Guns


Lets face it, guns kill people. Get rid of the guns and the emergency rooms can get back to the business of delivering babies. I mean, if two guys get mad at each other and all they have are their hands the most that can happen is a couple bloody noses. Give them guns and somebody is going to die. Guns are made for one thing: killing things (yeah, yeah, I know, there are a few guns made for the "sport" of target shooting, but those guns do not represent even 1/1000 of one percent of all guns manufactured.) Guns are made for killing. Period. Full stop.

I have almost always had some sort of gun in my house. My father gave me and my brother a used single-shot twenty-two when I was about eight or nine. He used to take us out along the Erie Canal outside of Syracuse and we would shoot at cans and bottles we threw in the water. It was a lot of fun -- boys out shooting with their father, sort of an American "rite of passage" thing I suppose.

Of course, my father told us to be careful, to not point the thing at each other and he probably mentioned one or two other precautions, but by and large he was pretty casual, attributing more to our basic intelligence than was warranted. What interests me now, in retrospect, is the fact that it really was our gun. It wasn't as though he had said, "Well, this is your gun but when we're not out shooting we'll just lock it up in this closet ok?" No, not at all. It was our gun and we darn well kept it in our room and played with it when we felt like it.

At the same time we also had Daisy "bb" guns of course which we used to shoot all the time. I remember that most of my friends had the lever-action model, styled after the old Winchester 30-30’s but there was no way an eight or nine year-old kid could crank that lever down and back up while holding the gun to his shoulder. I remember I had to take the thing down and put the stock against the inside of my right leg and hold the top of the barrel with my left hand and then I could cock the lever up. I am trying to remember exactly, but I think that with the lever actions you could only give it the one crank and that was all the pressure it would take. So I got a pump action. I was strong enough to pump that thing while keeping it at my shoulder, aimed more or less in the general direction of the bird or squirrel I was trying to kill. Furthermore, I was convinced that the pumps were more powerful because you could give them several pumps building up even more air pressure.

To my knowledge there was, and still is only one manufacturer of "bb" guns, the Daisy company. Funny name for a gun, a "Daisy." Well, it sure beats M-16 or AK-47. Uzzi isn't much better. I think I would rather be shot with a gun called a Daisy than an UZZI or M-16. Actually, I was shot with a Daisy once. It was at dusk and my brother and I were in the back yard messing around with our guns and all of a sudden I was hit in the eye. About all I remember is that it hurt like hell. We went to the hospital and the doctor pulled the "bb" out. Luckily, it had just hit the cornea and not the pupil. I was not unhappy to wear a patch for a week while my brother felt terrible for the double anguish of having shot me and not having a patch over his eye like me. My father told us to be more careful.

Actually, I think the "bb" guns preceded the twenty-two by a couple years because the house where I got shot by the "bb" gun was different than the house where I almost got shot by the twenty-two. This was back in Syracuse, New York and we lived in one of those typically unattractive three story houses that one sees all over working class neighborhoods from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania. They were two-story houses but with very ample attics. Only an American from the Northeast knows about these attics, their charm and mystery. My brother and I shared a little room up there, two cots across from each other, and one day we were playing with the single-shot twenty two. He was sitting on his cot holding the gun and all of a sudden, BANG! The thing went off right between my legs! I mean, there it was, the room smelled of gun powder and now there was a hole in the floor right under my bed.

As anybody who knows anything about younger children knows, the youngest are the most devious, they have seen the travails of bungled lying and the uselessness of honesty. So, being the youngest, it fell naturally upon me to run downstairs and exclaim to my stepmother, "Jeez, did you hear that firecracker that just went off upstairs?" (Kind of like the old smoking announcement, "Oh, its just tea we're smoking" as though tea in your lungs is any better than tobacco right?) So anyway, my stepmother had not heard a thing of course, and I was too young to realize that she would have been perfectly happy if in fact we had blown our brains out.

Sometime, I can't remember when, but I suspect it was long before going to high school, my father gave us a pretty little Remington pump action twenty-two. Now that was a nice rifle. I have an old 22 Savage now which is a club compared with that Remington. It came apart as slick as a clarinet and the action was so fast and smooth it seemed, to my juvenile imagination, almost like a semi-automatic. And somewhere along the line, my father gave my brother an old World War II Luger he had traded for a Manlicher rifle when he was in Austria. Many, many years later, after my brother was killed I took the Luger out and tried to shoot it but it was so ugly and awkward that I sold it for eighty-five dollars.

When I was a Freshman at Syracuse University I bought some sort of stupid semi-automatic 30 caliber rifle. I suppose it was the equivalent of one of these modern "assault" rifles. I mean, what is the point? If you want a rifle for hunting, get a hunting rifle; something that holds three or four shots and a bolt action. You go out in the woods and sneak around until you see a deer and you take careful aim and you shoot it with one shot. If you need a machine gun to kill a deer you don't have any business out there hunting. At least that's the way I feel about it. The next year I bought a Winchester 264 Magnum. This rifle was so fast you could aim right at a deer at a full run a hundred yards away and bang, you had Bambi-burger just like that. You didn't have to account for distance or lead or anything. Just aim and pull the trigger. I flunked out of college after my Freshman year and so I took my 264 magnum and headed West to go around the world.

I stopped off in Alton, Missouri to visit my girl friend and we went out and bought a Standard Arms twenty-two revolver. I remember going out shooting with her and she was better than I. I said good bye and headed off into the sunset for Colorado. Later on I gave that 22 pistol to my brother-in-law.

I never made it around the world, but I did make it around South America and Europe and then I went back to college in Colorado. We used to go hunting every fall. My wife was an uncompromising animal lover and the second time I came home with Bambi's blood on my clothes she didn't speak to me for a week. My marriage was worth more than Bambi-burgers so I sold the 264 Magnum and haven't killed anything since.

But later on, in graduate school, when we were going to go down through Mexico and Central America to do some research, I bought a little Smith and Wesson snub-nosed 38 Special. One night on the outskirts of Mexico City, we were surrounded by some rather unsavory characters and I can tell you that I was glad to have that Smith and Wesson tucked in my belt. Not long after that, in one of my anti-gun phases, I traded it for a year's supply of Amway detergent.

I didn't have any guns for about ten years, largely, because they are scary, dangerous things to have around; although, even in my most virulent anti-gun periods, there have been moments when I have wanted one; like, for instance, traveling with my family, camping out in places that seem somewhat lugubrious, places in the deep, red-neck South, places where the "good-ole boys" talk about "niggers," places where unhappy "good-ole boys" drive around in pick-up trucks with an arsenal displayed in the rear window, places where they go "coon" hunting, places along dark bayoos, places where a gun is the only authority people know. At times like that I have wished I had a gun for the security of my family.

Then back in graduate school again, a guy wanted to buy one of my photographs. He didn't have two hundred dollars but he traded me a Ruger Security Six 357 magnum for one of my prints. The only use I could think of for that gun was to shoot a few gallery directors I knew. But seriously, another thing about guns for some of us is the immutable cultural baggage we carry with us. I grew up on a steady diet of Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Allan Ladd riding into town and cleaning out the bad guys and occasionally defending the wagons from marauding savages. My greatest joy was playing "cowboys and indians". However, as little boys don't play at shooting indians anymore (I hope), they should not play with guns either. But, nevertheless there is this life-long affection for six-shooters and 30-30's even when it is so indisputably stupid.

I had that Ruger for several years. I probably shot it half a dozen times. It was a nice gun and quite accurate even for a rank amateur like myself. I remember, there were times when I would be making the bed and feel it there under the mattress and take it out and admire it's cool, heavy feel in my hand. And then I would put it back and forget about it. Some time later, when I was selling my motorcycle the guy was wavering and I said I would throw in the Ruger and that clinched the deal.

So now, for many years, other than the old Savage 22 rifle which sits on the shelf in my darkroom, I have not had a gun. (I still remember the moronic line from Battle Cry, of the drill sergeant standing there pointing to his rifle and saying, "this is a rifle," and then pointing to his crotch, "and this is a gun." and back to the rifle..."This is for shooting," and back to his crotch, "and this is for fun.") But, I confess, every now and then I look furtively, at the gun magazines in the drug store (the same way I might ocassionally look through the porn magazines) and speculate about the best hand-gun for self-defense weighing the pros and cons of semi-autos versus the old stand-by revolvers. And possibly, if I had a few hundred dollars to burn I would go out and buy another snub-nosed 38 Special to keep by the bed. But what do I need a gun for though? I live in a neighborhood so crime-free that we don't even lock the doors when we go away for the weekend. And with two dogs nobody is going to get near the house anyway.

I know that the real reason I might want a gun is because there is a deviant pleasure in looking at them and holding them. Guns are made to fit in your hand perfectly. Sure, we hold hammers, saws and screwdrivers, books, steering wheels, fishing poles, beer cans, footballs and cameras in our hands; but the fact of the matter is that a gun is made specifically to fit comfortably, solidly, powerfully in your hand. A gun is meant to be an extension of your body. It goes without saying that it must be ergonomically perfect. And, a gun has to be well-made otherwise it would simply blow up. Other than the very, very cheapest "Saturday-night specials", a gun has the mechanical prestige of a fine instrument, the smooth blue-black steel always feels convincingly cool in your hand. You cock a gun and something happens to your respiratory system. You now hold the ultimate authority, the ultimate equalizer -- a 9mm slug penetrates the flesh of mesomorphs and whimps, blacks and whites, PhD's and drop-outs, men and women, friends or foes with equal, indifferent democracy.

The only problem is that you need a reason to exercise this authority. I have a friend who has the most sophisticated, high-tech 9mm semi-automatic pistol on the market. He says, of course -- like we all do -- that it is for "self-defense". And yet he keeps it hidden in the bottom of a closet inside a locked ammunition box. Lots of luck getting that thing out in time when somebody is breaking through the door! Let's be realistic, he loves the deadly beauty, the pulse-quickening feel of it in his hand.

Owning a gun actually makes you want somebody to try to break into your house some night! I mean, how many things do we buy that we never use? You buy a new power drill and soon enough you've got shelves up all over the place, hooks and holes everywhere. I mean you can't use the darn thing enough. Or a cellular phone, a chain saw, a computer and so forth...the idea is to use these things. Well, the same with a gun too; what the hell, you've spent five hundred dollars on this thing so of course you want to use it!

One night a couple years ago there was a strange noise at my back door about two in the morning. I got out of bed and opened the door widely before I realized there was a man with a beard standing there in the dark. It was one of those moments of spastic, breath-stopping, nightmarish, adrenaline-rushing, ear-ringing fear.... and then I saw, behind him, my oldest daughter. It wasn't even the end of May and there they were already out of school for the year! "Hi Pop. Sorry to get you up. We thought we could sneak in. This is Steven by the way."