Viral

A Wild Anti-Gun Control Tweet Has Everyone Talking About ‘Feral Hogs’

TwitterContributing Writer


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The nation is still reeling from a pair of mass shootings within a 24 hour period over the weekend that left a combined 29 people dead in two states. As everyone from musicians to pro athletes called for gun control in response to the loss of life, some have pushed back against calls for gun control.

It’s a depressing cycle of normalization that comes when the same kinds of violence are met with the same excuses, and it can be hard to cope with the continuous wave of grief, anger and frustration. But if there’s truly nothing we can do to fix the gun crisis in this country, and congress and the president refuse to act (let alone get the locations right), the least concerned denizens of Twitter dot com can do is ridicule a ridiculous anti-gun control argument.

One popped up on Monday when a man hopped into musician Jason Isbell’s mentions to argue that he needed assault weapons to keep his family safe from feral hogs. Isbell tweeted a rebuttal of anti-gun control arguments and was met by a man who claimed he needed to kill dozens of wild animals in a few minutes.


The tweet actually was sent on Sunday, but on Monday that ridiculous logic went viral online. Willie here is claiming that he needs to mow down “30-50” feral hogs to keep his children safe, which was quickly derided. When you feel helpless and things are bleak, it’s often gallows humor that gets you through. Which is why Twitter quickly filled with references to 30-50 feral hogs.

It may even become a talking point in the 2020 election if this keeps up.

The math is really the weirdest part of it all, as it implies that he needs to kill a LOT of hogs in a short amount of time. Because, keep in mind, feral hogs are a problem in some rural places. There’s even a whole reality show about it. But needing to maim that many hogs in that amount of time makes it seem like a full-blown crisis.

The meme inside of a meme was also pretty great, too.

It did bring up a serious question, though: what if this man is truly our last line of defense keeping us from disaster?

There were a lot of very specific references made, as happens with all memes, but somehow these all felt funnier on Monday.

This one references a tweet about how America far and away leads the world in mass shooting tragedies, while other nations with gun control have far fewer.

There was a musical section of this meme as well.

This is an outstanding pun.

None of this solves the peril that faces the nation each and every day, nor does it quell the real fear that many feel. But one extremely dumb tweet was a distraction from the horrors of reality we’re often left with when we log off, so at least it wasted a few hours of the workday.

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