Gun Happy

Daniel Boone used to be on TV - coonskin cap, leather breeches and shirt, moccasins on his traveling feet. An animal man who lived his life in the mountains. He needed a gun, a rifle. He ate and wore what he shot and killed.

Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rodgers, and Gene Autry were on TV, riding their great-looking horses and packing pistols at the hips, all to protect and serve the innocent.

Nobody seems to want to go back to the pioneer way of life, abandoning autos for the horse, the buggy, and the sleigh.

But they drag the pioneer guns into every century, making them bigger, more powerful, and more plentiful, as if they had to hunt for their food, skin for their clothing, and kill the enemy in the woods. 

One of my brothers took himself and his career to the far north, and discovered he liked guns and he liked to look a buck in the eye from behind a tree, a safe distance away, and then put a bullet in its chest and watch it fall.

One of my uncles moved to the far north, trekking by caterpillar to get to his rough cottage so he could hunt and kill and eat. He died there, exactly the way he wanted his life to end, doing what he liked. Killing deer.

I fired a shotgun in a lonely pasture once, because the gun was placed in my hands and I wanted to prove I had good aim.

I blasted the orange on the stump post, way across the barren field, splattered it through the air into a thousand juicy pieces.

The kick threw me backward.

The roar deafened my ears.

My shoulder pained.

A powerful feeling.

One I vowed never to feel again.

Killing kids in classrooms and cafeterias is heartbreaking. So is murdering your wife, a convenience store clerk, a bank teller, an officer of the law, because you have a gun in your hands and you can use it.

It's gun-happy. It's powerful.

A nobody gets to be a somebody.

Pitiful, isn't it?