Why is Jim Carrey’s video “Cold Dead Hands” about gun ownership stimulating conversation? What! A celebrity you like speaking out on an issue and challenging you because you thought he was such a cool wacky guy?
He is joking about the kind of gun pride stuff many of us joke about with people we can safely tease, but he takes the risk of doing it with anyone that cares to listen, and he has a large fan base.
I don’t like the volume of guns on the planet, I think the very existence of guns in 2013 is a bad sign that the theory of natural selection may in fact be backwards. Guns continuing to exist may just be proof that humans were meant to grow in numbers, flourish and then disappear.
The very idea of a human killing device that could easily be owned is just absurd to me. I understand the rationale that if “they” have one then “we” need one to protect ourselves, but I don’t agree with it. A castle has walls to protect its occupants from harm, it has its own weapons to cause harm to those attacking. The walls and the weapons are different from each other. Why we have not focused more research and development on making guns easier to disable and obsolete I don’t understand.
Hopefully Jim Carrey and the band of people with him cause some positive disruption in this discussion because I think the issue needs people invested in it over the long haul or we will continue to rely on guns in some countries as a crutch for security that can only be stopped when the mass of gun owners are persuaded to move on. We need to agree to a new ideal where they are not part of the culture of safety, security, entertainment and pride.
Some human societies have moved on issues child labour, genocide, womens rights and gun ownership for personal protection. I like to think that gun ownership and the advancement of public policies around it is part of the natural development of a society.
Jim Carrey’s tease to those who do not agree is not unlike past public figures who used their noterity to draw attention to an issue. We rely on those folks stuck in the public spotlight to encourage public engagement, discussion and policy development to continue to be developed.