OP
- Thread Starter
- #21
I've mentioned it before; but perhaps it bears repeating. I was raised in the middle of the USA, in the cornfields of Illinois. My father and I hunted rabbit and pheasant since I was 10, when I got my first shotgun for Christmas. I kept that weapon and the shells for it in my bedroom closet. Somehow, I managed to avoid killing anyone or injuring myself.
In season, my dad and I would go out hunting, leaving early enough so that we'd be walking the cornrows before the sun came up. Afterwards, we'd have breakfast at a diner; it would be full of hunters and farmers, shotguns and rifles leaned up against the walls everywhere and in the back windows of pickup trucks. Nobody shot the place up.
My dad would drop me off directly at school. I'd take my shotgun into the school with me and hang it up in the cloakroom with my coat; at lunch I'd walk down the alley to my house and drop it off. Somehow I managed to avoid shooting up the school.
The basement of the school, which had been built in 1903, had a .22 rifle range in it. In my day, we no longer had 'target practice' as part of the curriculum, but at one time it was, I was told; makes sense, since the range was obviously still there.
I knew kids who had guns and some who did not. Some hunted and some did not. No one would ever have thought to point a gun at another person. Everyone I knew who owned a gun practiced gun safety; my dad assured me if he ever saw me doing something unsafe with my weapon, he'd beat me with it; I believed him.
I know people were committing crimes with guns. I know the world was not a safe place. And I know 'things have changed' since my boyhood. But guns are not evil. People can be trusted with firearms and we have a culture of legal and safe gun ownership in the USA that goes back to our founding and before that.
And this is something that many Americans no longer identify with or understand; many people not raised in the culture I was raised in don't get it at all. But no matter how mystifying it may seem; we gun owners who grew up with them do understand. Guns are part of our culture; they're part of our heritage. They are inextricably tied to our identity; we think of guns when we think of what it means to be an American. Some people belittle this; they think we see guns as an extension of our manhood in a more literal sense; but it isn't that. It represents not power or potency, but freedom.
Mao said that all power flows from the barrel of a gun; he was right. Our founders knew it before he did. European nations have struggled for freedom and democracy also, but we in the US took ours by force and built our entire ethos on top of that. Our land was peopled with those who could master our environment already; people who didn't like being told what to do and for whom the notions of kings and lords was a distant concept of their father's fathers, not their own. When they took their freedom, the first thing they did was to make sure that the government erected in its place understood that the power flowed up from the electorate to the elected, not the other way around, and that guns reside in the hands of the people because that is where the power resides. There is no one responsible for protecting our freedom but us; we are not the protected but the protectors of our own freedom.
A gun is a tool. But it is, for some of us, also a powerful symbol. One which is part of and permanently identified with how we see ourselves. We are not swaggering macho gun-slingers; we are filled with silent resolve and determination that says that we will never be defeated, that we will never trade our precious liberties for safety, for security, or for the illusions of those things. The only force that can ever defeat America is our own people. If we disarm ourselves, we remove the symbol and the power of our authority.
If we outlaw private ownership of guns, the government will not turn evil overnight. Our freedoms and liberties will not vanish instantly. No one will kick in our doors and destroy our way of life in a jack-booted moment of rage. But when those things come, one by one, and decade after decade, we will not have the means to protest, let alone defend, what we once held precious.
So when I say this, I don't say it as an arrogant boast or an idle threat. No one will ever take my guns from me while I live. No one. Ever. I will die first. But I will not die alone that day. Hope that doesn't seem too melodramatic.
In season, my dad and I would go out hunting, leaving early enough so that we'd be walking the cornrows before the sun came up. Afterwards, we'd have breakfast at a diner; it would be full of hunters and farmers, shotguns and rifles leaned up against the walls everywhere and in the back windows of pickup trucks. Nobody shot the place up.
My dad would drop me off directly at school. I'd take my shotgun into the school with me and hang it up in the cloakroom with my coat; at lunch I'd walk down the alley to my house and drop it off. Somehow I managed to avoid shooting up the school.
The basement of the school, which had been built in 1903, had a .22 rifle range in it. In my day, we no longer had 'target practice' as part of the curriculum, but at one time it was, I was told; makes sense, since the range was obviously still there.
I knew kids who had guns and some who did not. Some hunted and some did not. No one would ever have thought to point a gun at another person. Everyone I knew who owned a gun practiced gun safety; my dad assured me if he ever saw me doing something unsafe with my weapon, he'd beat me with it; I believed him.
I know people were committing crimes with guns. I know the world was not a safe place. And I know 'things have changed' since my boyhood. But guns are not evil. People can be trusted with firearms and we have a culture of legal and safe gun ownership in the USA that goes back to our founding and before that.
And this is something that many Americans no longer identify with or understand; many people not raised in the culture I was raised in don't get it at all. But no matter how mystifying it may seem; we gun owners who grew up with them do understand. Guns are part of our culture; they're part of our heritage. They are inextricably tied to our identity; we think of guns when we think of what it means to be an American. Some people belittle this; they think we see guns as an extension of our manhood in a more literal sense; but it isn't that. It represents not power or potency, but freedom.
Mao said that all power flows from the barrel of a gun; he was right. Our founders knew it before he did. European nations have struggled for freedom and democracy also, but we in the US took ours by force and built our entire ethos on top of that. Our land was peopled with those who could master our environment already; people who didn't like being told what to do and for whom the notions of kings and lords was a distant concept of their father's fathers, not their own. When they took their freedom, the first thing they did was to make sure that the government erected in its place understood that the power flowed up from the electorate to the elected, not the other way around, and that guns reside in the hands of the people because that is where the power resides. There is no one responsible for protecting our freedom but us; we are not the protected but the protectors of our own freedom.
A gun is a tool. But it is, for some of us, also a powerful symbol. One which is part of and permanently identified with how we see ourselves. We are not swaggering macho gun-slingers; we are filled with silent resolve and determination that says that we will never be defeated, that we will never trade our precious liberties for safety, for security, or for the illusions of those things. The only force that can ever defeat America is our own people. If we disarm ourselves, we remove the symbol and the power of our authority.
If we outlaw private ownership of guns, the government will not turn evil overnight. Our freedoms and liberties will not vanish instantly. No one will kick in our doors and destroy our way of life in a jack-booted moment of rage. But when those things come, one by one, and decade after decade, we will not have the means to protest, let alone defend, what we once held precious.
So when I say this, I don't say it as an arrogant boast or an idle threat. No one will ever take my guns from me while I live. No one. Ever. I will die first. But I will not die alone that day. Hope that doesn't seem too melodramatic.
