of worship and start executing people. There’s no justification that can be made for something like that. And this problem isn’t going away. If the NRA thinks the solution to this is more people carrying firearms, fine. Have your damn guns. Just. Stop. Killing. People. I don’t care what it takes.

There is a culture of violence and hatred in this country, and it’s not against people who are foreign — although we sure as hell have that, too — it’s against ourselves. It’s the exclusivist culture that allows some idiots in Utah County to think that having a Caucasian Heritage Night for a minor league baseball team is a pretty freaking swell idea.

So fine, NRA and gun toting assholes. I give up. You win. Take your guns. Wear them to church. Walk through the malls and down streets with me while carrying. Keep me safe from lunatics trying to kill me because obviously it’s only those lunatics over there that actually kill people, not you. Never you. If you think that will make this country safer, have at it. Whatever. Just stop using those guns to kill other human beings.

This is not a thing that is happening to them over there. This is happening to us. Right here. And the sooner we realize that someone who looks different than you, who is maybe a different color or a different shape or loves a different kind of person or has different hair or eyes or came from a different background than you is part of us, is just like you, the sooner we can maybe start to treat this disease that is creating “lunatics” and “outsiders” who “seem like a nice kid” but are really planning on hunting down and killing women, or walking into a school or a church and opening fire. These people, they are us, too. And we need to accept that the way you accept that you have a terminal disease. Oh shit, that’s bad. And then you deal with it. Talking about it, making these assholes out to be something other than us is saying “this problem…it’s not really a problem. That’s a one-time case.” If only that were true. Killing and hurting people who are different? That’s a fucking cultural tradition in America. That’s not a new concept. That’s been done countless times in every state in this country. Accept it. Treat the disease. This isn’t an isolated incident. It’s the product of our cultural upbringing.

I’ll end with Jon Stewart’s reaction to the Charleston Church shooting on The Daily Show.