Geriatric Scare

By Bill Maher

America’s senior citizens are arming themselves to the false teeth.   

According to the Wall Street Journal, “The National Rifle Association says 22,739 people over 65 took basic firearm training courses from NRA-certified instructors in 2015, four times the number five years earlier. An NRA spokesman said the growth in that age category was much faster than the overall rate.”

Men and women in their 70s, 80s and even 90s are arming themselves after watching their local news and Fox News and deciding that they are sitting ducks for threats like Islamic terrorists and Mexicans rapists.

I’m all for self-protection but, when my Grandma was in her 90s, we didn’t trust her with the remote. 

More WSJ: “Stephen Eyler, 71… began thinking about buying a pistol after two incidents in which he and his wife, Shirley, felt threatened by strangers.  The Eylers worried about random shootings, people with mental problems and ‘radicals,’ Mr. Eyler said: ‘You see it on the news almost every day.’  In early March, after researching guns on the Internet, he bought two Glock semiautomatic pistols, one for himself and a smaller model for his wife…” 

Glock semiautomatics! Because Fox News and Donald Trump told him he should be pissing himself… even more so than usual. Is that really who we want packing – shaky, frightened people with bursitis who get cranky if they haven’t had dinner by 4pm? 

I know we’re “the gun country” and there’s a constitutional right, but here’s the recipe for (even further) disaster: we’ve got self-serving politicians and the media convincing everyone that they’re not safe, and a rampant gun culture where firearms are being held up as our great problem-solving “equalizer.”