Hang on, hang on, I know what you’re thinking. John Wick wants more gun control? John Wick? The deadliest assassin in the world? The Boogoo Gaga? The Joogoo Baba? The Boogey Man? I know, I think it’s crazy. But you gotta hear me out.
At first I never really thought about sensible gun laws because my field of work had me engaging with people who operated outside of the law entirely. How could I, in good conscience, be concerned with gun laws when every day I was shooting at and being shot by people whose whole job was to have guns for shooting me? It just felt silly. It’d be like hosting illegal knife fights and then wanting stricter knife laws. You see what I’m saying?
But I’ve had a change of heart.
When I first started being the Baba Ghanoush, and stop me if you’ve heard this, I had to shoot dead about 100 or so men for my former boss (talk about a severance package). Literally I went into one massive headquarters and shot one hundred men in the head. I thought, “shit,” ya know? This is starting to feel excessive. But it was a means to an end and I was going to live the rest of my life with my wonderful wife.
2014 comes around and surprise: my wife had late-stage cancer, died, I got a puppy, then that got killed too.
At that point, I had covered my guns in concrete. I didn’t want them anymore. They were killing machines! But the game pulled me back in and I ended up killing about a thousand more dudes.
Even still gun control wasn’t on my mind. I mean, maybe it was in the big schemes kind of way but not in the practical Let's-Start-A-Movement type of way.
“I chose this life,” is what I kept saying to myself.
“These people are a product of their environment,” I said.
“These people are beyond gun laws,” I even said once, “They’d find a way to get guns regardless.” And I can attest to that because I’ve bought them from a homeless man, a sommelier in Italy, and pretty much everywhere I’ve been. But more on that later.
Fast forward to 2017 and I’m fresh out of the game. Until, woop, gotta fulfill a blood medallion oath. (I don’t know when we can get those on the ballot, but that’s next.) I kill a woman, kill a few dudes, and then have to kill the guy who betrayed me.
Around this time was when I first started thinking about gun control in a real way, because the following happened in one night in Manhattan:
- A big guy takes a gun out of his suit. It was in the middle of a park which was kind of disconcerting but I’ve seen that before.
- A woman playing a violin takes a whole 9mm Beretta out of her violin and starts shooting me. I’m thinking 1) Ouch. 2) Who put that gun in there? Did she? Did she design it herself? And 3) What if I never walked past her? Would she just be roaming the streets, busking on corners with a gun instrument? It rubs me the wrong way.
- Then, finally, five (5) different men shoot at me in the World Trade Center subway station. Five different men. Shooting. At the World Trade Center.
But still I was not into gun control. I started to rationalize. Started to take on that NRA kind of mentality. “If there are bad men with guns on the street, there need to be good men with guns on the street.” Right? “Some jobs require guns!” And “Oh, if we start taking away guns are we also gonna take away knives and pencils?” (Which I’ve killed men with also.)
But the final straw was when I was excommunicated from the Assassins Guild. They put a 14-million-dollar bounty on my head. $14 million. And now, as I hastily type this in my notes app, and I’m not exaggerating when I say this, literally everybody in New York is trying to shoot me. Every single citizen I have passed by has a gun. The bodega man, the bus driver, the dog walker, the Elmo in Times Square. Where are these guns coming from? And I can’t even use the excuse that these people are all criminals anyway—I’ve never seen half of these assassins before in my life! Not at a luncheon, not at a Continental, not at a mixer or holiday party. These are just people that have gotten wind of the 14-million-dollar bounty. And they all have guns. My old high school teacher tried to blow me away with a Remington Pump Action Shotgun. I just can’t handle it anymore. The coupon giver at Zabar’s came at me with an RPK Soviet-designed machine gun. Why are you even able to buy that?
I really feel like I’m turning my back on my own community, but I just can’t be passive anymore. If having stricter gun laws means that not every citizen in America will be shooting at me, then I’ll happily throw mine out. Just—let's do it in one second, because I’m literally being shot at right now.