Every Day! Strйggle

There are probably three dozen things that make my teeth wiggle. You know: things that get you to grinding your teeth so bad that they start to hurt and you discover that they're all wiggly as well. That kind of teeth wiggly.
     One of these is soft-core evangelism. You get your mail out of the mailbox and discover that, just on the day when your most recent copy of Freethought Today arrived, there's a note about Jesus wanting to draw you back into his bosom or some such stuck under the mailbox edge. Not that I'm in any way suggesting that the appearance of the tract is directly connected with the arrival of the mail.
     Another grinder is the absolute faith of so many in ignorance and irrational stupidity being a virtue. I'd rail on about this for long and overly verbose, were it not for the next grinder, which I consider almost as disturbing as belief in a just and loving god.
     My most suppressed and curbed grinder is my having to be in conversations about firearms that end up going to something like "All gun owners are potential sociopathic killers waitin' for no excuse whatsoever to burst out of the closet like Rambo, guns a-blazin' and people a-dyin'."
     Them kinds of conversations grind me 'cause, although I survived the '60s and was nominally anti-war and all that, I still have a certain pleasure holding a fine piece of low-rent firearm in my paws or holdin' it to my shoulder. And that, well, it's something that folks living outside the so-called "gun culture" don't get any more than I get puttin' tracts under the edge of the mailbox.
     Kinda like when I was in the USN and we had what was then a regular occurance called the "Dependants Day Cruise." Folks would bring their loved ones or family or girlfriends or whoever to go out on the blue and briny to see what an aircraft carrier does when it ain't loaded down with family & friends.
     There I was, standing on the port cat-walk forward of the comm spaces with Joy Eastman, watching one of the onboard jets fly by at supersonic speed, leaving a slam bang sound barrier bein' broken in our ears. The next bit, after deafening us, was the obligatory bombing of the fishes, during which a plane would zip by and drop a small device in the water, which device, upon hitting the water, would explode.
     I'd seen it before. It was cool.
     Joy didn't think much of it. She couldn't understand how we could see that happen and not think of all the death that such a device would cause, not counting the fish, if it were dropped on a village of poor Vietnamese villagers.
     To which my response was "It's technology. I know what it does. I am powerless to do anything about it, and I signed up for this so I have to go with the flow." Or something like that.
     Your garden-variety "it's just my job, man" bullshit.
     Either way, even with a friend standing there next to me, my participation in the military's purpose, misguided or not, was some abrogation of my sense of human dignity, justice and the way of peace, man. As if.

At which point we get back to guns. Which is kinda like getting back to religion, which is kinda like politics, which is kinda like cognition, which is a direct drop in modern times to Cyril M. Kornbluth's novella, The Marching Morons, which is a whole 'nother rant.

See, to me a gun is kinda like the screwdriver doodad on your multi-purpose hunting knife. Or a keestered shiv, if you wanna get down in the streets is real, man, mode. Anyone can use a gun to cap some food or protect their family from wild hyena-coyote hybrids from the planet Grnszlpaq or go out and put holes in things to see how close you can get to leavin' no paper unshredded . . . or kill themselves, their friends, co-workers and the gang of kids play that horror core music down the street.
     It's a tool that has multiple purposes.
     As for the cappin' your food. Happens all over the planet in places ain't got a WalMart or a Food Lion or whatever.
     "You hungry?"
     "Yeah, I think so."
     "Cool. Let's load up ol' Betty Mae and go get somethin' to cook."
     Boom.
     At the same time, guns are used in war and sectarian violence and violence against people, just as they were first designed to do, after cappin' some food. And when you think about it, it's the old "chicken and egg" conspiracy thing: Were guns invented to blow people away or to catch some meat on the hoof?
     Depends on whether you're the army general of Tsang Tao Chun or whatever – bein' as how we think the Chinese invented all the powder & sparkle parts of it – or maybe you're the guy put together the idea of a projectile traveling at the speed of sound, which projectile would snuff a deer or a bear or whatever.
     "Honey, I think I shot the neighbor's horse."
     "Well don't just stand there! Let's eat it."
     "I was wrong. I shot the neighbor."
     "Oops."
     But once we get the snuffin' of food or neighbors out of the way, intentionally or not, guns are machines made by people to do any of the above. Some folks like 'em 'cause they're just cool. You know, you've seen 'em. One of those "Have you seen the new attachment on my drill?" kind of deals.
     Or some folks just like putting holes in chunks of cardboard or paint cans or whatever.
     So be it. And therein lies the problem.

A gun ain't the same thing to everybody. The person who has a gun to protect himself, his family and his possessions, well, sometimes them people are as nuts as the crazies they fear or consider dangerous. I know, I lived next to one once. Total sociopaths. Had a sign in the door about "I have a constitutional right to protect my shit. And I'm armed and ready to do so!"
     Then they'd cut their kids loose to come into my hard to break windows in the garage or steal shit out of my yard or mess with stuff elsewhere on the property.
     Other folks have 'em cause they go out every year a couple times a year to kill some animal and drag the meat and horns home to show off how cool they are. I don't mind them folks. All of my grandparents lived at a time when hunting was another way to keep from killin' the cows and chickens. Many people still live that way.
     And yes, I know: there are hunter/gatherer societies on this planet that have never had guns. They use poison darts and bows and arrows and bolas and such. (To which the come-back is something like "If they can live that way, why would you need a gun for hunting?")
     To which I have no response 'cause I consider the question inane.
     At the next stop in this way through guns-as-a-topic there's the so-called "sport shooting" folks, which probably describes my attitude toward owning and shooting a firearm. You know: clay pigeons getting blasted at a trap shoot competition. Black powder gun folks showin' off the craftsmanship of a flint lock or cap lock rifle or pistol at a meet, sometimes with obligatory shooting added to coincide with the amount of shooting off the mouth going along with that part of it. Them.
     And then there's folks who like to have a piece of history, even if it's a repro .36 caliber cap-and-ball revolver like some unknown person might have died with in the Civil War or during a shoot out with the Apaches somewhere in Arizona. Or the guy who has a 91/30 Винтовка Мосина to hang on the wall 'cause it's the same as "rifle Uncle Igor carry in Revolution! Every day! Strйggle!"
     And yes, again, yes: I know that guns are used in crimes, in murders, in assaults, rapes, religious sectarian violence, war, pestilance, disease, torture & general mayhem around the world. Been that way since day one the first barrel ever puked out a bullet. I know. I know.
     I know, dammit! I know. But so have knives – even kitchen knives – and long poles with pointy ends and poison darts and even trip lines and them pits with pointy shit at the bottom of 'em you fall in you die. Or a toaster thrown in the tub while someone's innocently bathing themselves. Or cars driven into crowds. Or airplanes into buildings. You name it; it's a weapon.

But for me, bein' a kid of the era when Grandpa had a rifle (or maybe three) and maybe Uncle Igor had his service pistol from the Revolution (Every day! Strйggle!), I ain't a-fearin' of guns as things by themselves. I rather think they're interesting, like archeological stuff, like a flint arrow blade collection or a couple samurai swords that Uncle Takashimu used when he chopped up the gardener of Emperor Mung.
     So I see the K98k Mauser rifle carried by German troops in WW II as an interesting piece of history. It and the Russian version of the same piece, the Mosin Nagant, are bizarrely anachronistic to my thinking. A bolt action rifle such as these two would have been a bad match – at least in my minor league mind of strategies – against the US military's M1 rifle or carbine, which was a semi-auto rifle.
     Thus, owning a piece of history would be cool. Is cool. Ought to be cool.
     And lettin' fire with something like that is cool, even if it is noisy and smelly and it scares the aliens out of the sky.

Them what thinks guns are dangerous have a point. They are dangerous. I fear 'em for what they can do, actually. Seeing someone with a gun in their mitts makes me a bit nervous, even if the person mitting the gun is someone I know and trust and have no reason to fear. It's the reality: you can get killed with a gun, even if it is only your gun and you're all by yourself in the kitchen checking the firing pin protrusion. Happens often enough.
     But I also disagree with those who would ban all firearms completely, across the board. And as hokey as it might seem, there is a certain degree of truth in the statement that "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." You can go damn near anywhere and eventually find a firearm that will snuff Aunt Bessy's cat or Aunt Bessy her own self. It's a given.
     For me it's more a cross between interesting history, the mechanics of the firearm – if not the history of the mechanics of firearms, which is another thing even more arcane – and where the firearms in question came from, how they were assembled and what happened to the poor dumb sonnabitch held this one last in his paws. Or the poor gulag inmate made it.
     And I enjoy seeing how poor a shot I am with stuff that goes bang and shoots a bullet. Kinda like trying to play saxophone and thinkin' I'm a jazz musician. It's fun for a while but after I prove to myself that I can't hit the broad side of a barn, even with a backstop & all that, I'll empty the magazine or cylinder, get out the cleanin' kit, do that act and then put the gun back on its hook or rack or wherever else I want to put it.
     And yes, I do like showin' off that I got one of whatever. If that's the most egregious vanity I can muster for a firearm, fine. Move along. I've rattled about this before.

Once again I'm at a loss for what this means to anyone but me. I don't get off on the NRA gospel of right wing fearful extremist conspiracy freak stuff about "they're gonna take our guns! Holy Mother Jesus Christ in Heaven Almighty, White and pure as the driven snow, please no!"
     I also don't get off on the total ban of all firearms across the board. I gave my reasons before above. Live with it.
     This leaves me in the middle of nowhere surrounded by a constant gibbering about loss of rights, suppression of liberties, end of personal protection, guardin' against the evil horde or prepping up for the invasion of whatever horde. It's like tinnitus. EEEEEeeeeeeeee!!!, on and on and on, day after day and minute by minute. And believe me, I know tinnitus. It's annoying.
     For me, I figure it's a lost cause trying to explain myself to folks – like my dear wife, who has an abject, nearly frantic reaction of my possession of a cap-and-ball revolver takes half an hour to load. Thus I'll have my guns and she can not have hers and such is life. Uncle Igor will hang on the wall next to William Burroughs and maybe every now and then I'll take him down from the wall and haul him off to a friend's house to put holes in things at reasonable distances. A darn sight better fate than what he was originally used for, being the snuffing of enemies of the state and guarding the gulag.