Firearms & food: A bold policy proposal for right-thinking people.
The latest effort at rudimentary gun control legislation has failed even to emerge from the United States Senate, and in any event its prospects in the more atavistic House of Representatives were beyond bleak. The failure to take measures to reduce a plague of violence unmatched in any other prosperous country, and quite a few impoverished ones, is a national disgrace.
The failure stems from two causes, an unhinged and inhumane rump of fanatics with buckets of money, and an emphasis by safety proponents on the wrong approach. The idiocy of sociopaths like Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association is self-evident and requires no explication.
The reasons why advocates for reform share a misguided perspective require some explaining. Attempts at imposing background checks or banning assault weapons never stood a chance, but the good news lies in the fact that neither measure would have proven either effective or desirable.
Instead, the United States should approach the debate from a refreshing culinary angle. We could increase our national stature, enhance the pleasure of countless people in several ways, reduce the proportion of hunting accidents, provide employment opportunities and assist the economic recovery from recession while providing a healthy and, reasonably, safe outlet for people who have difficulty with anger management. Perhaps the most beneficial fallout from the Firearms for Food initiative will be its dissemination of traditional values.
Enacting any kind of legislation to regulate firearms, however pusillanimous, would of itself improve the reputation of the United States with our European allies. It is more fun to beat foreigners at something than it is to impress them, however, and as our wonderful president George W. Bush had the genius to understand, cooperation with allies smacks of appeasement.
In recent years Americans have surrendered the mantle of culinary innovation that only our exceptional nation deserves to wear. It is some, but not much, solace that the French have taken themselves out of the running with their hidebound approach to food as in all things.
First it was the British whose reputation soared despite their sodden vegetables and hallucinatory insistence, inspired, perhaps, by the paintings of Francis Bacon, on eating whole animals, including viscera, organs, even heads and feet. They have landed with a thud, and whose cuisine could be less worthy of fame or fashion? Then came Spain with its kitchens infested by live infant eels, pyromaniacs and demented chemists. At least that fad has faded. Now, however, everyone is booking flights to Nordic igloos where austere chefs forage for arctic roots, oily fish, pine needles and bitter berries.
We can return to our rightful point at the top of the heap by taking firearms into the kitchen. Nothing rips into flesh like hollow-nosed dumdums from the fifty round clip of an assault rifle. The texture that results is not possible to obtain by chopping, grinding or slicing, and the undertones of gunpowder and lead that the process imparts to food are impossible to duplicate by other means.
Nobody anywhere will take this new cuisine as anything but our own: What could be more American than a lot of guns? They are as All-American as apple pie and will let us own the future of food.
This would be no limited cuisine. The basic technique should be applied to all manner of flesh, whether fruit, meat, poultry or vegetable. Various caliber weapons with different muzzle velocities each impart their own unique textures and flavors, and the occasional explosion that follows the use of a grenade launching accessory (much like the sausagemaking attachment to a countertop Kitchenaid mixer) will liven things even more.
There can be little doubt that Americans face an epidemic of obesity, heart disease and diabetes thanks to the agricultural-industrial complex, but who cares? Anorexia is worse because overeating is enjoyable. Neither the government nor anyone else has the right to tell anyone what to eat, and if the fatties die early that is their choice.
The problem lies not with our freedom to choose but rather with proposed remedies that would infringe on our god-given rights under the Constitution, which dieticians, nutritionists and lunch ladies brainwashed by the Teachers’ Union ought to read rather than subvert. If the socialists can require nutritional information to be printed on convenience foods, then any of our cherished rights are at risk. Next thing we know the government will ban our beloved incandescent bulbs, remove lead from gasoline or require a license just to drive.
Scolds like Mark Bittman and Michael Pollan want to eliminate our right to microwave readymeals. They would pull people back to the kitchen even though cooking is a bore. Gunfire, however, is fun, and addicts of the processed food that the liberals decry could be enticed to buy raw ingredients voluntarily because they could shoot them up.
Too few Americans own guns because the drive to a shooting range can be inconvenient, and the tiresome, messy business of sloping through the woods to kill things understandably puts people off hunting. Bringing the shooting range into the kitchen solves these problems. The ease of home shooting is obvious, and the more squeamish among us may take solace in the fact that the flesh they mutilate is dead to begin with. The reduction in hunting accidents that will result from the shift of shooting from forest to suburb is but one of many ancillary benefits.
Research by the Cato Institute proves that the transition to cooking with firearms will increase the gross domestic product by 53%, create 3,141,592 jobs and boost spending on emergency medical care so much that it will be possible to repeal Obamacare.
Expenditure on the reconstruction of kitchens to accommodate shooting ranges, coupled with the uptick in firearm sales, will transform the landscape as well as the economy. Population flight from unamerican enclaves like Manhattan, San Francisco and Northampton, Massachusetts, with their outmoded little kitchens unable to support the new technology will create permanent conservative majorities in Congress.
The nation will turn to faith-based values. As gun ownership increases, the atheist campaign for so-called ‘marriage equality’ will fade, because homosexuals do not own guns.
Just as good, the Heritage Foundation estimates that the demand for cars will increase by nearly 33.3333% as the cities empty and avid cooks move to the suburbs. More urban areas will resemble Detroit, where young if weird entrepreneurs have unparalleled opportunities to establish organic vegetable farms and holistic bakeries, as well as avant-garde art studios, amidst the arson and decay. Everybody benefits from fusing firearms with food.
All this requires a nuanced approach. Handguns and single shot rifles are useless when it comes to cooking and therefore should be banned. Shotguns will not produce the refinement of flavor that it is possible to achieve with an assault weapon or heavy machine gun, but then some cooks are less accomplished and more impatient than others. They may lack the skill or patience to fire multiple rounds; the single blast of a shotgun can be a form of convenience cooking. Shotguns therefore may remain legal but should be discouraged by intrusive regulation because they would not contribute to the initiative aimed at improving our cuisine.
It is common knowledge that a significant proportion of chefs, estimated by the Club for Growth at some 51.7%, are clinically unhinged if not deranged, so background checks or other forms of socialist surveillance are a nonstarter if we are to return to National Greatness through this technological transformation of the economy.
Except for government subsidies to the manufacturers and purchasers of firearms, the free market in them and food must be allowed to flourish. The only prerequisite to the purchase of an assault rifle or Gatling gun should be proof of membership in the Tea Party, a pro-life advocacy organization or an evangelical church.
To ensure that misguided attempts to limit gun ownership do not arise, assault weapons and heavy machine guns need no longer be classified as weapons. If ketchup can be a vegetable them guns can be kitchen appliances.
The Firearms for Food initiative even has united normally antagonistic lobbying organizations; the Koch brothers and Carl Rove, for instance, have pledged millions of dollars to back the effort, and Dick Cheney secretly has donated an undisclosed amount of cash via Scooter Libby’s Swiss bank account.
To do your part and allow godfearing Americans citizens proudly to chant ‘We’re Number One!’ again, send donations to:
www.britishfoodinamerica.com
26 Broadway, 17th floor
New York
New York 10004
After all, freedom isn’t free.