The big bad wolf was hungry
And of course, he wanted meat
So he searched the forest pathways
For a little girl to eat

Red Riding Hood was headed
For her Grandma’s house that day
Her path, though, turned a corner
And the Wolf was in her way!

The poor girl never stood a chance
Against a wolf attacking
But this tale ended differently,
Cos Little Red was packing.

… Or so they tell the story,
As the NRA have done
In the fairy tale adventures
Of a Good Guy With A Gun

While the news reports a story
That’s as common as it’s sad,
Where a young boy shoots his sister
Or his best friend, or his dad

Let’s give everybody weapons
And the world will be polite
And we’ll all of us be safer…
It’s a fairy tale, all right.

Apparently, the NRA has gotten into the children’s fairy tale business, rewriting classic tales so that the poor, victimized children are able to stand up for themselves, cos they’re packing heat.

In the stories, the gun owners are calm, cool, and collected, in the midst of dangerous situations they are able to de-escalate through the display of a potentially lethal weapon. They are almost entirely unlike any actual humans I have ever known, and their stories are written with all the subtlety you might expect from a propaganda campaign. These young Responsible Gun Owners would almost convince you that the world would be a safer place if all children were armed.

Almost. Until you put down the fairy tale book and pick up the newspaper. Or, for some of us, think about personal experience. My parents taught marksmanship, so we had rifles when we were young. Looking back, despite NRA approved gun safety lessons, we did enough stupid stuff with guns that we were probably lucky to have grown up at all. Well, my best friend in 5th grade didn’t actually make it to adulthood. When it came time for my parents to distribute the guns to my generation, none of us wanted them. So some are now in a museum, and the rest have been destroyed.

Which, I suppose, leaves my house vulnerable to Big Bad Wolf attacks.