The other night, I was dining with friends and fellow members of The Worthless Sons & Daughters of the Wealthy Landowners, Santa Clarita-Velveeta Chapter. Among our cowboy hat crowd, the Second Amendment naturally came up. My friends were shocked at my stance on concealed carry.
I’m against it.
I’m not against it in principle, theory or practice. It’s personal. You see, I’ve lost 50 pounds since last year. I’m teetering dangerously close to 200 pounds. I can now see things like my silver tea tray-sized rodeo belt buckle, boots and potentially dangerous loose boards covering up mineshafts along the paseos. Carrying a loaded 1-pound .357 Magnum, tucked into the back of my belt? It has drawbacks.
Dear Mr. SCV,
Not one to be picayune, but couldn’t help notice you attributed the .357 Magnum to weighing just a pound. It’s actually about TWO POUNDS, unloaded, and, a pinch shy of THREE when lovingly jammed with go-ka-blooey cartridges.
Keep those donations flowing!
Sincerely,
Charlton Heston
Former NRA President and Oscar-winner, From Heaven
Dear Chuck,
Absolute Christmas hearing from you! Gotcha on the revolver weight discrepancy. Actually, I file down the firing pin (like, a whole lot) for fast draws, hence the .5-to-1.5-pound difference. Please note. I do recycle the steel firing pin shavings and donate them to the Santa Clarita Chapter of Recently Divorced Rodeo Queens With Low Self Esteem for education purposes so that in the future, they can make better choices in their colorful, wanton and varied love lives.
Put in a good word up there for me, hombre!
Señor SClarita
One of the unintended consequences of losing all this weight is that I’m between jean sizes (Circus Tent to Size 34). This presents problems. Formerly snug and tooled cowboy belts now wrap around my waist in 11 complete circles. To keep excess beltage from riding up to my chin, I have to attach said belt to my previous lifetime Fat Pants (no relation to the old 1930s blind blues singer) via little vise grips. Fourteen of them. If I were to stick a revolver behind my back into my trousers, engineering would fall victim to gravity. My jeans, 12 feet of tooled cowboy belt, loaded revolver, bullets and dignity would be lying there in a non-OSHA clump, around my ankles, on the floor, where, at night, germy cockroaches frolic.
Just walking around with a drawn gun doesn’t work. Try typing. You’re constantly switching the revolver back and forth, from hand-to-hand. Try cutting a steak while holding a loaded weapon, or, worse, peeling an orange. Constantly holding a weapon brings unwanted judgment and people think you’re a public menace, which, in their defense, they have a point.
What if I were confronted by several dozen rock-throwing, angry, store-looting youths? I reach for my concealed carry, just north of my heinie crack.
“HEINIE CRACK!”
Can’t touch this. If that’s not a lyric from an old M.C. Hammer song, I don’t know what is.
Faces distorted, the gang charges. I reach for my piece, only to discover I’m just standing there, pants around my ankles.
“Pants around my ankles …” Lyric from a Deborah Harry forlorn disco love ballad?
Forget the Concealed Carry. Just buying a handgun comes with the Annoying Oil Slick Hair Gel Newsom 1,243% ammo tax. And the required 315,006 pages of “Be Honest. You Can Talk To Us. We’re California. Have You Ever Been Or Are You Considering Being A Nut Case?” forms. With questions like …
QUESTION #103,496 — “If you could go back in time and save just five of the nice gunfighters from the original ‘Magnificent 7’ movie, who would they be and why?” Or,
“QUESTION #72 — Back in 1967, you asked Sheila “Cha-Cha” Muldooney, a real nasty North Oaks coed and future fornicator well-known to the FBI, to the Hart High Jr. Prom. Fortunately, she said, “No.” What were you thinking?”
You’d think blow guns, like Cha-Cha, are different. Not in You Guys Are No Fun Anymore California. Rioting, looting, pillaging or torching a house of worship? They’re legal, if not encouraged. But blow guns? Big no-no followed by several hundred “tuts…” I’d have to move to own a blow gun. Like, to Borneo. Everyone in Borneo carries a blow gun. They don’t conceal blow guns in Borneo because, according to several aging copies from Councilman Cameron Smyth’s borderline porno National Geographic childhood collection, nobody wears clothes in Borneo plus they eat people, and monkeys, so, unless you have a fabulously disarming smile, people, and, for that matter, monkeys, will notice you’re carrying 8 feet of skimpy irrigation pipe that expels a poison dart. That’s how COVID started.
“Pffffttttt…!!!” Person, probably Republican, grabs neck, pulls out feathered dart, swoons, but not before realizing, “… a lot of good this stupid mask did me …”
Primitive blow guns. A snappy way to mitigate the Homeless Problem? Thin the herd of Democrats? I’m not at all suggesting using poison darts. Water down the payload. Instead of the deadly curare, like our friends in Santa Clarita’s sister city, The Amazon use, try Pepsi. Unlike my beloved Classic Coke, Pepsi enters the blood stream immediately, causing erectile dysfunction, nausea, diahreekie and hallucinations.
Dear Mr. SCV,
(In a sing-song voice) No … it … does-n’t …
Best,
Michael Jackson
In Heaven, For Pepsi
Except for the occasional diesel leaks and pants stains, maybe I should just consider a Concealed Flame Thrower. Flame throwers are legal in this state. Seriously. No background checks, either. For now. At checkout, the helpful Home Depot clerk won’t even ask — “Pesky backyard Viet Cong?”
But. You know California. They’re always cooking up some new red tape. When the bureaucrats start regulating harmless flame throwers and asking questions, I’ll just smile fetchingly. I’ll tell authorities that me and my flame thrower’s preferred pronouns are “Hopeless Romantics” and we just want to start a flame in your heart …
Living here in Santa Clarita for like — months now — John Boston is Earth’s most prolific humorist and satirist. Visit his bookstore at johnbostonbooks.com.
