Scenarios in which I, Ross Murray, might conceivably need a gun

1.

I’m a cop.

2. forces.

3. I’m a member of the forces that aren’t necessarily armed but like to be armed in order to feel better about themselves.

4. I’m Liam Neeson.

5. It’s 1802.

6. I need to protect my livestock but only if I am able to use the phrase “them varmints been at ma henhouse aggin!”

7. I need to provide food for my family, and all the grocery stores have been shut down due to an outbreak of ecola, the “New Live-bacteria Beverage That’s A Real Fresh-maker!” but actually turned out to be a real death-maker, and so with no provision for provisions, I have to take to the woods (but not before letting my food-deprived eyes linger hungrily over the cats, until I recall what I’ve previously seen those cats licking), where in said woods it is man against beast, as well as other man against another beast, or maybe even a bunch of I’m a member of the armed men against the very same beast, which could be cause for conflict (possibly armed conflict) in this dog-eat-dog, maneat-cat dystopia we’ve created for ourselves, so it’s a good thing I have a gun. Or, alternatively, I could just go vegan.

8. The above scenario has led to a zombie outbreak, as these things tend to do, and I need a gun to protect my family from the encroaching hoard of undead, though given the nature of zombies and the killing thereof, vis-à-vis the necessity to incapacitate the brain, aka head shots, I had best be confident in my targeting skills, given that bullets in this apocalyptic hellscape are likely precious commodities, so perhaps a firearm may not be the most useful tool in my arsenal compared to the indisputable effectiveness, especially in close quarters, of a chainsaw or even, given the likelihood of gas rationing, your tried-and-true machete, which you have to admit is not only more effective but fun.

9. I’m a biathlete, in which case I really need to step up my cross-country skiing skills.

10. I’m a marauder.

11. She’s a marauder.

12. Wouldn’t you like to be a marauder too?

13. I am confronted with an emergency of a marauding-based nature, one that calls for a good guy with a gun to take out a bad guy with a gun, and I am said good guy with a gun. Although, how can I be sure I’m good? Where does badness end and goodness begin? Is it not true that we can be good one moment, bad the next? Can we not be good and bad at the same time, sometimes twice on Saturdays? Sure, I believe in liberty, peace, fairness, but is it not also a fact that I snarkily point out grammar errors in otherwise well-meaning public signs when surely it doesn’t matter that they wrote “everyday” instead of “every day,” since only the doltiest of dolts would fail to understand the sense they are after? And in 1986, did I not spend the weekend with my girlfriend only to break up with her over the phone as soon as she got home, which was the 1986 equivalent of ditch-by-texting? Does that sound like a good guy to you? Thus, the argument could be made that a truly better good guy with a gun might be justified in taking me out, a guy of lesser good. And to be clear, I don’t mean “taking me out” as in “dating,” because clearly he’s too good for me.

14. I live in a high crime neighbourhood and would rather lethally shoot someone than have my porcelain bust of Tommy Lesorda stolen from my home.

15. I live in a place where everyone has a gun because everyone else has a gun so I need a gun to protect myself from the people who bought a gun because the other people have guns. It’s just common sense.

16. For fun, although that would not so much be a “need” as a “want,” like I want to call every constitution-quoting, gun-fetishing, march-mocking troglodyte on social media “human drain gunk,” but I don’t need to.

17. The deer keep eating my beet plants.

18. Penis problems.