SPRINGFIELD, INDIANA — Phillip Grant is a self-described “pro-gun, modern libertarian.” He owns “several long guns officially, but even more unofficially, off the books” he’ll tell you with a wink and a smile. “The Founders clearly envisioned a time when our people would have to overthrow a duly elected government that we get to help decide every two, four, and six years,” Grant told our interviewer back in 2014, “and that’s why they wrote what looks like an attempt at national defense without a large standing army but is actually carte blanche to legally own every weapon you want no matter what, because ‘freedom.'”
Grant’s family recently contacted us because they wanted to announce the creation of a GoFundMe drive that has been created by his family as he is currently in a medically induced coma and his hospital bills are mounting. According to Grant’s mother, who Grant lives with along with his father, rent-free while he ostensibly goes to college and also learns about “pulling himself up by his bootstraps,” as she’d later tell us, Grant was rushed to the hospital over the weekend with acute alcohol poisoning, and it was determined that the best course of action was to put him in a coma until doctors could relieve enough of the symptoms of his alcohol poisoning.
“Phillip started drinking early on Sunday morning, getting ready for a day of watching football,” Bill Grant, Phillip’s father told us, “and he was drunk as all get out by halftime of the early games. We told him he might want to cool it and drink some water, but he laughed at us and told us that sobering up is no different than solving the country’s gun violence problem.” That’s when his father told us that his son went into the kitchen, brought out a bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin, and started taking shots.
His mother pleaded with him to stop, but her son told her to “stop listening to statist doctors who are paid off by the government to tell us how to live our lives,” and he continued to drain shot after shot of gin. “I’ll sober up with this gin, just watch,” Phillip told his parents as he watched the game and had a steady pour from bottle to shot glass going. “The only way you solve a problem is by introducing exacerbating factors,” he told his parents, “everyone knows it.”
“But after about 20 shots,” Susan Grant told us, “it was obvious that he wasn’t getting sober, but in fact just getting drunker and drunker. It was like the problem was only getting made worse by putting more of what started the problem into his system. He couldn’t understand it, but he kept on drinking until he literally passed out, face first, into our coffee table.” That’s when his parents decided to call an ambulance and have Phillip rushed to the hospital.
Doctors told his parents that it was one of the worst cases of alcohol poisoning they’d seen, and that the coma they wanted to put him in was the only way to stop the heaving and convulsing that was wreaking havoc on his brain and internal organs. If he had stopped with a sensible amount of alcohol that day, doctors told his parents, Phillip would have still probably had a hangover or felt some other effects of the booze, but he wouldn’t have reached such a toxic level of alcohol in his blood, and very likely would have been “just fine” the next day, Susan told us.
“We will definitely be having a talk with our son once he comes out of the coma,” Bill told us, “about his booze. Maybe if we get him to spend the money on guns and ammo that he’d be spending on alcohol he won’t have enough to get so drunk with. And we all know that guns are far safer than alcohol, so it’s a good trade-off if you ask me.” Currently the GoFundMe account set up in Grant’s name has received $30,000 from the NRA and various other pro-gun groups.
Follow James on Twitter @JamboSchlarmbo.
