Gun Culture

If a gun means freedom and that you are a citizen, you need to get out more.

I don’t like guns.

I - also - don’t know anything about guns. I’ve never shot or even handled a gun. My father had a shotgun he used for quail hunting. I have no idea if he enjoyed quail hunting, or if he just went on quail hunts as a means of connecting with members of his congregation. He never talked to me about his quail hunting and I don’t remember asking about it or even thinking about it, except when our dinner was the bounty of his few-and-far-between hunting trips. While living under his roof, I’m pretty sure I never even caught sight of his shotgun.

I have no idea if he had any other kind of gun. I doubt it.

I am also not in favor of taking your guns away.

But I do think there needs to be some agreement, and some enthusiastic follow up on enforcement, about where it is appropriate to take guns. Along with an agreement about what kinds of weapons are permissible in public.

I avidly do not believe any American is entitled to a military grade weapon that fires nearly 150 bullets a second. Let’s be honest here. For the layman, not a soldier or a cop, anything beyond a bullet a second is overkill. The M134 General Electric Minigun is at the extreme end of possibilities, not practical and almost impossible to possess (though apparently about a dozen entities own one - probably gun ranges). There are hundreds of other guns that are deadly enough.

Just keep watching this YouTube channel if you want to vicariously watch all kinds of weapons being fired. Whoopee.

I have come to an understanding automatic weapons that fire many rounds a second are necessary or applicable for hunting four hundred pound feral hogs. They are a scourge in the South and - apparently - they are multiplying faster than they can be annihilated by helicopter. But, other than war and a licensed shooting range and wild, unpredictable pigs, I can’t think of another reason for your everyday citizen to own a weapon meant for the military and designed to slaughter or, according to emergency room doctors, butcher humans.

Oh, right. It’s what defines freedom. It’s what makes y’all citizens. I apologize if I have more genteel notions of freedom and citizenship.

I am offended, as a law abiding, sensible American, by the people who carry these kinds of weapons to protests. After all of the slaughter caused by military-grade weapons, throughout the country, at every venue and setting imaginable, if you think walking around with a weapon that destructive slung around your neck is patriotic, you’re wrong.

It’s pathetic. It’s intimidating. It’s insensitive. It’s juvenile.

We are not in the midst of a second American revolution. This is not 1776. Keep it at home until the revolution actually comes. Use it on your own property. Take it to the gun range. During peace time, if you find yourself casually strolling around a public space with an AK-47 dangling between your legs, you’re a coward.

I think the National Rifle Association is represented by some reprehensible people who like inciting common sense gun owners in supporting their militaristic agenda. In the past, I’ve referred to it as a domestic terrorist organization because its advertising and promotion borders on a call to arms. Yet I know there are more sensible, card-carrying gun owners than not. There are 400 million “known” weapons circulating in the United States. That statistic alone tells you that most gun owners are responsible and sensible.

Speaking of sensible, what is not sensible is for members of Congress to ignore the request to not bring their weapons into the Capitol. It is not sensible for them to elude the magnetometers put in place after the attempted coup, and the threat to some members of Congress’ lives. It is not sensible for them to ignore the Capitol police who were also traumatized by the assault on January 6th. They’re being asses and they are fanning the flames of idiocracy. If I were a member of this Congress, I’m afraid I’d have a viral social media moment berating one of these jackasses in the chamber.

NRA members should be outraged at their behavior. NRA members should be outraged that people (mostly boys) are strutting about in public with the same weapons that struck down church goers, grade school students, worshippers at mosques, country music fans and nightclub partiers. NRA members should be outraged that their organization has financial ties threading back to Russia.

I’m sure I know sensible NRA members. Y’all are the ones who need to speak out. I’ve already told you I know next to nothing about guns. Most liberals are equally unfamiliar with weapons. We want gun laws that make sense and we want gun laws that will be enforced. We want them to be - where possible - universal.

I don’t think a national digital database should be controversial.

I don’t think closing the private gun show loopholes should be controversial.

I don’t think background checks and a two-day waiting period should be controversial.

I think the whole idea of open carry should be reconsidered. I think open carry led to this point in our history where people who have a Napolean complex insist on brandishing their military weapons in public.

Sensible gun owners are the only ones with the clout to bring about change.

Keeping your heads down and allowing this iteration of the NRA represent all gun owners is certainly not the solution.

Since it is - after all - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I’ll wrap up with his oft-used quote:

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Here’s hoping. Amen.

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Meet the Press. 1965 interview with Martin Luther King. We are 55 years passed this give and take and - to me - things have not progressed nearly enough. When King said the arc was long, I have to wonder if he knew how long that long was going to be.

This interview is telling. Different from his oratory, but his cadence and tone, I can’t help but think irritated the men interviewing him. It feels as if they are annoyed they have to be giving a “Negro” the time of day.

I also saw that Dr. King’s daughter wanted people to remember that her mom, Coretta Scott King, deserves some admiration as well for her advocacy and tenacity in the years and decades after his assassination.

Also, an article - first person perspective - from a police officer who found himself in a gunfight in Skokie, Illinois with a Gangster Disciple member. The lessons he learned from that gun battle.

Only so many hours left in the reign of you-know-who. I am euphoric and terrified all at once. - JLM