“I want to say those fighting words, to hear
and to heed, and especially to you, Mr. Gore: From my cold, dead
hands.”
-Charlton Heston in May 2000, waving a
rifle above his head at an NRA annual meeting.
“The NRA is opposed to common-sense gun reform, and they
have George Bush in their hip holster…”
-Al
Gore’s then-spokesman Chris Lehane.
In my first newspaper
job in Georgetown, Texas, I became friends with a reporter who had
been in the military and liked to target-shoot. Georgetown is in
the German-Czech, beer-drinking part of Central Texas, but the town
itself was dry. So after work we’d head up the two-lane highway
over rolling hills to the tiny hamlet of Theon, which had a bar on
its outskirts.
We’d order beers and walk across the road
to a “shooting range,” which really was just a pasture with an
earthen berm in it, and we’d blast away with my friend’s .38
revolver and/or .22 rifle. I assume the criticism of this
shooting-while-drinking behavior will start any minute, but we
weren’t primarily drinking; we were target shooting and having fun.
And there in way-rural Williamson County, we were a danger to no
one.
About a quarter century later, I was walking down
San Francisco’s trendy Valencia Street when a short man in his late
teens or early 20s walked next to me, way too close. He stuck his
face about three inches from my cheek and chanted, “Gimme a
cigarette, bitch.” After 10 or 15 paces of this, I stopped to face
him and noticed the other members of his gang – judging from their
colors, one of the Norte?o crews that claimed this part of the
Mission – who were watching intently.
When I explained
that I didn’t have a cigarette, the gangbanger scooted back a few
steps, crouched weirdly and then charged, swinging a beer bottle at
my head. Reflexively, I blocked it with a forearm, and time began
moving very, very slowly as I backed away in careful baby steps.
And you’d better believe that I was looking for guns; the Nortenos
and the rival Surenos had been shooting each other for years in
that part of town.
High Country News has a history of
championing collaboration among antagonists – even bitter enemies –
as a way of solving intractable Western problems. No issues call
more loudly for the finding of reasoned common ground than gun
ownership and gun control. There are groups and politicians who
benefit from polarizing the gun question into simple-minded
absolutes with demonizing subtexts: Do you support the right to
bear arms? (Or are you a big-government fascist come to take our
guns and put us in a camp?) Do you support gun control? (Or are you
a right-wing loon with an assault rifle at the bedside?) The
polarization has led to a mishmash of state and federal laws that
disserve the majority of Americans – and Westerners – who don’t
want to take guns away from solid citizens or rural areas, but
don’t want their kids killed in gang crossfire, either.
Ray Ring’s cover package, “Guns R Us,” offers an authoritative look
at the sometimes loopy state of Western gun culture. I think it
remarkably even-handed and hope it can provide a starting point or
two for discussion among people of goodwill from across the
political spectrum who are more interested in sane gun policy than
rabid rhetorical gunplay.
Theon, meet San Francisco.
S.F., Theon.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Ready, aim, compromise.
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