It's been a while since I had my opinions column, Everyone's Got One. In fact, I kind of forgot about it for a few years, there. This was originally supposed to be the final essay, but I never got around to posting it. I updated it a little and decided, what the hell, why not use this as a Goodnight, Fuckers?
This is maybe, possibly?, almost ten years old. My dad brought me out shooting in the desert when I was in junior high, but this was the first time I'd gone shooting as an adult. So far, it's also the last time. I don't necessarily have an interest in doing it again, but if the opportunity arose, I might. Anyway, here goes!
I live in the Chicago area, so it's not common to be able to go to Walmart and buy weapons and bullets and such. I'm sure if you get further out into the country, it is common, but not where I live. So you can imagine my surprise when my dad and my brother brought me into a Walmart in Vegas, and I saw this cabinet with this sign, typo and all, on it. I remember thinking how odd it was because the only thing preventing you from buying bullets there is because the door on the cabinet is broken.
Because in Nevada you don't need a license to own a gun. You don't need a license to openly carry a gun. You don't even need to register your guns. It's more of a suggestion in case you wind up getting in a shooting incident. It makes things a little easier to clear up.
While I was out there I met a guy who made his own guns. The only thing he has to do is let them be inspected to prove that they can't be converted to automatic fire.
That's pretty crazy, in my opinion. Even when I was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs about guns as a kid, I believed that they should be registered and that you need a license for them. But that's neither here nor there.
I no longer believe that guns should be readily available. Handguns and rifles, sure, own them. Shotguns? I'm on the fence about those. Assault rifles should absolutely not be owned by any citizen regardless of how responsible that person might be. And any gun license should be at least as difficult to get as a driver's license. But that's neither here nor there, either. The gun lobby is extraordinarily powerful, and if a bunch of American children getting killed by guns every fucking year isn't enough to defeat them, nothing is. I'll bet a psychopath could fire a machine gun into a crowd of children on live TV, killing all of them in horribly graphic ways, and it wouldn't move the needle one iota.
Because lobbying (for anything) should be illegal. You can't bribe a politician, but you can have someone else bribe them on your behalf? But that's not what I'm here to talk about.
I think I can say these things as someone who has fired a litany of guns and understands how dangerous these things can be.
You don't even need to go to a shooting range in Nevada. You don't even need to shoot on your own property. All you have to do is find a stretch of desert and make sure no one is in your line of fire. That's it. And that's where my dad and brother took me. So many people go out there to shoot, and very few clean up after themselves. The ground is littered with shell casings as far as you can see.
Dad gave me a refresher course on gun safety. So did my brother. We put in our ear protection and got down to business. Now, when I was a kid, I was a decent shot, but I discovered that not shooting a gun for almost twenty years took a lot of that away. I didn't hit a single thing I shot at during this excursion. And I had a few things to fire. I tried out a 9 mm, a .44, my dad's .357. That .44? Firing that cleared my sinuses out for an entire year.
(A few weeks ago I found my old guitar from high school and held it for the first time in decades. I remembered being able to turn out at least a pisspour tune, but my hands didn't even recognize the shape of the instrument anymore. It made me think of this column that I'd never published.)
My brother's friends came out with their own stuff, including a sniper rifle one of them had made. On the way out we'd also stopped by a gun store to get Tannerite. If you don't know what that is, it's an explosive. You have to mix it together in order to make it volatile. Then you set it up and shoot at it until it blows up. If memory serves, I did take a few shots at it, but I missed entirely.
My brother is a much better marksman than I am. He hit the Tannerite every time except when it came to the sniper rifle. Not only had he put the biggest container out there, he also put a bunch of garbage we found out there on top of it to make the explosion more impressive. It took him a few tries with the sniper rifle, but he got it, and it blew sky high. We were perhaps a little close to it, and some of the debris landed behind us. Whoops.
I am never going to own a gun. I'm not responsible enough to own one. I don't even need one. I live in a place where, if I called the cops, they would show up in five minutes, tops. More likely, three. If I did have a gun, they would probably shoot me upon arriving. Ask me how much trust I have in the police shooting the right person. I'll save you the effort: ZERO.
I will also admit that shooting guns is fun. Maybe even a lot of fun. But we play waaaaay too fast and loose with personal responsibility when it comes to gun ownership. We need to do something about that, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
The argument could be made that we need guns to protect us from the government, and that's why assault rifles should be owned by citizens. If David Koresh and his "family" didn't stand a chance against the government, none of you do. Stop wasting time with that argument.
I'm not saying to ban guns, although a part of me wants just that, but that part is a very small part because I know we don't live in a perfect world, and guns are, at times, a necessary evil. But holy fuck, maybe make psych evaluations part of the process. And those people whose guns fall into the hands of people who use them to shoot up schools? Maybe they're not so responsible as they might think. Perhaps they should be punished at least as a lesson to others who are fast and loose, too.
Anyway, here's a picture of me shooting. Try not to get a boner.
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