Make America Safe Again

I tried to put a couple of bumper stickers up for sale on the do-it-yourself sites Zazzle.com and CafePress.com, but they wouldn’t touch them due to threats of lawsuits from the NRA. If you don’t see many anti-NRA bumper stickers, you now know why. Any decent lawyer will tell you it would be totally legal if you had your own press and distribution system, but the NRA’s threats function like a preemptive SLAAAP suit. Oh well.

I’m updating this post/page yet again. The Parkland shooting seems like decades ago, and the latest, in Sante Fe, TX, is briefly in the news along with Ollie North being named as the new face of the NRA. Ollie freaking North! Once again, the NRA and the GOP are blaming “mental health” as the reason, and Ollie even suggested it was Ritalin causing all the shootings.

This page is mainly a songwriter demo to get musicians playing the song. I wrote about the origins of this song here twice before, but this time I’ve changed the title from “Blow the NRA Away” to “Vote the NRA Away.” Perhaps the change will encourage more musicians to record the song and change a few minds on the issue of gun control.

 

UPDATE: I recorded the video after I’d changed the title/chorus to “Vote the NRA Away” from the original “Blow the NRA Away,” but before I’d rewritten the first verse to make it more universal and appropriate for the times. If you are a performer and cover this tune, please use the lyrics below. It’s only the first verse that is different.

© Scott Morrison • Skeptico Music–BMI • WilliamScottMorrison.com

‘A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State,
the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’

 

Vote the NRA Away

Well America’s got a problem

About how we deal with guns

Can you pack heat anywhere you want

Just to have some fun

Do you need an Army weapon

So you can play pretend

What’s it gonna take

To make America safe again?

Every Army soldier knows

Grunt lesson number one

Your weapon is for killin’

Your gun it is for fun

Army weapons made for killin’

In full-out total war

Some say they’re so thrillin’

Guns ain’t fun enough no more.

CHORUS

Vote the NRA away

Vote the NRA away

You know if they could do it

They’d legalize grenades

Flame-throwers and bazookas

Even tanks would be OK

To the loony tune palookas

Runnin’ the NRA.

War toys are so thrillin’

They make you feel so brave

Some people make a killin’

Catering to the craze

They promote the cult of violence

‘Cause there’s money to be made

Politicians quake in silence

In the sights of the NRA.

The NRA it lobbies

It pays and pays and pays

They’ve bought off most Republicans

Who always vote their way

They say war toys are just hobbies

No threat to you and me

But they’re a clear and present danger

To our Democracy.

CHORUS

America’s Founding Fathers

Said people could bear arms

So that state militias

Could keep us all from harm

They saw state-run militias

Well-regulated and ready

Drillin’ every Saturday

Down on the village green

America’s Founding Fathers

Showed how to make our laws

Based on the Constitution

‘Cause people have their flaws.

It’s clear our Founding Fathers

Would say the NRA is wrong

Well-regulated means just what it says

And they’d second this loud and strong.

Vote the NRA away

Vote the NRA away

America’s a’prayin’

For that happy day

When there’s no Saturday Night Specials

No Glocks, no Uzis

No AK 47’s, no Mac 10’s

No AR-15’s

Vote the NRA away

Vote the NRA away

America’s a’prayin’

For that happy day…

 

 

Gun Math

I wrote a version of this about ten years ago when I was still living in Petaluma, CA. The statistics are based on the 2000 Census.

Lets apply some elementary math to the claim that there are _AT LEAST_ 2.5 million crimes prevented every year by law-abiding citizens brandishing guns.

According to the Census Bureau, there were 281,421,906 Americans as of April 1, 2000. Dividing 2.5 million by the total population yields a percentage of .00888 (rounded down). If the gun supporters are correct, to get an idea of how often someone in your area is saved by a gun, simply multiply .00888 by your area’s population, then divide by 365.

I’m writing this from Petaluma, California, population 54,478, a town so typical of the rest of America that Ronald Reagan shot (no pun intended) the parade for his famous “Morning In America” re-election campaign commercials here, and blockbuster movies such as “American Graffitti” and “Peggy Sue Got Married” were filmed here just because it is so “typical.” I submit that if any town is likely to be considered a valid statistical model for the average American town, Petaluma is it. It has an ethnically diverse population, and also has its share of crime, including the nationally televised Polly Klaas kidnapping/murder case of several years ago.

So lets run the numbers for this “typical” town. Multiplying 54,548 by .00888 yields a result of 484.38 crimes that were allegedly prevented here last year, or an average of 1.32 every day (rounded down). Given what I know of this area, and attempting to apply common sense in evaluating these results, the numbers claimed by gun supporters seem to me to be about as valid a reflection of the reality which surrounds me as a Mother Goose fairy tale.

I have no hard data, but common sense tells me that if guns do prevent crimes here, it happens maybe once every couple of years, and certainly not 1.32 times every day, 9.24 times every week, 39.6 times every month, or 484.38 times every year. Looked at another way, if the gun supporters are correct, in the twenty years I’ve been in these parts 9,680 Petalumans have been saved from crimes by guns.

This is not to say that there may indeed be cases in Petaluma where brandishing a gun has prevented a crime, but neither I nor anyone I know has ever heard of one.

Scott Morrison

PS–Always remember–guns don’t kill people, bullets kill people.