Small and Strapped

By Crispin Sartwell

Debates about gun control often focus on the second amendment to the Constitution, and are infected with much the same ambiguity that it is. That is why we who stand up for the right of Americans to come strapped must change strategies. Laws restricting gun ownership violate the clause of the fourteenth amendment that guarantees all Americans, no matter their stature, equal protection under the law..

I am what many would call a "short person," and as such I have been subject to oppressions without name or number. I have never dated a super-model, for example, because few women will tolerate a man whose hair tickles her armpit.

In fact, the pharmaceutical industry is poised to define my height as a disease and sell me their products for its treatment.

When I was a little kid, I developed a variety of strategies to survive and maintain my pride on the playground and in the streets. In elementary school, I formed an organization known as the Mini-Marauders: we liked to jump en masse on bullies, or perhaps merely large people, and tear at their cellulite with our teeth, like tiny weasels. Since therapy, I realize that our feral snarls were really cries for help. But had I been carrying in fourth grade, I would not have had to resort to such unseemly behavior.

In Junior High, I was known as the Mouth, and I was allied with the Muscle: Steve Porter. I would thrash you verbally, and if you didn't like it, you could deal with Steve, who would thrash you physically. Had I habitually packed heat (perhaps the aptly-named Colt Equalizer, for example), I could have fought my own battles and preserved my own pride. What kept me from doing so? My absurd respect for the law, though obviously it did not have a similar respect for me.

Mankind has paid a hideous price for the deep insecurities it has inflicted on short men. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon: short guys who tried to conquer the known world simply because they thought that somehow that would make them bigger. Napoleon, in fact, has lent his name to that complex of self-loathing, megalomania, and petty malice by which all short men are infected, and for which the whole world has suffered.

Consider the film roles favored by Steve Buscemi and Tim Roth. Why are the small psychopaths they portray so plausible? Because Steve Buscemi and Tim Roth understand from deep inside the madness that comes with being a micro-morph.

If the puny, teensy, compact, nanoid, lilliputian, runtish, diminuitive, stunted, bantamweight pipsqueaks among us are to protect ourselves from the lummoxes that bestride the world like lunkheaded colossi, we need lots of big firearms.

It may appear to you that there is a fallacy in my argument. "Professor Sartwell," you may be saying, "if we strike all gun laws from the books, doltish bubbas will be able to arm themselves as easily as you will. Then you'll find yourself back in the same hopelessly oppressive situation in which you began."

Think again, you big chump. Small people have many advantages in a firefight. Ponder well the image of the broad side of the barn. And in proportion to our size, the itsy-bitsy are elusive. Furthermore, short people are by nature wily and clever, and almost anything, even an unmown suburban lawn, suffices to afford us cover.

Little guys are masters of verbal abuse, and you should never underestimate the importance of talking good smack during an exchange of fire. When people are enraged by a really good insult, they are tempted to act rashly and leave themselves vulnerable, especially if they - like all large people - are fundamentally unreflective and lack the intellectual resources and verbal skills to respond in kind.

Perhaps all men under 5' 8" should be provided by a just nation with hand cannons when they register for the draft at age 18. Those of greater stature could be supplied with Derringers. We the infinitesimal are not asking for special privileges, but we demand simple equality for all Americans.

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