One Direction's Zayn Malik is more-or-less permanently strapped (courtesy instagram)

“It is a shame that anyone would think it makes you look cool if you get a gun tattoo. Promoting guns in fashion could lead to gun violence and we certainly don’t need any more of that.” – Ray Nelson, president of Guitars Not Guns, quoted in Zayn Malik gets controversial gun tattoo as ink-artist brags: “Made sure my homey was strapped” [via mirror.co.uk]

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72 COMMENTS

  2. “…Promoting guns in fashion could lead to gun violence ”

    Sure. And promoting eating utensils in fashion could lead to obesity.

    And promoting algebra in fashion could lead to advanced math degrees.

    And promoting telescopes in fashion could lead to more astronomers.

  3. These always crack me up. I can’t wait for the day a gun tattoo spurns a swat team invasion of a mall when a saggy pants wearing homie shows off his ink.

    If you are going to do it, at least do it right. 5:30 with a proper cant for me.

  4. It is well documented fact that Pamela Anderson’s barbed wire tattoo directly led to such prevalent use of barbed wire fencing that cattle ranchers were having trouble finding supplies back in the mid 90s.

    Also, when butterfly tramp stamps were all the rage, giant butterfly attacks in the central Congo went up by a whopping 1000%

    It’s a shame that liberals always have science on their side.

  5. Is that a Colt .45 Peacemaker? Nice! I’m going to get a tat of a Mac 10 with a supressor. That could look really bad ass on the Beach in Hampton, NH next summer. Or maybe a 1911, or a hand granade, or maybe a Stinger missile. Maybe a mash-up of all the real guns I can’t afford. Either way, ink is just that. Body art is NOT a real gun and to suggest otherwise is just stupid.

  6. I think MAC had a post on this subject, it went something like:
    “You are an musician/actor/professional athete, do your job and leave the guns and politics alone, your opinon in irrelevant and unnecessary”
    I’m paraphrasing but that was the general idea.

    And yes, current “popular music” makes me violent…ly ill as well.

  8. “It is a shame that anyone would think it makes you look cool if you get a gun tattoo. Promoting guns in fashion could lead to gun violence…”

    What’s really impressive is that this dude managed to come up with a sentence I agree with, followed by one I disagree completely with.

    As far as the singer goes, it’s his body. I don’t care what he does with or to it.

  9. “…Promoting guns in fashion could lead to gun violence ”

    Yo dog, I was going to volunteer at the local soup kitchen but I saw a musician with a a gun tattoo and now I want to go shoot somebody.

  12. I don’t know, guys. You live your whole life being one of, if not the, smartest guys in the room, any room, and you early on become accustomed to hearing and ignoring abject idiocy passing for insight and noddingly received by the hoi polloi. Still, occasionally you stumble upon a quote like this, in its unfettered foolishness, and it leaves you bracing for a reimagination of the future.

    • These days, anyone who reads the occasional book is going to be considered the smartest in the room. Over the last fifty years the bar has been lowered so far as to be feared as a trip-and-fall risk for seniors.

  13. Love guns, just hate tattoos. Tattoos are for thugs, wannabes, ex-cons, rock stars, the emotionally damaged, a end of a long drunk night, tramps, artists or people who think they are artists, the condemned and bikers. With the exception of military, maybe police or fire, I find tattoos to be mostly a sign that says “watch out for me I’m trouble.”

    • **Warning: Completely Sexist Comments Below**

      I really lament the number of tattoos on women. I have never seen a female body and thought: “Ya, know, that would look better if somebody drew on it.” I know, I know, they didn’t do it to please me personally, they did it to make a statement . . . and that statement is: “I’m willing to put things in my body to get attention.”

      I need to think of a rhyme along the same lines as “If she smokes, she pokes.” Same principle.

      • I saw what I remember was a Farside comic and it showed a Freak Show booth at a carnival and the sign said, “Come inside and see a completely nude woman with ABSOLUTELY NO TATOOS!”

      • Based on the two comments above I can tell you two are both over the hill.

        I think this is very much a generational thing.

        I’ve found in life that the majority of men who get all weepy over chicks getting tattoos are the same ones who wish the brazilian wax had never been invented.

        ::weirdo old guys::

        • This is categorically false, as I am under forty and hate ink in general and on women in particular. It’s your right to treat your body as a billboard as much as it is my right to be repulsed by it.

        • You could be right; it could be generational.

          I just think that when the Good Lord made the female body, he left no room for improvement.

          (sometimes, I wish he’d have spent a little more time on the rational faculties . . . )

      • “If a woman chews gum, she may smoke.
        If a woman smokes, she might drink, and
        a woman who drinks will do ANYTHING”.

        Thus spake my grandma. I doubt she ever even imagined a woman with tattoos.

    • Well, that’s not judgmental or anything. I know quite a few perfectly normal, well-adjusted people who have tattoos. Several of them have more than a couple or three. None of them are military or law enforcement. One has a Masters in Nuclear Engineering.

      Stereotyping people because of a couple tattoos is so 20 years ago.

      • More like 50 years ago. Only military get tattoos made me laugh out loud. Ima scared of the guy with the tattoos is EXACTLY the same as Ima scared of the guy open carrying. Stupid judgenents are stupid. Full disclosure I have zero tattoos. Not due to personal preference but due to lack of local talent I would allow to ink me.

      • Thanks from the tattoo community, Matt. I’ve been a full time tattooist since ’89 and have been tattooed since ’74 and seen the attitude evolve over almost forty years. This past week I had a customer who was controversial, by some standards, on two counts. A female who got a gun tattoo. Her tattoo was a lever action Winchester with the date of her Grandad’s birth and death. I don’t think it made her either dangerous, as Ray Nelson would suggest or “easy” as others would suggest. I do a lot of gun tattoos even though, happily, we have few gang bangers in my neck of the woods. Most of the gun tattoos requested are old-style revolvers done in an old west style. And most are on women. I guess there are those who would say these women are lamenting their lack of a penis–but somehow I don’t buy it.

    • I have 3 tattoos. One is my family crest, one says Molon Labe. Also, my wedding band is tattooed around my finger. One gets tired of cutting a crushed piece of metal off of a blue and swollen finger, or experiencing the pain of having that same ring heat to 300F after weld spatter sticks to it. Would I make you nervous by entering the room? Saying that all people with tattoos are trouble is exactly the same as saying that all gun owners are blood thirsty baby killers.

      • What exactly does “Molon labe” mean? I saw it once typed in Greek characters, copied/pasted it into Google translate, and it answered in English “Molon labe,” IOW it either isn’t Greek or GT thinks “molon labe” means something in English.

        I don’t. Would someone please enlighten me? Thanks.

    • So THOSE are the old guys in the gun community the media is constantly going on about!

      Relax, everybody! We finally found them!

    • Lars, you and Ensitue and a few others have a very odd view on ink. For some reason you have this idea that all people with ink except military/LEO/etc. are thugs looking for attention, where this antiquated idea of ink comes from is baffling. I have ink, my mother, father, uncles, friends, I don’t know many who don’t honestly. And by all means were not scumbags or thugs, and we at least have the decency to cover cup. Sure there’s people like douchebags and bikers with “fuck you” on their heads
      (I know one with that very thing) that purposely look that way for the attention, but unlike my biker “friend”, im not a gang member with 10 convictions, nor do I ware a tank top all day to show off. There are many kinds of tattoos, so having a RIP tattoo of your loved one is thuggish and looking for attention? Calling people out on and accusing them of being something you don’t understand is a very Liberal thing to do.

  17. Interesting question: Has Zayn Malik ever even fired a gun? Maybe if he’s lucky he got to take some pheasants with an over-under once? I doubt even that.

    I don’t mind his tattoo even if he is a poseur… The real problem that liberals have with this is that One Direction is a boy band with a 100% female audience. They don’t want young girls to think that firearms are “sexy” by associating them with their ideal fantasy boy toys.

  18. He does know there are other reasons for tattoos right? The idea that a gun tattoo can lead to violence is ridiculous. I suppose he believes after school guitar lessons can help a gangbanger in Chicago suddenly get a job.

  19. Don’t really care one way or another. Although as kids we lived in Phonix AZ, next door nieghbor was retired fire fighter from Chicago ILL. Was a WWII veteran, stationed at Pearl Harbor when the japanese hit. His ship was one of the ones sunk in the harbor. He had a huge tatoo of that ship on his abdomen. He could make move it up and down on the waves with his stomach muscles. That was COOL!

    • I think it’s just sad that their twisted little mentality thinks that just seeing an image can incite violence. Everybody knows they project, but what a weird thing to project.

  22. Hopefully this will cause many (future MDA members) little girls to want to learn bout guns… won’t hold my breath though.

  23. There’s a tendency among progressives to invest too much power in words and symbols rather than actions. I think it comes from the fact that most have educational backgrounds in art or the humanities, and feel a need to emphasize that these things are Important Matters.

    Me, I have a feeling that having a gun tattoo tends to indicate some degree of absence of hoplophobia. Regardless of whether one agrees with it as an artistic or fashion choice, I can’t help but think that’s a good thing?

  25. This picture gives rise to the hope that the young miscreant will lift his shirt in the presence of myopic peace officers, who will spray the general area with bullets and inadvertently hit the warbling wanker. Boy bands represent the nadir of popular culture. They all wanna be the Beatles, but lack any discernible talent. Any chance one of them can be taken out should be welcomed.

  27. I know a belly dancer around town who belly dances in a friend’s band, and she has DUAL revolver tattoos! She doesn’t need to tell someone ELSE to “DANCE!” 😉

    • OH! I almost forgot! There was a girl in a two-piece band in Taos I saw once (she player accordion) who had a DOGGIE PAW PRINT TATTOOED ON EACH SHOULDER BLADE!!!

      I swear to God. I almost died laughing….

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