"While it is often easy to kill a bunch of unarmed people, it's much more difficult when some of the potential victims are shooting back."
As a family man who enjoys mall shopping, I find myself thrown into desperate confusion by Mr. Kopel’s statement. The obvious question:
Where are potential victims like me supposed to keep their AK-47s when shopping?
Certainly not in my hands. In the mall, I’m often pushing a double stroller whose handles so loaded with shopping bags that I can’t turn an aisle in The Gap without knocking down a box of scrunchies or another small potential victim. In the basket below the stroller are three plush jackets squished so tightly that their sheer mass threatens to create a black hole – which would explain what happened to that pink binkie we had as recently as the Hallmark store. No room there for an AK.
Even if I did have room for my own PDA (“personal defense ally” – Mr. Kopel, feel free to appropriate), My three-year-old, Josie, can't eat her Mrs. Fields cookie and load her own rifle at the same time. What ever are we to do?
One solution would be to modify food court trays with rifle-holders. This concerns me because of an ongoing disagreement I have with the China Wok over the amount of chicken in their “chicken with chicken.” Things could get ugly.
Another idea: mall security. Someone should try that.
Of course, I’m being completely silly. AK-47s aren’t made for mall shopping. That’s what handguns are for! A glock can fit in my pocket, in the stroller pouch, or in a bag with my Old Navy wool-style sweaters. Plus, how easy is to imagine hot pink gun holsters as the next big fashion accessory at The Limited?
Better yet, grenades. They have the kind of shape and texture my own potential target-children love and fit easily in their Elmo cookie-stained palms.
Still, all this fun gun stuff does paint a rather violent picture of society – particularly for my susceptible children, who are probably better off spending quality time at home watching pro wrestling and Power Rangers. And having everyone in the mall packing heat does make it a little hard to find those pesky terrorists and your neighborhood stone cold killer.
So until someone makes it easier, I’ll continue to arm myself solely with my overextended debit card, and train my fantasies away from food court shoot-outs and back to a more socially acceptable focal point: the display window of Victoria’s Secret.