Man wielding bible like it's a gun

Ungodly Demagoguery of Gun Mongers

Another prescient uncanny tidbit reared its head in reality after I’d written about it in my Other Worldly novel series. It’s not a fun or feel-good way to promote Alien Sensation that launched in June, but here goes…

Recently I saw a Twitter post deriding a disgusting ad for none other than the NRA selling what it calls “Diversion/Concealment books.” Just $49.95 for a set of two of these fake hollow tomes the NRA claims is “perfect for hiding valuable jewelry, documents or defensive handguns.”

Here’s the ungodly detail: The “books” are depicted as bibles with the gilded words Higher Power printed on the covers.

Because what could be holier than offensive gun violence touted as “defensive” or justified in the name of a deity?

For comparison, here’s an (spoiler alert) excerpt from the opening scene of Alien Sensation, initially drafted last year:

A maniacal glint in the newcomer’s eyes mirrored toxic energy wafting from him like waves of sarin gas. He smelled as vile as he looked. It was a bible not a gun he brandished as he rushed the podium, but the searing threat from his rabid being was no less daunting.

“Aliens are an abomination! Whores who fornicate with aliens are an abomination against all that is holy!”

“Y’all holier than thou males really need new material. Whore?” I shook my head. “The epithet hurled at outspoken women since time immemorial. You think I’m Hester Prynne? You want to burn me at the stake here in Salem? Tell me, do you brand men with the same puritanical standard? Or is this heinous hypocrisy reserved only for females?”

“Silence whore!” The stinky man waved his bible as if to threaten me with the written word. Please. More like his putrid presence threatened the now roiling contents of my stomach.

“We have a thing called freedom of speech, not to mention free association—as in free to associate with aliens—under the First Amendment to our Constitution, drafted not too many miles from where we are now.” I glared. “I’m not moved by your attempts to silence or shame me with pseudo religious control. The US is a secular nation and has been since the ratification of the Bill of Rights.” My gaze shifted to the reporter who’d reentered the room at the sound of a man spewing rot that his network would eagerly lick off the floor to falsify a story.

“You want to paint me with a scarlet A for loving aliens?” I challenged both men, hands on hips. “I’ve been there, thwarted that. Those who judge with hatred or attempt to injure others usually end up doused in paint themselves. You are the ones who might just get burned.”

“Die, whore!” The frothing fanatic lunged, pulling a pistol from the hollowed-out pages of his bible.

Just another gun worshipper after all.

As you can see, not only was the gun-in-a-bible ploy all-too possible, there’s also the issue of violent misogynists aiming to control women through religious edict that has proven all-too true in 2022. Though I confess I didn’t make six Supreme Court justices the bad actors in this novel.

Here’s some additional text from that Alien Sensation scene, however, that unfortunately is all-too familiar in present-day:

I turned back to the visibly shaken reporter. “When you file today’s story, do try to refrain from referring to the arrest of a dangerously deranged man as a witch hunt—as your network so often has with the indictment of the former president and his cohorts in crime.” I channeled some Luna Moth Woman mojo, my fictional superheroine journalist. “Bone up on the factual history of actual witch hunts that took place on this very soil—and whom they targeted. It’s men who perpetuated and perpetrated witch hunts in a pathetic attempt to control. The systematic, targeted persecution and burning of females for such oh-so-shocking things as having sex.”

I paused to drive my point home. “Given how you’re so preoccupied with intimate details of private lives of women you don’t personally know…This isn’t some 1950s Doris Day fantasy world we’re living in.”

One can only hope my fictional criminal indictment of the former president will soon come true. And as for those six Supreme Court justice cohorts in Christofascist corruption…may they reap all the injustice and more that they have heaped upon us.

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