I never grew up around guns, so maybe I just don’t understand the gun culture. I think the only time I have seen a handgun up close was when a hockey teammate who is on the job arrived at our game after work. I don’t understand the American obsession with handguns. It is not the Wild, Wild West anymore. Well, maybe it still is in Texas…but for the most part those are rifles on their gun racks.
Growing up where I did on Long Island, guns were never
prevalent. We did have a few Dads’
who were on the job, but their weapons were never discussed, let alone seen by
us kids. Surprisingly, none of us
owned a pellet or a BB gun. Sure,
we had our wrist rockets and firecrackers…but that was about it. I remember a Nassau County Police
Officer visited my grade school.
He went on to discuss how life on the job is not the same as it is
depicted on TV. He said in his 15
years he had never had to remove his firearm from his holster. My, how things have changed…now they
want to put that same Police Officer in those grade schools…preferably with his
pistol already drawn.
It wasn’t until Junior High that I fired my one and only
gun. It was a 22-caliber rifle.
It’s low cost, minimal recoil and relatively low noise made it perfect for
recreational shooting. I was a Boy
Scout at the time and this was used for the rifle shooting merit badge. A weekend trip out to the woods would
be the setting. Several Fathers
served as Pack Leaders. As I look
back, I don’t think many of them had fired a rifle before. The one group I was in, the Dad was
more interested in working with his son than with anyone else. In hindsight, and what we are learning
about the Boy Scouts now, I should be thankful. However, I was given very little instruction, and even less
supervision. I remember thinking
at the time this is not safe. I
hardly knew all the kids, what if one of them didn’t quite understand the
consequences of handling a firearm.
It was at that moment one of the kids decided to shoot at something
other than the target. I guess a
bird or a squirrel had caught his eye.
Our group leader was still fawning over his own son when he heard the
commotion. He practically dove and
tackled the kid. Now what if that
individual was not aiming at the woodland creatures. What if he had an issue with someone in the pack? Well, it was swept under the rug as our
group leader told us not to speak about the incident. I wonder if this silence is still happening today.
It wasn’t until many years later that another unsafe armed
situation occurred. It was my
fourth year in the Hamptons we had a hard time filling our rental house. A group from the previous years had
decided to move on from the summertime antics. This left us short.
The guy running the house found friends of a friend. It was three guys who were police
officers from NYC. I guess he felt
that would be a good enough resume reference. It was the third weekend of that summer and the original
group was just getting to know these guys. That Saturday night they had brought back a few girls from
the bar…and this is when they decided to show off. They broke out their sidearms and proceeded to act like it
was Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.
Bragging about it being loaded, I had no idea in their inebriation how
far they were going to take it.
And we all know alcohol leads to accidents. Now, by this point I had known quite a few guys on the job
from my hockey team. NONE of them
would have ever pulled a stunt like this.
Really, you take out your gun while you are drinking in a group of
people. I never felt so
uncomfortable in my life. I wanted
to say something, even report them.
I didn’t… knowing it would get back to me. Sometimes I wish I had.
I am not going to argue about the 2nd Amendment. It tends to get people’s Constitutional
undies all in a bunch. However, I
don’t think our Founding Fathers could ever fathom Man’s ability to invent something
that so effectively eradicates one another. Rumors are even prevalent that in 1845 the Commissioner of the
U.S. Patent Office wanted to close it because he thought there was nothing left
to invent. How wrong he was. How Man seems to have an innate need to
build a better mousetrap not realizing we are actually the rodents. If you take away the 2nd
Amendment, the gun advocates say that the “bad” people will find way to get
them anyway. Of course they will,
they are criminals. And the
criminals who usually have these firearms are killing each other. Yes, there are times where there are innocent
bystanders. But it is when the
innocent bystanders become the target, that is when things need to change.
“Bad” people will always be able to get something that is
illegal.
The problem is the “crazy” ones who get the guns that are
legal.
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