by Ken Bash A version of this article was published in The Ventura County Star on Sept. 22, 2013. When I was a child, I played with guns.
My father let me take a .22-caliber rifle into the woods, by myself, when I was only six years old. Perhaps he was crazy, but around our Texas farm there were few humans to endanger, and I was relatively responsible for so young. Daddy employed corporal punishment—too harshly, in my view, even by 1950s standards–so I grew up fearful and cautious. With no playmates for miles, I was often bored, so I ventured out with my dog Jack, looking for something to kill. Hunting. I liked the big bang, and the smell of gunpowder in the open air. Mostly I shot birds. Sparrows, though small, were easy targets. Blue jays were more difficult, and crows impossible; they’re just too smart. A crow could spot my rifle from fifty yards, though I tried my best to conceal it. The first time I shot a blue jay it didn’t die quickly. It lay trembling beneath the tree, struggling to breathe, blood oozing from its chest. I shooed Jack away, and soon the bird lay still. I knelt to examine it, struck by the perfect arrangement of feathers, their intense color and intricate patterns. I did not feel guilty then for destroying this creature. I had captured its wildness. I could examine the once elusive bird as closely as I wanted, but its beauty faded before me. As I walked away, Jack snatched the carcass, to eviscerate in private. The only other building at Brazos Point was Wheatley’s General Store, where I bought my cartridges for 35 cents. Each box bore the message: "Range One Mile–Be Careful." One day, when I was eight, I overheard my father and another farmer chatting in our yard. “Your barn is pretty far,” the man remarked. We had acreage across the road, with a windmill, stock tank and a tin-roofed barn, visible from our house. “I guess it’s about a mile away,” my father replied. This presented to me a provocative coincidence. Next day, as I roamed the yard, looking for something to shoot, my eye was caught by a glint off the roof in the distance. One mile away. I raised my rifle and sighted at the gleaming square. With careful guesswork, I elevated the barrel a few degrees and fired. I waited. Several long seconds later came the satisfying report of my bullet smacking the corrugated metal like a giant drum. This was fun, and I felt smart. Not only was I an expert marksman, I was learning science of some sort. This became a regular diversion. One day, after lobbing several rounds into the barn, walking away I saw my father’s pickup parked beside it. My heart came up in my throat. Daddy had been inside the barn. I dropped my rifle and ran crying into the house. To this day I am not sure if I was more terrified that I had killed my father, or that I had not killed him. I rushed into my mother’s arms and breathlessly choked out the story. We hurried to the yard. Daddy’s truck was gone. He was alive. The rest of that day, and for days after, I lived in fear of my punishment, but it never came. A few weeks later, when my father and I were at the barn, scattering alfalfa for the cows, he spoke to me measuredly but gently. “Kenny, if this roof has holes in it, rain will get in and ruin all the hay.” That was it. I was stunned. The one instance my father did not use his razor strop, and reasoned with me instead, taught me more and was more memorable than any whipping. Of course, I had no business with a firearm so young. It’s a miracle there were no accidents. Now we read of tragedies involving children and guns almost weekly. Recently a six-year-old in Wisconsin (with “firearm training”) shot his four-year-old sister in the face with a shotgun. A Kentucky five-year-old shot his two-year-old sister dead with his birthday present: a .22 purchased from a company that markets pink rifles for kids. A Florida teen fatally shot his six-year-old sister playing hide-and-seek. Now I am a father. I got rid of firearms long ago. I did buy an air rifle for our two sons, and we take it out to shoot at cans. I do this to help defuse the allure of guns, and to teach the boys how to be safe with them. We don’t shoot at animals. The only appropriate places for firearms in modern society are law enforcement and the military. Otherwise, a gun is nothing but a deadly toy. There is not a single premise of the pro-gun argument–whether constitutionality or the need for self-protection–that has validity. The Constitution does not allow us to keep unregulated weaponry any more than freedom of speech allows us to slander. The Second Amendment was actually written to appease southern states, granting them militias–well regulated–to quash slave rebellions. A gun in the household is far more likely to be used against its owner or a family member than an intruder, according to numerous studies compiled by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. Anecdotal incidents where guns successfully protect life or property are extremely rare compared to how often a firearm kills or harms a household member, by accident, homicide or suicide. We are far less safe with guns in our homes. The scenario of good guys with guns dispatching bad guys is a fantasy created by screenwriters. Reality rarely plays out that way. If one’s rationale for gun ownership is a perceived need for protection from our government, it is naive, to say the least, to imagine that any rifle could fend off the arsenal of the most powerful nation on earth. But gun lovers cling to their notions, egged on by the industry’s shill, the National Rifle Association, that spends its members’ dues on purchasing lawmakers and whipping the populace into paranoid hysteria. The NRA’s bald-faced response to gun violence is invariably that we should buy more guns. Even though 90 percent of all Americans--and even 74 percent of NRA members--favor background checks, according to polls by CBS News and Frank Luntz, the NRA executives still oppose checks, because the NRA does not represent its members; it represents only the gun manufacturers and peddlers who regard criminals, terrorists and the unstable not as threats, but as paying customers. Modern-day hunting–shooting animals for sport–is a sick pursuit. I did it, as a child. Our ancestors hunted to survive. As a hobby it is sadistic, and attempting to justify it by consuming the prey is an absurd pretense. If you can’t afford meat, apply for food stamps. Hunters call themselves “outdoorsmen,” who don’t kill animals, they “take” them. On TV hunting shows, men in camo hunker around the magnificent creature they destroyed. “Isn’t he a beauty?” they marvel. Yes. He was. I challenge gun lovers: find alternate recreation. Go hit a ball with a stick. Justify the time and expense by claiming that your golf club is for self-protection. Your loved ones will be safer if you keep a nine iron or a baseball bat for home security. Get a big dog. You’ll live longer, and lower your blood pressure. The carnage from guns in America continues because of a convergence of two base compulsions: the greed of the firearms industry and the childishness of gun lovers. Are we unwilling to prevent the relentless slaughter of innocent lives for the sake of profit and our love of a toy? Do we love our guns more than our children? Just because we can’t stop every gun tragedy should we do nothing, and mourn helplessly? America’s love affair with guns has nothing to do with freedom. It is a cruel, neurotic fixation, rooted in fear and spurred on by unconscionable corporate hucksterism. It is time to put away childish things, before they destroy us. Our nation cannot withstand the pain any longer.
3 Comments
B
1/24/2017 06:11:49 pm
During the time that it took law enforcement to show up to the first crime scene, then the second crime scene, then the third crime scene, then the fourth and so on; if just one bystander was properly trained and had the courage to risk their life, perhaps they could have got a clear shot and there would have been many fewer crime scenes instead of a dozen. I didn’t make this world and I haven’t contributed to the craziness that we all bear witness to nowadays, but I’m okay with being called childish for believing in our right to own arms. That’s fine. What I’m not fine with is being woken up to the sound of a window breaking in the middle of the night, calling the police and counting the seconds for someone to show up, wishing that I had some kind of tool that serves as a last line of defense should this intruder enter my bedroom where my significant other lay next to me trembling in fear. If someone breaks into your house it’s not to say hi or to ask for some sugar, they want something from you and sometimes they will do whatever necessary to get it. Will a baseball bat, nine iron, hammer, screwdriver, or something else work? Sure, but not as efficiently or effectively as a highly precise projectile moving accurately towards the assailant at 300 m/s. I train and practice with firearms a few times per year, enough to keep my shot consistently sharp. I truly hope I’m never in a situation where I feel like the last line of defense is to use a form of deadly force to defend my family and/or my own safety. But should that moment come where the unthinkable occurs I’d rather be ready to defend myself than cowering in the corner waiting 5 or more minutes for the boys in blue to show up, when in a few seconds some stranger is going to enter my bedroom. I totally agree with stricter background checks, that shouldn’t even be a question. If you’re not intelligent or mentally sound enough to posses a deadly machine than you simply shouldn’t. Not everyone can get behind the controls of a jet, helicopter, forklift, etc. So if you, I, or anyone else is individually deemed too incompetent to handle a gun, then be an adult and accept this simple flaw and remember all the other things you have in life that are more important than some mechanism that makes a pin strike a bullet, because that’s all it is at the end of the day.
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M
1/24/2017 06:12:22 pm
Well, I do like to hunt. And I love to target shoot. And I remember the sergeant on the practice range busting my ass for stepping over the no fire line to grab my hat. Plus dad always taught me that a gun should not be leaded, and the finger should not be on the trigger unless you are planning to shoot.
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Peter Goulding
10/21/2022 01:22:22 am
Speaking as an outsider living in Ireland, we, and most other countries around the world, are astonished by the 'right to bear arms' part of your constitution. This was set up over 200 years ago to deal with completely different problems ('injuns' and outlaws) and we cannot understand how it has been allowed to remain in your constitution. No other country has this and no other country suffers 10,000 fatal gunshot wounds per year. In Ulster, during the Troubles, the Unionists often insisted on their 'right to march' through Republican neighbourhoods. Wiser minds persuaded them that the 'right to march' did not supercede 'the right to live free from fear.' In America, it seems, (again, from afar,) that 'the right to bear arms' is held higher than any other right. Rights are not equal. If one right impinges on somebody else's right, then one of these rights has to give. We have very few legally held guns in Ireland and very few murders. Most murders are either gangland killings with illegally held arms or domestic killings and even then they are few and far between.
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