Guns (Kindle Single)

gore-splattered rooms and
hallways looked like when the first responders entered them.
    The assertion that Americans love violence and bathe in it
daily is a self-serving lie promulgated by fundamentalist religious types and
America’s propaganda-savvy gun-pimps. It’s believed by people who don’t read
novels, play video games, or go to many movies. People actually in touch with
the culture understand that what Americans really want (besides knowing
all about Princess Kate’s pregnancy) is The Lion King on Broadway, a
foul-talking stuffed toy named Ted at the movies, Two and a Half Men on
TV, Words with Friends on their iPads, and Fifty Shades of Grey on their Kindles. To claim that America’s “culture of violence” is responsible
for school shootings is tantamount to cigarette company executives declaring
that environmental pollution is the chief cause of lung cancer.

V. From My Cold Dead Hands
    When I think of the politically conservative gun enthusiasts
who are opposed to any form of gun control, no matter how many innocents die in
acts of gun violence, I remember something a Democratic member of the House of
Representatives is reputed to have said about Gerald Ford: “If he saw a hungry
child as he walked to work, he would give that child his bag lunch without
hesitation, then go ahead and vote against school lunch subsidies without ever
seeing the contradiction.”
    Most anti-control firearms enthusiasts have similarly split
personalities, and the slogan you sometimes see pasted to the bumpers of their
station wagons, campers, and SUVs — YOU WILL TAKE MY GUN WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM
MY COLD DEAD HANDS — does not make them bad people. It only makes them walking
contradictions, and which of us does not have a few contradictions in our
personalities?
    Most Americans who insist upon their right to own as many guns
(and of as many types) as they want see themselves as independent folk who
stand on their own two feet; they may send food or clothes to the victims of a
natural disaster, but they sure-God don’t want charity themselves. They are, by
and large, decent citizens who help their neighbors, do volunteer work in the
community, and would not hesitate to stop and help a stranger broke down by the
side of the road. They are more apt to vote for increasing law enforcement
funds than they are for increasing school improvement funds, reasoning (and not
without some logic) that keeping kids safe is more important than getting them
new desks. They have no problem with drug and alcohol recovery centers … as
long as they are in someone else’s neighborhood. They can weep for the dead
children and bereft parents of Sandy Hook, then wipe their eyes and write their
congressmen and women about the importance of preserving the right to bear
arms.
    They declare they must keep those arms — not excluding those
of the semi-automatic type — for home defense. They’re plenty worried about
home defense. They see the world as a fundamentally dangerous place and their
homes as castles that crazy people of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre type
may try to invade at any time. Ask them if they have ever actually been a
victim of a home invasion, and most will say no. And yet all of them know of someone who has been thus victimized. If only they’d had a gun ,
they’re apt to mourn.
    Sometimes they do. In late 1959, two drifters, Dick Hickok
and Perry Smith, invaded the Kansas home of farmer Herbert Clutter, looking for
money they believed Clutter kept in a safe. They killed Clutter, his wife, and
the two Clutter children still living at home. Clutter had guns, but was unable
to get to them; so far as we know, he never even tried. Most home invasion
victims with arms find themselves in Herbert Clutter’s position: surprised and
overwhelmed. Unless you sleep with your .45 auto fully loaded and under your
pillow, you’re apt to find yourself in the same position if the bad guys ever
should show up in your bedroom, enquiring as to the location of your safe.
    I guess the question is, how paranoid do you want to be? How
many guns does it take to make you feel safe? And how do you simultaneously
keep them loaded and close at hand, but still out of reach of your inquisitive children
or grandchildren? Are you sure you wouldn’t do better with a really good
burglar alarm? It’s true you have to remember to set the darn thing before you
go to bed, but think of this — if you happened to mistake your wife or live-in
partner for