The
year was 1941; I was an eight-year-old child, and I was given a very pointed
instruction by my father. He, my mother
and I were living in a very small, dumpy apartment in the city of Norfolk,
Virginia where I was to spend the rest of my childhood. (Just the three of us; I was, and still am,
an only child.) Dad had just been inducted
into the Norfolk Police Force, and I remember quite vividly the day when he
first walked into that apartment in his uniform. I was in my bedroom, which was in the front
of the house, and he proceeded solemnly through the narrow door; in his hand
was a gun issued by the Police Department.
He showed it to me and announced that henceforth it would take up
residence with us in the apartment whenever he was home. The instruction was very direct and simple: I
was not ever under any circumstances to touch the weapon. It was off limits to me, because he was
always required to keep it loaded, even when it was not attached to his body,
not to mention that in handling it I would be breaking the law.
That
moment was the closest I ever came to that firearm. It never occurred to me to defy his authority
on that score. He had thrown a little
scare into me, and I did not have enough mischievous curiosity to rummage
through his possessions to locate it, not even when he was sleeping and I was
awake. The gun and I remained silent,
distant cohabitants, and I have never had any regrets about that.
I am
pleased to say that I never developed any interest in ever shooting one or
taking any lessons in how to obtain one of my own or to handle one. Such was not the case for other kids in my
extended family. I had two cousins who
were shooting quite early in their lives, even though they like me were city
dwellers. The father of one of them, my
uncle, once took the boy out into the woods and taught him how to shoot
squirrels, and on one occasion they clipped the leg of a four-legged animal
(dog or cat, I cannot recall), just for the sport of it. The other cousin was dead set on a military
career almost from the beginning. In
high school I was standing right next to him when he fired a revolver into a
large trashcan. That was awesome and as
close to home as I ever wanted such a sight and sound to be. His familiarity with weaponry was far
advanced long before he entered the Virginia Military Institute (VMI). I alone in the family remained willingly
ignorant on the subject of deadly hardware.
And
yet I feel as if guns have occupied a place in my existence nonetheless. I held many a toy gun in my hand during those
years. My playmates and I played cops
and robbers and soldiers attacking the fort or killing off bad guys. America’s involvement in World War II began
later that same year that my father gave me his ultimatum. In the wake of Pearl Harbor a torrent of war
pictures was let loose onto the movie theater screen. Most all of them had current settings,
fictionalized accounts of battles in that war that had already taken place or
fictional encounters between our side and “the enemy”. We got pleasure as kids in our play time from
shooting “Japs” and slimy Germans.
Harmless gunplay! Far removed
from the dangerous world in which my father was involved! He never had to kill anyone during his thirty
two years on the force, but he had to draw his weapon on several occasions.
Looking
back I sometimes wonder why he never invited me to a shooting range. Not that I am sorry he did not, but I wonder
how sensitive he was to the addictive effect of those weapons. Strangely we never throughout our lives ever
discussed the question. Neither of my
cousins’ fathers was a policeman or a military figure; of the three of us you
would think I would have been the easiest target for instruction. But I never had to confront the subject of
how to establish a relationship with firearms.
I
might not have been active with them, but I saw enough movies in which I was a
passive participant in gun use. I
enthused when I saw Humphrey Bogart in various action thrillers sock it to the
bad guys. Whether he was trapping villainous
Edward G. Robinson and his ugly entourage aboard that yacht at the end of “Key
Largo” or clipping the wings of his nemesis in the closing minutes of “The Big
Sleep”! I must confess that I
experienced the thrill of seeing him subdue.
The same was true of Gary Cooper and John Wayne in their various
westerns. And then there were the war pictures in which the
carnage was broad scale, but all to the sound of bullets and cannon fire
ripping through the soundtrack. I do not
remember as a child ever experiencing any revulsion or distaste at the sight of
blood oozing from bullet punctured flesh or dying men gasping out their last
words before their eyes closed and their bodies went limp. It would be many years and much consciousness
raising later before I developed anything like the dovish sensibility that I
now possess.
What
fascinates me now is the sound that the firing of a handgun makes when heard in
a movie. Perhaps many of you have
noticed how it is often accompanied by an echo effect. Every real gun blast I have ever been present
in person to hear sounds more like a firecracker to me, a very loud and sharp
one, to be sure, yet the narrow, pointed sound of one – no echo. But on screen the blast is broader – a
resounding explosion that one might expect if the firing were done in a
courtyard or- what else? a sound stage. The movie blast is a more romantic one, a
kind of musical reverberation. That is
what seduces the audience, as far as I can determine. Even though I believe that there is much more
artistry and brilliance and maturity in movie making now than there was when I
was a kid, there is still a fascination with gunplay in many films, one that
verges on exploitation.
There
probably was a gun lobby back in the early twentieth century, but how powerful
it was or how necessary I cannot say.
The National Rifle Association was organized in the late nineteenth
century. If you ask a current member
what the NRA’s purpose is, they would no doubt say that they are guardians of
the second amendment. But that could
only be at best an adopted purpose. At
the time of its inception there was no consolidated opposition to the
proliferation of guns in American society.
We were a frontier nation at the time and weaponry was required for
self-protection. Firearms were a staple
part of households. But as our urbanized population
has grown by leaps and bounds, the place of them in contemporary twenty-first
century life is now much more open to controversy. It
appears that there now are more guns than the survival or self-protection of
average citizens requires.
America
has undergone a long and extended romance with the gun. It affords many people of shallow discernment
and meager expectation and impoverishment the feeling that the implement is an
extension of their own bodies and minds and a means to assert their own self-importance
and invincibility. And add to all this the
appeal of a religiously sanctified cult such as ISIS and you have extremely
dangerous individuals. It does not
require sophisticated minds to unleash the fatal fury. Heinrich Heine once noted that “a citizen’s
musket fires as well as a nobleman’s”.
We
recognize in our society various and sundry forms of addiction – alcoholic,
gambling, drugs – but we have not heard enough about the addiction of the
gun. So many are so enthralled with its
ownership that they cannot be satisfied with only one. A second weapon leads to a third weapon and a
third to a fourth and so on. A gun
collection! How many does it take to
provide protection for one individual or one family? Gun shops have proliferated, and gun shows in
many quarters are the coming attraction.
People who patronize those shows collect varieties of the product with
the same fervor that some of us collect musical recordings or books or artworks.
One
of the better TV cop shows that have captured the household audience is the
original version of the Hawaii Five-O series, the one that starred Jack
Lord. It was exceptionally well written
and produced and stayed on the air somewhere around twelve seasons. How many reading this remember it? Lord’s chief McGarrett was a very sensible
and humane character who could also be really tough and no nonsense when he
needed to be. He spoke to the
sensibilities of the men under him, not just to matters of procedure. I remember one episode in which he laid down
the law about their attitudes toward their weapons. I will paraphrase a bit, but he told them in
so many words that they should never enjoy using them. It should trouble them every time they are
forced to reach for their holsters; it should send a chill through their
bodies. And if they ever have to fire
the weapon, it should “tear their guts out” to do so. I do recall that phrase most exactly. His bottom line was that if anyone really got
to enjoy its use, that person was in big trouble and was swimming in dangerous
waters. His words were not just intended
for officers of the law but for civilians as well.
Enough
of the romance! The absence of effective
laws of restraint in the sale and use of guns in our world today has pushed us
all into those dangerous waters, however little we may have contributed to
creating them. I still live in hope, as
I am sure many of you do too, that stricter gun laws will yet break through the
mindset and resistance of legislators and stubborn citizenry whose allegiance
to the second amendment now borders more than ever on virtual insanity.
To read other entries in my
blog, please consult its website:
enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the
blog entry for August 9, 2013.
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