The Nightmare of Everyday Life

I woke from a blissful slumber yesterday, just an ordinary day.

Moments before waking, my phone's alarm went off like a nuclear shockwave, jolting me from that blissful slumber into terrifying reality, leaving me shaking for hours.

I lifted the covers, and immediately the cool air from my air conditioning left ice crystals forming upon my delicate skin.

I swung my legs off of the bed and immediately pulled a muscle in my groin, sending fire shooting through the nerves of my body, leaving me incapacitated and weak.

I hobbled to the toilet and had a morning pee, which left me dehydrated from loss of fluids. I felt as if I had just trudged for days through the Sahara desert.

I stepped into the shower and the hot water scalded me, leaving me with third degree burns across 90% of my body.

I dried off after my shower and felt what little skin remained sloughed off by the roughness of the towel.

I brushed my teeth and felt the bristles of the brush, powered by the frightening motor held within, tearing massive chunks off of my gums and chipping through the enamel of my teeth.

I sipped delicately at my morning cup of coffee, and felt my lips being seared by the unforgiving molten lava in my Frozen mug. I can still see Elsa's smiling face, mocking me.

I got dressed carefully, the rough fabrics of denim and cotton seizing my body hairs and plucking them out ferociously, as if I were in some Vietnamese torture camp.

I stepped outside of my apartment, and immediately went blind as the mid-day sun shone ultraviolent death rays into my eyes.

I stumbled to my car and fell into the seat, turning the key and having a heart attack in fear as the terrible roar of the four-cylinder death engine of my Corolla turned over.

I drove carefully out of the parking lot of my apartments, enduring the whiplash and partial paralysis of the speed bumps spitefully shaking my car.

I dished out my life savings buying a sandwich at gunpoint from Subway, as they filled the loaves of bread with poisonous materials that would likely render me sick for days.

Returning home, I switched on my work computer and settled into the slavery of my day job, prepared to be humiliated beyond belief for having to work for a living.

In short, yesterday was a day like any other day. I write this as tribute to the sheer suffering and torment that Mr. Gersh Kuntzman subjected himself to when he fired the terrifying AR-15. I have just a few select words about this issue:

Gersh, you are no martyr for having fired a rifle. Knock it off. A 7 year old can fire that thing with no problem. Look, here's a 7 year old firing it.

And either the blood vessels in your skin are worryingly delicate, or your shoulder is fine.

And you did not have "Temporary PTSD." Speaking on behalf of only myself, but echoing what is surely the sentiment of anyone who has ever suffered from this, you don't just get "temporary PTSD" and then recover a few hours later. This is the most insulting use of the term since, and possibly more-so than, Melody Hensley's "Twitter PTSD."

As for your follow-up rebuttal, I'd like to say that what you said regarding masculinity and femininity is just as, if not moreso, misogynistic than anything that was said to you following your original article. Women are just as capable of handling firearms like grown adults (even when they're only seven years old) as a man. To draw a correlation between women and your experience with an AR-15 "bruising" you is insulting to any woman who has ever handled a firearm -- from the ones on funny YouTube recoil videos to the professional shooters who hold records and can fire and reload firearms faster than the human eye can easily track.

So congratulations, Gersh. You managed not to kill anyone when holding that 'death machine', but you certainly shot someone: Yourself. In the foot. That's a metaphor, by the way. Not a scary death threat, since we're on the topic of grossly wild exaggerations.