The American Jerk Editorial: Editorial: Losers With Guns Are Still Losers

To parents: these two fine young men aren't disposing of black sand in leftover pipe. There is also no such thing as a 9 mm potato gun.

As a young American who regularly wears a black leather trenchcoat with my hair in a ponytail while chain-smoking, I can’t tell you how pleased I was when a couple of teenaged whackos from something called the "Trenchcoat Mafia" went berserk in Colorado at the end of April. These racist bastards have forever given a bad name to a fine Italian organization that subsidizes my gambling jones for only two points over the vig. On the plus side, Americans everywhere are now keenly aware of the potentially explosive danger that we non-descript middle class white people can pose to society.

On April 19^th, I was just some jerk with a dark sense of humor and, well, a trenchcoat. One day later, I’m treated like Don Corleone. Since the Columbine High School shootings, total strangers have looked at me with thinly disguised terror. On the plus side, people go out of the way to make sure I move quickly through bank lines, and people rarely ask me to extinguish my cigarettes anymore. Even close friends have gotten edgy around me, particularly after we published our May issue. ("Hi, Rob! That’s a great picture of the Jonestown Massacre you have on your front page! Why yes, this is mace! Please back away slowly.")

However, speaking as someone with a stand-up act and a Web site that revolve around violent humor, if I have to hear one more person tell me: "Don’t even joke about that, because these days you never can tell…" I am going to stab that pacifist bastard to death.

"Many are terrified that the knowledge to build homemade bombs could fall into the hands of children, apparently believing that only fully-grown, self-supporting sociopaths should have access to this technology."

I think that’s what disturbs people the most about this crime: the idea that there might not be a motive, and that you "just can’t tell" who’s gonna snap, because you can’t understand why. That question of "why?" has been resonating across this country since the tragedy. I have developed my own unique and complex theory on this, and even called my local television news and offered, free of charge, to appear on the 6 o’clock broadcast and submit my opinion: "Because they were assholes."

This kind of random violence does beg the question of why, but perhaps we aren’t ready to believe that some people are just bent like paperclips and should be whacked out at birth.

A lot of people have speculated that these two degenerates were trying to emulate Hitler. Eric Harris, one of the shooters, supposedly had a Web site devoted to everyone’s favorite wacky, one-testicled fascist, and I heard Harris and co-loser Dylan Klebold used to high-five each other at moments of victory (Like a good Dungeons and Dragons twenty-sided die roll) and shout, "Heil Hitler!" These exclamations were apparently considered by their keenly observant parents to be manifestations of an interest in political science.

Do you think these loser whackjobs actually thought that when they got to hell, Hitler would be happy to see them? "Great," Hitler said, "Two more wannabes! What’s your body count? Thirteen between you? Are you shitting me? If you got to even the low six figures, we could talk… Why don’t you find someone who gives a damn? I think Dahmer’s over in the kitchen…"

Many people are more disturbed over the sheer number of highly destructive homemade explosive devices these two morons used in their assault on the school. They had all kinds of bombs, from simple pipe bombs to some mutant device made from a propane tank. Many are terrified that the knowledge to build homemade explosives could fall into the hands of children, apparently believing that only fully-grown, self-supporting sociopaths should have access to this technology.

Now, I have read The Anarchist’s Cookbook, and I know that anything from bathtub nitroglycerine to professional-grade blasting gelatin can be made in the kitchen. However, I also know that they all make a big fucking mess. Not to cast aspersions on Harris’s and Klebold’s parents, but I’m reasonably certain that the reek of nitric acid cannot be easily mistaken for roasting s’mores. And if your stove glows deep green and emits smoke that causes the family cat to hemorrhage, your children are not cooking TV dinners. In addition, most teenagers do not have a legitimate need for a crate full of mercury switches and kitchen timers. Finally, please be aware that while you may think your child is showing an interest in helping out with yard work, five hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer is enough to put the average suburban lawn into orbit.

Others are more concerned that two high school seniors had access to firearms. While the United States is fiercely protective of its citizens’ right to bear arms, we must be aware of the potential danger signs that could potentially forewarn of violence of this kind. For example, legitimate teenaged squirrel hunters do not usually request armor-piercing ammunition. It is also generally not normal to purchase a twelve-gauge pump action shotgun and a hacksaw at the same time. To be fair, it is easy to understand how Harris’s and Klebold’s parents could have been blind to these danger signs; many harmless sportsmen use rapid-fire assault weapons to butcher skeet.

And yet television news personalities continue to ask how parents or friends could possibly have guessed that their openly racist, loser sons might use an arsenal of bombs and firearms larger than the national armory of Guam to execute an attack that they had been telling friends about for an entire year.