From The ALH Archives -Stop The Gun Violence-Nothing More Needs To Be Said-Or Maybe More Does When You Come To Think About The Matter

From The ALH Archives -Stop The Gun Violence-Nothing More Needs To Be Said-Or Maybe More Does When You Come To Think About The Matter

By Fritz Taylor

It bears repeating since I have taken what I half-expected would be some blow-back from what I call frankly “gun nuts.” Guys, maybe gals too but I don’t see many of them on the range, at least not the one in Rowley, whose only political position, and who knows if that is even true and maybe it is something about security lost way back when at the time they had to fend for themselves after working their ways out of dear mother wombs, is that they will defend, fight, maybe even go to armed struggle like some of the whackos out west so that no governmental agency, great or small will take away their weapons. On inquiry, maybe inspection is the better word, when asked by me or others whether any such agencies had approached them about taking their weapons away they have universally said no. That said I still have to tell you about the blow-back from the nut-cakes -and I am a guy who both likes the right to bear arms, thinks the original founders met for us to be militarily prepared for whatever was up and who likes to fire a few harmless rounds at paper bullseyes for, I don’t know, kicks maybe.   

To refresh I mentioned in my first caption on this subject that I knew exactly why Greg Green gave me this archival caption assignment. I am maybe the only one on staff here, I am not sure of Sam Lowell, who agrees with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on an individual’s Second Amendment right to bear arms. Having grown up in 1950s then rural Fulton County down in Georgia where guns, learning to shoot are a way of life and then having served in the military I am very familiar with weapons.  Like to go to the firing range over in secluded Rowley and see what my latest abilities are. No subtle or sweet reason argument here for my position except that I want the right to bear arms because I don’t want the cops, the crazies, the criminals and the cranks to be the only ones with fire power.        

Let me put this in big letters or something like that I do not like the NRA, have never joined despite constant and unending mail giving me a million chances to join that organization and defense my rights big time. Defending those rights somewhere along that line of reasoning where if one single regulatory encroachment passes through the sieve every gunowner with have to surrender his or her weapons and go on the run.  Jesus.

That is where I draw some very big lines on this gun question. This gun madness question of late. It is a very, very long distance from exercising my right to bear arms essentially defensively against cops, crazies, cranks and criminal or whatever attempts to harm me and mine and opposing every attempt to limit access by crazies and criminals to weapons. A very long way from an occasional admittedly male-hunter warrior drive to some secluded firing range to burst off a few rounds and not have safe-guards against the very real dangerous people in the world who should not be allowed access to endless weapons depots. Yeah, call me a liberal, call me a bleeding heart, but we have got to protect our kids, grandkids, and somebody else’s too by dropping the violence index which is sky high right now.           

Those seemingly sane reasons drew more hell and damnation from so-called fellow gun owners who have frozen their brains around the thought that any encroachment is tantamount to surrender and destruction of everything this country stands for, or did until the military went berserk with weaponry, the cops become militarized, the criminals did likewise and more to keep the coppers at bay, and the crazies started almost looting the gun shops, shows, and depots.

Here is one example, not the worse, and since I have not asked permission in the age of privacy and identity politics concerns will just use a first name-Claude-

“It is motherfuckers like you, guys who claim to defend the sacred right to bear arms, to defend home and hearth, to defend against the criminal immigrants, the (n-word), and dopey liberal bureaucrats that are bleeding us dry. Are putting my three kids and darling wife at risk by chipping away with regulations and other “deep state” secret government stuff I know about but don’t want to talk about here to a commie. So fuck you and your friend Obama and the other (n-word) who want to see us defenseless when they come crawling into our neighborhoods.”

Like I said this is far from the worst one so you can see what I am, we are up against in protecting our kids and grand-kids from the vultures.