Owing Guns is not a Hobby.

I collect action figures and comic books. If action figures and comic books starting killing people en masse in the streets, I’d stop collecting. I might be sad if the government had to come and buy them back from me, and while I’d want equal value for my purchases, I would understand. I would understand that this stupid hobby I waste far to much money on was hurting people and that I need to find a new hobby.

If you feel the need to own a bunch of guns, you need to find a new hobby.

In fact, it’s not a “hobby” because hobbies are, by nature, harmless. In the same way we don’t consider “making skin lamps” Ed Gein’s hobby.

You’re not a gun collector, stop using my words to describe your strange obsession with wanting to shoot someone someday.

Maybe you are a “law-abiding gun owner”, but most law-abiding gun owners I grew up with in South Carolina used to openly talk about how excited they were at the prospect of using their new gun against somebody trying to break into their home. By the way, we’ve seen this fantasy play out in the murder of Renisha McBride:

Renisha McBride had been in an auto-accident and didn’t know where she was. She pounded at a screendoor for help, and the home’s owner, Theodore Wafer, shot her through that screendoor, in the face, saying he feared for his life:

McBride was intoxicated and had crashed her car earlier in the night before ending up on Wafer’s porch. He had been sleeping in a recliner and said he couldn’t immediately find his phone to call police when he awoke to an “unbelievable” pounding on his doors and feared for his life.

Bernita Spinks, McBride’s aunt, said this was anything but a self-defense shooting.

“Theodore Wafer’s house looks like my sister’s house. Renisha thought she was at home. By her being discombobulated and everything, she was knocking at the side door because the side door to they house was just like his house. The front door was just like that,” Spinks told WWJ’s Charlie Langton. “She was trying to figure out why wasn’t nobody letting her in and all he had to do was call 911.”

I’m going to sympathize with Wafer here. Maybe he did fear for his life. He certainly acted in a rash manner, but maybe he did fear for his life. It’s not the most fun thing to be awakened by someone trying to get in to your house, specifically if that person doesn’t live there.

Yet, to be fair, I’ve made this mistake before, and luckily it didn’t cost me my life. You know what killed McBride, and landed Wafer in prison, the “hobby” of owning guns. The fascination with owning those guns and then using them are some “unsuspecting intruder”. Unlike movies, reality doesn’t play out this way.

Theodore Wafer might even be lucky he himself was not a victim of gun death, as gun owners have an increased likelihood of being shot, even with their own weapons. Or perhaps the victim could’ve even been a member of his family since guns are linked to an increase in fatal domestic disputes.

When I buy an action figure it sits on a shelf. Admittedly, I could play with them, but I don’t play with action figures anymore, and too much handling can reduce the value should I ever want to sell it. Guns, by contrast, beg to be used. I’m sure there is some exception — someone who collects decommissioned rifles from World War II, for example — but every gun “collector” I knew bought brand new guns, and then usually followed the purchase by a trip to the range. One range trip involved a close friend of mine taking a picture of his recent ex-girlfriend for us to shoot up with an AK-47. She was a nice lady too, and I’m quite certain would’ve taken exception to us doing that. Now just imagine they had stayed together, and not broken up like mature people sometimes do. Do you think she could’ve been one of those “domestic dispute” statistics? Doesn’t seem entirely unlikely.

This wasn’t an isolated incident either. Nearly every gun “collector” I knew use to speak glibly about killing people. Whether it was “joking” to me or another friend about what would happen to us if we broke into their homes, or tried to fight them. I never met a single one that didn’t, in some way, minimize taking the life of another — I also never met one who did.

When Wafer stood at sentencing for the murder of McBride, a crime for which he got 17 years in prison, he cried. He gave a very tearful and heartfelt apology and told her family that he would carry the guilt of taking an innocent life for the rest of his life. He asked the judge for clemency. The funny thing is I’ve never met a gun owner who displayed that kind of introspection prior to being handed clear consequences for their actions. All that time to think about what he did when the tragedy could’ve been avoided if he simply never bought a gun. I imagine when he made the purchase of that gun he was pretty satisfied with himself that this decision to buy a gun could not possibly blow up in his face. It sure did though, or rather it blew up in Renisha McBride’s face, killing her.

As for “law-abiding gun owners”, those “hobbyists” and “collectors”, of the 82 mass shootings in recent American history most of the perpetrators, 82 of them, legally possessed those firearms. Wafer, the murderer of McBride, legally possessed his. He was a law-abiding gun owner right up until his verdict was read. A verdict he unsuccessfully tries to appeal as “self-defense” even after his heartfelt apology.

Why am I focusing on Wafer so much? Because, in my opinion, he is a textbook example of precisely the kind of law-abiding, “good guy with a gun” the NRA loves to talk about so much. Were he in another state, perhaps with more lax criteria for the Castle Doctrine or McBride were a large black man instead of a diminutive black woman, he probably would have walked. He’d probably still be a “noble” “law-abiding gun-owner”. Wafer’s portrait should adorn the NRA’s officers because he is the exact person they aspire to create. The kind of “shoot first, ask questions never” person who sees owning guns as a fun pastime, or even a good idea for home security (they’re not).

Statistically, having a gun in your home is more dangerous for you and your family, especially if you have young children or teens. A 2014 review in the Annals of Internal Medicine concluded having a firearm in the home, even when it’s properly stored, doubles your risk of becoming a victim of homicide and triples the risk of suicide.3

This is not a “hobby”, it’s a fixation, an obsession, and a fascination with the idea of owning something that can take a life, and then fantasizing about taking one. That’s what Wafer did. He had that fantasy, and he got to live out the nightmare when it finally happened.

Here’s a solution: stop buying guns, now. Find a new hobby. An actual hobby. Watch some movies. Collect vintage beer bottles. Anything but buying guns. You’re “hobby” of buying guns is sociopathic and it makes you, yes you, a terrible person.

It makes me sad as a collector, that the longest-running and most enduring form of “collecting” is gun collecting. Most of the comic books and toylines I collect have been canceled multiple times — but no one ever cancels gun owners’ favorite “toy”line — the guns. People can freely collect those whenever, however, and as many as they want. They have no restrictions.

You might find it odd that I haven’t mentioned the recent shootings in Atlanta and Colorado, but that’s because I shouldn’t have to. Under no circumstances should we have ever, EVER, gotten to this point. Other countries have figured out where unfettered gun ownership leads a long, long time ago. We have 4% of the world’s population and 15% of gun-related deaths. By comparison, Japan, who has a sizable population of 127 million, roughly a third of the US population, rarely has a year that records more than 10. Let me repeat that, 10. How did they do it, regulations upon regulations. How did they do this? Because they don’t have liars and death merchants like Ted Cruz in their government. People who call gun control, that works in every country in which they have been enacted as ridiculous theater. Who have scores of talking heads, racist grifters like Steven Crowder and liars like Ben Shapiro, to repeat their talking points to a gullible public who has an addiction to their sociopathic “hobby”.

It’s not that we can do better than this, it’s that we pretty much can’t do any worse. We’re an embarrassment. This stuff makes us look like a failed state because we are one. We don’t need guns. Nobody does. It’s certainly not a hobby or a collection, and frankly, it offends me personally to be lumped in with those people.

Find a hobby that doesn’t kill people, you assholes.

Fuck you and your stupid guns.