America’s Love Affair with Guns

I think this is something that has to change.

In the  late 1970s, I knew a guy named Harry. He was into guns. He was from Chicago, where he said guns were endemic to the culture. He gave me a .22, with ammo, which I still have, stowed away somewhere in our attic. He taught me how to load it, clean, it, shoot it.  This is a gun which, if you shot it at someone who is threatening you, would only piss the person off.

That first day at the shooting range, I knew I was not a gun person and that Harry was slated for that slot in my life entitled History of Ridiculous Men. Harry mistakenly believed that because I was worked at a prison (as a librarian and Spanish teacher, positions not exactly famous for their gun control advocacy), I obviously had to understand the importance of guns. I told Harry that whenever a gun appeared in a novel or movie, it was always used to kill someone – or was used for suicide.   As in art, so in life.

Harry said he had no sympathy for anyone who committed suicide – with a gun or anything else. “There’s always help for these people. All they have to do is ask.”

A year later, his son  committed suicide with a gun.

After Harry’s brief appearance in my life, I wrestled with this gun issue with my prison boss – a gun advocate, of course – who really got off on the hunts for escaped inmates. On these hunts he where he could  legally stalk these inmates and shoot them if he chose to because the law said he could.

My boss was a good ole boy southern idiot.

In Florida prisons between 1976-1979, there was a raging drug trade within the prison system. Guards sold weed and other drugs to inmates who then sold it to other inmates.   I know this because in my double wide trailer library in the middle of0 the prison compound I had five inmates assigned to my area who talked openly about the trade. These guys were in their late teens and early twenties and talked freely about life in prison. They talked because they trusted me. I was Ms. Trish who brought them food, books, and contact from the outside. The library was their safe haven, where they could talk about anything, say anything.

When an inmate hung himself  in solitaire, I heard it first from another inmate , The ssistant superintendent  had taken this young man back to his trailer in the employee park, and forced him to have sex. This young man was black. No one believed him, no one  gave a damn, he was a statistic, too bad. But I started asking around, I went to the superintendent, talked to some of the other employees, and eventually the assistant superintendent was forced to resign. No charges were ever brought against him. He and the superintendent are probably now long dead. Good riddance.

In those three years, I sat in on parole hearings, saw from the inside out how the system works, how corrupted it was. And I don’t think much has changed in all the years since I left in 1979. Florida’s present governor, Rick Scott wants to privatize prisons, turn them into bastions of profit like Halliburton, Bush’s favorite private security company in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, good ole Governor Scott and his Republican legislature have made concealed weapons permits in Florida easier to obtain. As of today, December 21, one million concealed gun permits have been issued in Florida. 1,000,000.

This evening, we built a fire in our outside fire pit. Our neighbor dropped by. At one point in the conversation, she said to Rob, “You’ve got to stop slamming  me on Facebook.” Rob.”

“I’m not slamming you,” Rob told her. “I’m talking about why we need control in this country.”

“But you’re always saying it’s the fault of the Republicans. I’m a Republican.”

“Assault weapons should be banned.  They’re not used for hunting. They’re combat weapons used in war, by the military, to kill people.”

You can see where this conversation was headed. Sure enough, we then got into religion, then politics again, then the education system,  families…all over the map.  After she left, I went to Huffington Post to find out if the ending of the world had been delayed and was nearly upon us, and saw this:  If  the event the headline has changed when you click the link, here’s the link for the full article. :

The headline, TO LIVE AND DIE IN AMERICA, is followed by a list of the shooting deaths in the U.S. in just one week since the Sandy Hook massacre.  They top 100.

The synchro is disturbing. It may also be a reflection of something that zipped through my head today when Megan and I were at Sports Authority doing some Christmas shopping. I noticed a guy who just walked around with his hands in his jacket, never touching any of the merchandise, never picking up anything. Back and forth he went through the aisles, looking around, here, there. And I thought: Suppose he’s one of the million who got a concealed weapon permit this year? Suppose he’s a wacko? What would I do if he pulled out a gun and started firing?

And this whole scenario unfolded in my mind, how I would find Megan, grab her hand and head for the nearest exit. Or we would  hit the floor and play dead. Or…I suddenly realized I was interjecting great emotional power into a what if scenario, that my weird paranoia was connected to Sandy Hook and the million permits I’d read about this morning. I cut the thought off, but then it was followed by the conversation with our neighbor, and the Huffington Post headline.  And now, this blog post.

For Rob and me, there’s a wider conversation here. Our neighbor, for instance, said the election is over and we shouldn’t be talking about politics. But politics permeates every aspect of our lives: the food we eat and the cars we drive, the public services we have or don’t have, health care and our access to it, where and what we build, who can vote and where and when we vote, the taxes we pay, the rights we have, the roads on which we drive, the national parks in which we camp and hike and reconnect with nature, how our most vulnerable citizens are treated, rich and poor and everything in between.

Politics isn’t just elections. It’s not just some isolated game politicians play. It has real consequences in our lives.

So, back to those million permits, prisons, guns, and Harry.