It’s the 4th of July, and what’s more American than a whole lot of assholes claiming they need guns to “defend themselves”? Against what, I don’t know. But good timing.

Not my first Robert Lowell rodeo.

Violence
–Robert Lowell
From the first cave, the first farm, the first sage,
inalienable our human right to murder —
“We must get used,” they say, “to the thought of guns;
we must get used to seeing guns; we must
get used to using guns.” Guns too are moral. Guns
failed Che Guevara, Marie Antoinette,
Leon Trotsky, the children of the Tsar:
chivalrous ornaments to power. Tom Paine said
Burke pitied the plumage and forgot the dying bird.
How can a plucked bird live? Whoever puts
arms in the hands of the people is a criminal,
arms given the people are always used against the people;
the only guns that will not kill the owner
are forged by insight… fear made wise by anger.