Monday, December 29, 2014

Guns again


Another senseless killing involving guns, which have now become religious symbols in the U.S. This killing was "inspired" by another favorite U.S. religion: racism.

So here I go again, re-publishing this same old piece I wrote several years ago.

On hot Saturday afternoons in Kentucky, in the 50s, my sister Betty Zane would give me fifty cents to take my niece Karen Lee by the hand and go “uptown” to the Lido Theatre. Karen and I would watch a few commercials, a cartoon or two, an episode of a serial, like Flash Gordon, and at least one movie—sometimes it was a double feature. Usually the movies were westerns with flashy guns figuring prominently. I lusted after pearl handled toy six shooters.

I remember how I felt when we walked out of the cool, dark theater into the heat and glare of a late afternoon. Surreal and high. In the two or three hours inside, I had become Flash Gordon, Whip Wilson, Lash LaRue, Gene Autry or whoever the hero happened to be. Being the older uncle (I was maybe 9), I kept these feelings to myself as Karen and I walked home. When I got home, though, I’d head for the woods with my imagination for a horse and fingers for guns and kill the bad guys or Indians with the appropriate gun sounds and death sounds coming out of my mouth. I was transported into another reality, and I enjoyed it a lot.

As I got older, I enjoyed driving nails from as far away as possible with my daddy’s .22.

The only part of the Army’s basic training that I enjoyed was the rifle range. The M-16 was light weight and accurate and fun to fire. I was good at it. I have a medal to prove it.

Guns, real and imagined, have been a part of my experience all my life. I currently own several real ones; fewer imaginary ones as time passes.

In 1992, my son was a precocious 16-year-old student in a small (300 student) private college tucked away in the woods of Western Massachusetts. Christmas was approaching. One of his fellow students bought an assault rifle and ammunition and killed a professor and a student and wounded others. Luck (or God or fate or Karma or….) intervened on my family’s part and he was not physically injured. We still deal with it psychologically.

Every time there is a new tragedy involving a school or mall or street corner, or whatever, it gets dragged out again.  The incidences are increasing. Blame is placed at everyone, except for one major U.S. group, who manages to shape public policy, using fear and money.

As I sit in Colorado on a cold December day, I wonder why:
1.     We pledge allegiance to the flag “and to the Republic for which it stands,” BUT
2.     We believe that our founders believed that the elected “government” of this Republic might someday take our guns away and subjugate us
3.     We, therefore, believe we have the right to own as many guns of whatever kind as we want—not the smart bombs, drone planes, tanks, and dirty weapons owned by our “government”, but GUNS—with which to protect ourselves from the smart bombs, drones, tanks, and dirty weapons our government might throw at us in order to subjugate us
4.     Our elected representatives (those same government people who might come after us one day) pledge allegiance to The National Rifle Association to act on our behalf against the government that we fear is going to enslave us—themselves
5.     The NRA (the largest lobbying group in the country) collects boatloads of money from us, which they use to support those representatives (the people who might subjugate us) in their continued reelections.

I admit I’m not all that smart, but I wonder where the logic and reason went. "Guns don't kill, people do." "God (via the first amendment brought down from the mountain) gave me the right to bear arms." 

Think about that. I wonder if people would worship the same mantra if it read:

1. Atomic bombs don't kill, people do
2. I have the God-given right to bear arms
3. By all definitions, the A-bomb is "arms"
4. Therefore I have the God-given right to my own bomb

I find myself feeling that same sense of the surreal I felt leaving the Lido Theater all those years ago. Without the high.

I make no judgment about my friends who continue to hunt, shoot for sport, collect, and love guns. God bless you.

But I do hold some ill will toward the NRA (not the rank and file, but the “NRA government” that controls the organization). I also hold ill will toward cowardly politicians who support the NRA government over that of the U.S, and pass laws that fly in the face of reason, humanity, and love of country, in the name of guns.

I wonder if these people think I’m calling them ignorant and un-American.

I sure hope so.

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