April 22nd, 2008
The guy, Melvind, who says that parts of a gun are human emotions actually commented on the Real Gun Guys post where I found the image.
I hadn’t bothered looking yesterday, but I decided to see what this guy had to say in the comments section of the Flickr page where he posted his “artwork” and on a second discussion page.
Here’s a gem:
i think all you gun owners should be shipped to a nice deserted island somewhere and be allowed to shoot the shit out of each other until there’s only of you left. then that person can blow their own skull open too.
He spends a lot of time insisting that he doesn’t hate anyone, but I’m pretty certain that his wish for gun owners to all kill each other shows serious symptoms of #1, #2, #7, and #11, likely caused by a good dose of #9 and more than a touch of #13.
He claims to want gun owners to come up with any reasons that he didn’t list, then giggles as he ignores them. For instance:
xadrian says:
I love how “defense” was not included.Melvind says:
yup…that was deliberate
That’s pretty rational. In his comments he goes on about how he would welcome anyone who could change his mind, but he also says this:
i don’t know gun history, though I don’t see how that would help me. but i do know about guns.
you point one at somebody, a piece of metal flies out of the front and then someone dies or is horrifically injured.
i don’t feel i ever need to learn any more than that.
we could toss gun law statistics back and forth but my opinion won’t be changed. they’re bad; people who own them or seek to own them are morally flawed.
So he spends so much time saying that gun owners are fearful, intolerant, closed-minded, and so on when really it’s just him all along. Which is exactly what I was getting at when I asked “Don’t project much, do you?”
He also wrote
i did come here with an open mind.
it’s still open.
I guess I have trouble squaring that with “but my opinion won’t be changed.” It’s like arguing with a nine-year-old, though I thought he wrote somewhere that he is married.
He also wrote
and can we PLEASE stop all the profanity and name-calling? it demeans this whole thing.
not long after he wrote
Basically, I’ve upset a lot of rednecks
and he seems to say “fuck” a lot for someone calling for an end to profanity and name-calling. The insisting over and over and over that he doesn’t hate gun owners gets a bit tedious. Again, he just wishes that they’d all go off and shoot each other, but apparently in a nice way.
Scrolling through the comments, it seems pretty clear that my initial call of projector was spot-on.
It’s sort of amusing how so often those claiming to have open minds are far more closed-minded than the ones they’re opposed to. It’s like the people who scream for “the truth” at the top of their lungs. They’re usually the ones lying the hardest.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:45 am
I’ve noticed a pattern with these kinds of people. It’s always ‘Peace, love and understanding’ with the left, unless you disagree with them, and then you’re a ‘morally inferior, sub-literate redneck who ought to just go off and die somewhere.’ Mighty tolerant of them if I do say so myself…
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:44 pm
I think it’s an interesting piece. I don’t agree with it, but it’s the kind of thing that I seek out, something that challenges me to look at the world differently. I did follow the Flickr thread, though. He seems to have his ups and downs, his moments of civility and uncivility. I imagine that’s part and parcel of being an artist. Or being bipolar. Being from San Francisco, you run into a lot of Melvinds. In fact, when I went to his Flickr account and saw a self-portrait, I had a good laugh. He looked EXACTLY the way I thought he would. I mean, like he was punched out of cookie dough with a cutter or something.
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Oooh. I didn’t catch the self-portrait. I think I’ll skip it.