Sorting Out The Sheeple

In the months running up to the national elections, I’m constantly approached by people wanting to know my position on “gun laws.” I’ve learned the hard way many don’t care what I think — they just want to tell me about how I’m a misanthrope and my guns are evil.

I’ve learned, too, talkin’ to those folks is useless. Even when they’re not jabbering, they’re not really listening — only suckin’ in wind for their next barrage. Trouble is, until you’re in knee-deep, you often can’t tell the sheep from the goats — or the sheeple from the good guys. Now I just hand ’em a survey. Then I’ll decide, based on their answers, whether we’re gonna have a nice conversation or a brief confrontation. You might wanta try it yourself. Here are some of the questions from mine:

Fleeing from the police after a liquor store robbery, two armed felons just burst into your kid’s school. There are two fourth-grade classrooms. The teacher in one is a former Army infantry captain, an Iraq veteran who recently married a middle-school teacher. He conceals a .45 ACP Glock Model 36 inside his waistband. The other teacher is a former college hacky-sack champion and a veteran of several anti-war demonstrations in DC. He is having an affair with a middle-school student, and he conceals a stash of marijuana in his jockey shorts. Which classroom would you prefer your 9-year old to be in?

Your two next-door neighbors were simultaneously awakened by strange noises at 2AM. Initially finding nothing wrong, they both drifted into their kitchens looking for a snack. Both are suddenly confronted across their identical breakfast bars by knife-wielding meth-freak burglars. Both decide to engage their “guest” in brief pleas for non-violent resolution of the situation. One punctuates his verbal points by gesturing with an Italian-made biscotti pastry. The other punctuates his by pointing with an Italian-made Beretta pistol. Which one is more likely to succeed?

Take The Cowboy For Backup

You’re a woman — maybe even a lady. Walking to your car in a subterranean parking structure, you round the fender and find a hulking, leering troglodyte crouched beside your car door. He rises, grinning, with a length of clothesline and a roll of duct tape in his hands. At that instant, you have your choice of one of three vehicles to pull up beside you:

One is a 420-horsepower Audi R8 piloted by a powerful corporate attorney. The latest BlackBerry is clipped to his belt and he can pull up his stock portfolio in two seconds. He boasts he’s the toughest litigator in the world of bath soap skin-irritation lawsuits.

The second is an eco-friendly Honda Element painted in “Tango Red Pearl” driven by a director of Handgun Control, Inc. A simply tres chic messenger bag over his shoulder contains Violence Policy Center leaflets and he can whip one out and into your hand in a half-second. He has said his dream is to someday direct the National Gun Confiscation Agency in nationwide warrantless door-to-door searches for firearms.

The third is a rattly, rusted Ford F-150 wrangled by a Wyoming cowboy. There’s a cocked’n’locked 1911 on his hip and he can put a 230-grain pill into a pie plate at 40 yards in a blizzard. A Ruger Mini-30 with a 20-round mag and “one up the pipe” rests in his rack.

So, which one did you choose? And if your Optional Answer was, “I’ll take the cowboy for backup, but there’s nothing here my Guardian Angel pepper-snot shooter and the HK P7 M8 in my Hoffner’s Holsters purse can’t handle,” then you’re not just a lady, but a by-God real woman too!

Deer In The Headlights

Gunshots roll like thunder through the shopping mall, and you turn just in time to see a tall, greasy-haired, pimply faux-Gothic vampire pumping a shotgun and blasting a display of Hummel figurines into plaster-dust. The look in his pinwheeling fried-marble eyes tells you he might be out to shoot more than ceramic shepherdesses and tubby tuba-tooters. Shards of what appears to have been a porcelain toadstool skitter across the marble floor to your feet as the laughing nutcase shifts his aim over a shelf of high-end cologne decanters. Your response is to:

Freeze like a deer in the headlights, emitting choked gurgling noises and slowly wetting your pants.

Break into a wild, spastic gallop into the hair salon across the way, shoving a hairdresser out into the open so you can hide behind her swiveling chair.

You close your eyes tightly and weep.

Reach for your cell-phone, suddenly realizing when seconds mean life or death, the police are only minutes away …

Step behind the cover of a concrete support pillar, pull out your new Ruger SP-101 chambered in .327 Federal Magnum, and pop that black-cloaked punk when he pauses to reload.

You are attending a pre-election political event, and you brought your 10- and 14-year olds along for a glimpse of “democracy in progress.” Screams erupt as a purple-spike-haired activist from “Anarchists United” (united? anarchists???) fumbles the pin out of a hand grenade and drops it at your feet. You are surrounded by Hilary Clinton, Charles Schumer, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, plus a 20-year old Marine Lance Corporal who just returned from a tour of duty in The Sandbox. Which one is most likely to jump on that grenade and save you and your children’s lives? Which one is most likely to throw your 10-year old onto the grenade and run away screaming?

The Omnibus Gun Control & Public Warm an’ Fuzzy Security Act of 2008 has passed, and Americans are ordered to turn in all of their firearms or face felony prosecution and possible imprisonment. Who is least likely to hand over their guns? You? The cap-and-ball revolver collector down the street? The insurance broker who shoots IDPA matches on weekends with his Kahr TP9093? A twice-convicted rapist whose convictions were overturned on appeal due to a flaw in the trial judge’s jury instructions? The retired Navy Master Chief and former Olympic Team shooter next door? Senator Dianne Feinstein? A pheasant hunter from Peoria? The Rochester, New York, carjacker who shot a suburban housewife last night in her driveway while ‘jackin’ her Chrysler mini-van? John and Helena Connor?

Most participants only make it halfway through the survey. You finished — and that tells me something about you.

Connor OUT