Twenty-five years ago I used to hang out with a very good martial artist. I don’t know the terms — let’s just say his black belt was blacker than most. One of the things that came up in those gun-control neutral years was his view that any concave-chested drunk can whip out a pistol and blow him away. No hard work, no training, no concentration on the ethical and moral values involved in taking someone down — just pull a trigger. I’ve done some thinking lately on how we, as a nation, can enlist the admirable ethical values of martial arts and maybe penetrate into the antique hindbrains of gun nuts. Here are a couple ideas for an ad campaign sponsored by whatever group is on the side of reason.

(1) A martial artist appears onscreen. He is thirty-five. He wears street clothes — maybe a t-shirt that shows he’s in good-shape, but not muscle-bound. He picks up a pistol off a table, removes the clip, plucks the bullets out of the clip, places all the components on the table.

MARTIAL ARTIST: I’ve spent twenty years becoming the man I want to be. A third degree black belt. (PERFORMS IMPRESSIVE MOVES) I just want you  to know there’s a word for men who don’t feel safe unless they’re packing heat. Pussies. Yeah, pussies. Now, I have to admit, a pussy can blow me away in a second. But please quit trying to pretend you’re a man of principle and American values.

He flattens the clip with a mighty blow. Then he tosses the pistol, clip and bullets, etc, aside.

(2) Attractive woman in her forties.

WOMAN: Guy comes up to me at the hotel bar. Cute. We hit it off.  Three hours and six drinks later we go to my room. First thing, he pulls a gun and aims it at Harry Reid, who’s on TV. Pkew, he goes, Pkew Pkew. Then he laughs and he says C’mon, laugh, look who I just shot. Harry Reid, a real BIG SHOT Heh heh heh. It took me about forty-five minutes of delicate negotiation to get him out of there. I checked out of the hotel twenty minutes after he left…with his (reaches in purse, removes gun, looks at it carefully) Glock. This is a Glock. I don’t want it. I just didn’t want him to have it. (Hands gun to camera).

Okay, you get the idea. Ridicule of gun owners. Will it merely cause a civil war or will it help get these gun nuts out of our hair?